One of the inevitabilities of subscription digital music services is that when you stops subscribing you lose all that you’ve been downloading. The same goes for when that service is withdrawn. This is why subscription music is a bad idea.

Virgin Digital is in the process of being shut down. A process that will complete by 19 October 2007. Subscribers to this service could not (obviously) burn downloaded music to CD, so after that date there’ll be no more music for them to listen to – even if they downloaded it.

Ash have decided to stop releasing albums, instead they’re going to release singles. Radiohead don’t release music on iTunes because they’re obliged to break albums into tracks that can be sold separately.

When you’re as successful as Radiohead, you can be choosy, ‘cos let’s face it, your new or occasional fans don’t matter.

It’s official – and yes, I’m late on this – Charlotte Martin’s new album of covers, Reproductions, will be exclusively available to those who visit her Never Say Never tour this autumn. It’s possible that it will be released into the wild during spring 2008.

Much discussion of this strategy is going on over at the arsonist army, especially the disappointment of those who cannot make it to one of Charlotte’s shows. In this age of digital releases and the inevitable demise of the CD, such a policy of exclusivity is bizarre.

Musicians: when you have something to release, release it. Everywhere. By all means sell your stuff whenever the opportunity arises, but don’t lock it down or invent some cachet for it, for you’re only hurting your audience.

John Gruber agrees with most commentators: the ringtones pricing (and restriction) model is a racket, aimed to bring more cash to the record companies and to Apple.

Surprisingly, I disagree. It’s not a racket. You’re paying for the privilege of abusing and mis-representing a song for the purpose of identifying a phone call. This turns a piece of music into a completely different entity. It’s not merely a change in context. It’s a change in form and in function.

But that’s the musician in me speaking: when I wrote music I was very precious about ensuring that people heard the full track. I weep for those listeners who skip through the end of a song, or only listen to their favourite bit. Music isn’t supposed to be heard like that. You’ll gather from this that I believe the whole concept of ringtones to be wrong from a musicology viewpoint. Sure, design ringtones for that sole purpose, just don’t hack about some artist’s work so that you can tell when your Mum is calling you.