For years, Apple has maintained that consumers want to own music rather than rent it. Meanwhile, Napster, Yahoo, Rhapsody, Urge, and others have been offering subscription services that average $15 per month.

Subscription services let you listen to any songs you want without having to buy them first. You just download whatever you want to listen to, from a catalog of millions of tracks. The downside is that once you stop paying the monthly fee, all of the songs stop working.

Media Biz blogger Paul R. La Monica is reporting that Les Ottolenghi, CEO of INTENT MediaWorks, a digital distribution system that works with peer-to-peer networks, said he's had meetings with people from Apple -- and he believes the company will announce a subscription service for iTunes within the next six months. "I think Apple is seriously considering a subscription offering right now even though they will probably tell you otherwise," Ottolenghi said.

Ottolenghi thinks that the only reason consumers are averse to the subscription model is because Apple doesn't have one. As soon as they do, consumers will likely begin to embrace it as another option.