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Consumer Electronics

Apple (AAPL) Looks At Free iTunes For Everyone

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Published
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Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) is in conversations with the music industry about offering its entire iTunes library free. It would recoup the loss of revenue by changing more for its iPod hardware.

According to the FT "Detailed market research has shown strong appetite among consumers for deals bundling music in with the cost of the device."

Since none of the major music publishers have signed on yet, it will be interesting to see if Apple tries to use its substantial leverage with them to create the new program. This would probably involve getting one of two of the publishers to agree to an altered partnership with Apple. Jobs & Co. could then pressure the balance of the industry to get in line.

Due to Apple’s share of the music download market, if the iTunes store is available free to purchasers of the company’s digital media products, it is likely to affect handset companies trying to start their own download operations. If Apple changes it model often enough, no one will be able to keep up.

Douglas A. McIntyre

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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