A big topic of the day is the news that Apple is working on a device-subscription bundle that would give buyers of a premium iPod or iTouch free access to iTunes music. So big, actually, that CNBC's "Squawk on the Street" took a few minutes off the Bear Stearns crisis to talk about it. Just check out the action at Techmeme. There are dozens of blogger responses to the Financial Times report.

It's worth nothing that Silicon Alley Insider spoke to some sources and reported "...while some are skeptical this will amount to anything, we're told discussions have definitely taken place."

In all the posts I read, something was missing: An explicit reference to DRM. Some comparisons were made to Nokia's "Comes With Music" plan, which would lock up downloads with DRM. There were some mentions of the current per-stream royalty structure and a few vague indications that people expect the music to be trapped on the device, but nobody came out and said "DRM!" In many cases, surprisingly, people assumed a download acquired through this sort of bundle would be theirs to keep forever.

It seems the only way to make this equitable to labels is to make them tethered downloads. Owners of sound recordings would get a percent of revenue. Publishers would get a percent of revenue. Allowing for unlimited downloads -- or even a high, set number of downloads -- would be problematic for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is plain old dollars and cents: Labels could lose their shirts paying mechanical royalties on downloads unless some other royalty structure is magically agreed upon. (I won't get into whether or not labels would get a fair return for all the music downloaded. Some people would be gluttons. Some would download sparsely. It's hard to say how it would turn out.) Another problem is political: If unlimited downloads were allowed, labels would have to endure the wrath of every other online music store and service...the very ones labels have hoped would rise up and challenge iTunes' dominance.

JupiterResearch's Michael Gartenberg assumes a subscription-style model in his post today:

First, with the latest changes to the Fair Play DRM to support movie rentals, the technology now would also be able to support a subscription service as well. Second, if Apple does this, the one thing I'm sure they will do is take the time to market this beyond the hard core music lover and explain the value proposition of how a subscription service can co-exist with music that you own and that the two are not mutually exclusive.

Maybe I am underestimating the industry's ability to embrace a drastically different business model. Perhaps the plan would have a ceiling on the number of tracks that are downloaded in a set time period (a la eMusic). Anyway, we're working with too little information to make much of a judgment. If and when details emerge we can better predict the plan's feasibility.