Real Launches Music Download Service

fupeg writes "Spurred on by Apple's success, as well as their own purchase of listen.com, Real Networks announced their own online music service, dubbed RealOne Rhapsody. Here is the press release. They're offering songs at $0.79 per song, but with a $9.99/month subscription. The first two months are free. The press release says that 2/3 of their 300,000 song catalog is available for CD burning, while everything is available for 'on-demand' listening."

The Real link....get it?

[mao che minh]

Here is the link to the actual Rhapsody site [real.com] itself.

And yes, it requires a Windows PC and is only available in the United States. It looks they are having a 14 day trial, with the first three months at $4.98, months 4++ being $9.95 each. The free trial covers unlimited "on demand" music and Internet radio. CD burning costs are not covered by the free trial ($0.79 per song on each CD). It also sports a horrid image containing both Avril Lavigne and Fiddy Cent in close proximity to that David Bowie guy, who plain refuses to die and go away.

PS: fist post fools

why do they keep trying subscription services

[mjdth]

when they have been proven to not work. the only way they would beat the apple store is by using the same model but undercutting their prices and getting it out to windows users before iTunes for windows is released. The stat was that in the entire year before iTunes Music store was released, a total of 500,000 songs were actually sold from all of the subscription based services combined. Apple sold 1 million in the first 18 hours if i recall correctly.

if anything, just copy apple and try to market it better... you could even call yourself microsoft then! ;)

Re:Cost breakdown

[Wawbo]

But you have full access to the catalog for on-demand listening, plus all the niceties that comes with the service. I have been using Rhapsody for a while now and its just amazing by itself, with or without the ability to burn.
Looking at it in another way, you can sample the full song before commiting to buying it, not just short 30sec clips.

Re:The Real link....get it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet when you go to ask it more about the service it says you can access from ANY PC on one of the tabs, but then in the actual text it says any WINDOWS pc. Sort of irritates a user who only has linux, absolutely no windows machines...

Not so awesome.

[Theaetetus]

This is a good thing. Whether or not RealNetworks can pull it off (and they might, being the first comparable option in the Windows market), competition will help. Perhaps this will lower Apple's per-song fee.

Really? Let's say you're an average, music-loving consumer... You might download say, 20 songs a month, right?

Apple cost: 20*$.99 = $20 (I'm rounding the penny)
Real cost: 20*$.79 = $16 (rounding the penny) plus $10 for monthly fee = $36 dollars.

So, why should Apple lower their fee? It's already cheaper. The only way the Real model gets cheaper is if you download more than 50 songs a month, every month you're subscribed.

-T

emusic

[merz]

is still the best deal in my opinion. $15 a month for unlimited access. Sweet.

Re:Question

[djcatnip]

Nope, 10 bucks a month for access to the library, then 79 cents per song per cd you burn. 10 bucks to find an album, then full album price to brun it to a cd... *a* cd, not *as many cds as you want*.

Re:Real Player!

[Methlin]

1) Install Real's free player.
2) Set it up to not launch it's systray app.
3) Get Media Player Classic from www.doom9.org [doom9.org]
4) Listen to/View Real content without using Real's crappy player.
5) ???
6) Profit!

If you're using Linux on x86 just go get mplayer and quityerbitchin.

Re:Cost breakdown

[JackMonkey]

But with Apple's service the breakdown is more like this:

Good CD = $9.95
CD with 2 good songs = $1.98
One-hit wonder = $0.99


vs. Sam Goody pricing:

Good CD = $16.99
CD with 2 good songs = $16.99
One-hit wonder = $16.99


Sounds like a much better plan to me.

Windows alternative to Realplayer

[booyaar]

There's a lot of posts from people fed up with Realplayer. Give this a whirl:

http://sn.hardnet.ro/realalt090.exe [hardnet.ro]

(Windows only). Comes with the Real codecs and MediaPlayerClassic (no relation to the proper windows one - it's a very good bit of software) so you can play Real files without needing Realplayer.

Misconceptions R Us

[Llywelyn]

"It is a wonder that Apple et al do not support mp3"

iTunes supported mp3 format before it supported ACC.

"If their proprietary or licenced technology is so wonderful and superior, where is the harm of offering mp3 as well for backwards compatibility since it doesn't compete?"

Simple for Apple--They want to provide higher quality at a lower bitrate, all of the people downloading their music would be doing so through the iTMS, they didn't want to bother with the technical difficulties of ripping from the masters to both mp3 and AAC (doing a quality check, selecting 30 seconds out for streaming, getting the track information added, &c) and then deal with adding the (very mild) DRM to mp3s as well.

"why not watermark the songs as they fly off the server so they can be tracked?"

Apple does--your email address is in every AAC file.

" The net result is users will stick to free p2p services, grabbing their songs from Kazaa and the record companies will get NOTHING and the services will have a fraction of the customers. It doesn't make any business sense."

You must have flunked basic economics--either that or have been living under a rock.

Apple Sells 2 Million Songs in 16 Days [slashdot.org]

Re:Not so awesome.

[MonsieurPiedlourde]

To be fair, the Real model allows for more browsing than the Apple model. Your comparing apples to oranges here (oooh, I kill me...)

Apple cost 100*0.99=$99.00 (10 songs that you want to burn to CD - 90 that you downloaded but maybe didn't like...)

Real cost $10.00 + 0$ for 100 songs listened to + $7.90 for the ones you liked = $17.90

The models are quite different. One with the emphasis on getting songs you know the other on browsing for songs you might not know. Of course, the usefulness of being able to browse the library is highly dependant on the quality of each library.

Even after Apple gets it right,

[walterbyrd]

These bozos can't figure out what to do. How do these people get rich, when they are so dumb?

Re:Not so awesome.

[Mikey-San]

You have access to half-minute, full-quality previews with the iTunes thing.

It's not bad, actually. It is, at the least, neat to be able to preview entire albums before I click "buy" or walk into the record store up the street.

Re:And will it use mp3??

[oscast]

"Wrong. You cannot just re-rip a CD you have burned into MP3 format.

Go ahead and try it."

Sure you can. I do it with iTunes all the time.



Maybe because its not really DRM (at least not like you're refering to it. It's not managing your rights... telling you what you can and can't do with the file, hence the reason why you can burn the sungs to CD in MP3 format... than unrip them afterwards.

Re:Don't forget Magic Albums!

[Cutriss]

The only downside to the Apple mechanism? You need a Mac running OS X and you cannot 'sample' for free. On the other hand, that's what radio/movie/tv/cable does for you. And I cannot see Apple not doing something to fix that... perhaps a tie into Internet Radio, which iTunes *already* has a feature for... Perhaps 'on demand iTunes radio'?

iTunes does let you take 30 second samples of each and every track available for download. It says so on the iTunes Music Store webpage [apple.com].

Rhapsody was...

[yerricde]

Joke hint: Rhapsody was the code name for Mac OS X.

Its not from RealPlayer

[phisheadrew]

Real didn't make this program. Rhapsody is a seperate program at www.listen.com who has many sponsers. As far as I can tell they are all the same, they just have a different logo. I got mine through www.jambase.com, RoadRunner has one, as do many other companies.