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."

Comments

on demand?

[Musashi Miyamoto]

I can't imagine most people paying for something that allows only on-demand listening. There are far too many limitations to on-demand listening:

Must be on a Windows PC attached to a high-speed internet line in the United States. So that cuts out listening to your music on any sort of musical "appliance" like a radio or cd player... You can't listen in your car, or anywhere else.

Its much like watching re-runs of Friends on pay-per-view. Who would want that?

Re:Did I miss something?

[HBI]

This is the same industry that pushed through mandated SCMS (serial copy management) for all DAT music players. The result was that the consumer format failed even though it would have been an adequate replacement for cassette tape and avoided a lot of the trauma associated with burnable CD-Rs. They tried hard to kill that technology but failed as well. Minidiscs were a similar situation though Sony managed to kill that all by itself.

The recording industry's business plan has been floundering for years - expecting logic from them, beyond the logic that they need to make money, is silly.

Incidentally, those mix tapes were illegal, unfortunately, once they left your hands and entered someone else's. The difference was no one cared back then.