Don’t hold your breath for music subscriptions from Apple's iTunes music store – Steve Jobs will never offer them. Renting music flies in the face of consumer behavior. Consumers want to buy music, not rent it, and a big part of Steve Jobs' genius is his firm, intuitive grasp of how consumers behave, and tailoring Apple's technology to accommodate it – not the other way around.

Nonetheless, there's a lot of speculation that Jobs may soon offer subscriptions, mostly because he's currently renegotiating contracts with the record labels, which love subscriptions because of the steady, predictable revenue stream.

Some speculate that the labels will force Jobs to offer monthly music rentals as part of new licensing terms, the same way they forced him to add DRM copy protection to music in iTunes' early days. Jobs may have been hinting at this scenario last week, when he told Reuters:

"Never say never, but customers don't seem to be interested in it," Jobs said. "The subscription model has failed so far."

Jobs is right. There's no mainstream demand for music subscriptions. The music business isn't built on long-term rentals; it's built on one hit after another. It's confectionary. Tunes are addictive for a while and then discarded. It's like the drug business: Users are always looking for the next hit.

I'm currently hooked on The Good, the Bad and the Queen – it's all I want to listen to, all day, all night. I'm not interested in hearing any other music at the moment. There's no sense "subscribing" to this album. I'd much rather buy it.

I just canceled my subscription to Microsoft's Zune service after about three months as a subscriber. I finally realized that I'll never change my music-consuming behavior to fit its business model.

Like all subscription services, Zune is analogous to a cheap Vegas buffet. At first you stuff your face like a pig, but when you go back, there's nothing you want to eat. After an initial burst of activity where I downloaded everything I could find, my usage dropped off a cliff.

I thought the Zune subscription service would be good for finding for new music, but it isn't at all. I've found more music from TV ads than I found through Zune.

A lot of people tell the same story. Even die-hard fans of subscription services don’t use them for music discovery. They use Pandora or Last.fm, they hear tunes on the radio or read about bands in magazines. Then they go to their subscription service to download it. I've yet to find anyone who uses a subscription service to find new music.

Subscriptions make sense in a group setting, like an office, where a lot of people want to listen to a lot of different music, but not for individuals.

The Zune service is pretty slick. It's all you can eat, and has a surprisingly deep catalog. The online store is nicely designed and easy to navigate.

But I just didn’t use it.

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