Here is an interesting ad just released by Microsoft pushing the Zune subscription service over iTunes.

The ad is trying to sell Zune subscription service on the basis that paying $15 per month for the subscription is cheaper than filling up a 120GB iPod at a buck a song.  But that’s not the point that’s interesting.

Do you know people who have full, or nearly full, 120 or 90GB iPods?  Sure you do.  Do you think they paid $30,000 or $22,500 to fill them up?  Then where did the music come from?

Per the ad, music costs about $250 per Gig or that songs at a dollar a piece are about 4MB each.  So a 16GB iPhone  or iPhone nano costs $4,000 to fill.  Do you know anybody with a full iPod nano?  Do you think they spent $4,000 on the music? Do you know anybody who has spent $4,000 on digital music?

Lets take another case where an iPod owner might fill her iPod with music ripped from CD’s she owns.  If the average CD costs $12.99 and has 10 tracks and it takes (per the math above) 30,000 tracks to fill a 120GB iPod then it would take 3,000 CD’s at a total cost of $38,970 to fill the iPod.  Do you know anybody who owns 3,000 CD’s?

Just a thought.