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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."
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
Thank GOD for newsgroups.
I'd like to remind everyone, before making flash judgements:
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.
Bravo for taking a risk.
Sure, it's .20 cheaper than the Apple Music Store per song... However, due to that monthly fee, the only way it actually balances out is if you download more than 50 songs a month ($10/50=$.20 - download less than that and each song is correspondingly more expensive than the $.99 charge).
Plus, this doesn't include the Apple $9.95 for a full album pricing option.
-T
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I can't imagine most people paying for something that allows only on-demand listening. There are far too many limitations to on-demand listening:
Must be on a Windows PC attached to a high-speed internet line in the United States. So that cuts out listening to your music on any sort of musical "appliance" like a radio or cd player... You can't listen in your car, or anywhere else.
Its much like watching re-runs of Friends on pay-per-view. Who would want that?
from the article:
"we believe this is a great offer to consumers who are now realizing the power of online music services"
That's it, the consumer is just now realizing the power of online music. Sheesh.
People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people
How many of you trust or want Real to be selling you music.
This is from the company hides their free player, tricks you into purchasing an upgrade, and has an install process which hijacks everything on your browser.
Even if this was a good bargin I would reject if becuase it is from Real.
Ted Tschopp
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Really? Let's say you're an average, music-loving consumer... You might download say, 20 songs a month, right?
Apple cost: 20*$.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
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*.
I make these: http://beatseqr.com
Guglielmo Marconi has released a new system for music delivery, its called "Radio". Unfortunately, it doesn't provide the ability to select a particular song, but it does provide the ability to choose genre.
The reduced functionality vs. Real's new system comes at a reduced price, FREE. And all songs are available for downloading and burning, all within a user's fair use rights.
User adoption is still up in the air, and Nikola Telsa is challening the patent.
I've been buying CD's now since 1987 or so. I still like some of the CD's I bought back then. I cannot fathom having paid $10/month since 1987 just so I could still have it in my collection.
I want to buy my music and call it mine to play whereever and whenever I darn well please thank you. Can you imagine forgetting a month and -poof- CD collection gone! I'm probably missing something here since I can't imagine this appeals to anybody.
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
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.
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.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
This is a way too complicated of a pricing plan for a basic home user.
There are simply way to many rules with this plan as stated. I pay a monthly fee, so I should be able to use any song right? No, I have to pay for each song [after the trial]. So why am I paying a monthly fee? Then I get the song, and realize I can use it but for my computer?
You try selling that to the guy on the street.
That's why the Apple plan works. $.99 a song. We'll give you a discount if you buy a full album (for most CDs). No monthly fee. Burn, iPod, play your songs you got. There are some restrictions, but transparent to the average user. That's easier to sell to the guy on the street.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
10 tracks @ RealR - $7.90 + $9.95 = $17.85
10 tracks @ Apple - $9.90 + $0.00 = $09.90
25 tracks @ RealR - $19.75 + $9.95 = $29.70
25 tracks @ Apple - $24.75 + $0.00 = $24.75
50 tracks @ RealR - $39.50 + $9.95 = $49.45
50 tracks @ Apple - $49.50 + $0.00 = $49.50
So I have to buy fifty tracks per month before Real Rhapsody is even remotely competive, not to mention the fact that something like one-third of the tracks aren't burnable at all.
I am so sick of comments like this. You can still tape songs off the radio, but do you want to know where the line between 'sharing with friends' and 'stealing' is? It's when your 'friend' (who you've never heard of) comes to your computer and downloads the song. It's where giving becomes taking. If you give them the song, as in you hand someone a great mixed cd or you email an mp3, that is sharing. If you post your 18Gigs on music on your server and let anyone download, that's stealing.
And for the people who are going to respond that it's not stealing because they're just 0s and 1s, or becuase it's just copyright, we've all heard it. As for me, I'm glad to see these services starting. They're coming late to the party, we all know that, but it's what I've been asking for...a legal way to browse new music without paying $14 bucks at Best Buy.
Things fall down...People look up... And when it rains, it pours.
For a music service to be great it needs to have some or all of the following characteristics.
If I like the music, generally I want the artist to produce more of it.
But if you don't have money, then I really don't see anything wrong with file sharing because you are not costing anyone anything.
Similarly, in college I copied programs just like everyone else but now I buy pretty much anything I use regularly because I can afford to and like to support development of good programs (I also donate money to the EFF and FSF for the same reason).
So my personal line is that if I can pay for it, I do, and if I can't, then it's OK to copy (because they wouldn't have money from me anyway). Of course the trick is deciding what you can afford and it's easy to rationalize that many things are too expensive - you just have to try and be honest with yourself about what you can afford.
I did have two or three songs from P2P services that I liked and kept in my music library - but after the Apple service started up I bought them to help support the artists (and the originals I had were 160k MP3's so it wasn't to get better quality). I know they don't really see much money but the artists do also get the intangible benefit of perceived popularity, which might help them in dealings with the label...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
"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
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
You're not being glib. You're being an asshole.
First off, taping songs from the radio and giving them to friends is illegal, and always was; but no one really cared about music sharing before perfect digital copies became easily available.
I'm not going to try to defend the recording industry's fiscal practices or their despicable assault on music fans' real rights - but frankly it's wide-eyed disregard for the just-as-real rights of music publishers that is fucking it up for the rest of us.
How much cause would Sen. Hollings have if content companies weren't scared shitless by millions of pirates like yourself? Would we have the speech-destroying DMCA without music/movie piracy? I submit, possibly not. There's no point in debating the details of who gets what under copyright law if you're willing to flout that law for personal gain.
But don't be surprised when the entertainment industries cajole the government into flouting some rights that you might think are important.
1) KaZaa, MX, &tc are full of hassles, including:
These are a pain in the ass that didn't used to exist to such a high degree in file "sharing" and they've spoiled the experience for a lot of people. Hunting for some of the really good obscure shit I like to listen to has become such a hassle that I far prefer Apple's music service.
2) The whole idea behind P2p was it was supposed to turn you on to new artists and broaden your horizons. In my experience, it's the web (forums, internet radio, weblogs, etc) that do a better job of that...so it makes sense that music downloading should be tied to it. Which message would you prefer:
You gotta check out this MC kris track, it's called booba fet or something, look for it on kazaa.
or
You gotta check out this mc Kris track, click here.
A pay-for-play music service allows that kind of ease of linking with music that is cheap, easy to find, always available, ships for free, has no clicks of pops, bears full id3 tags and album art, whatever. It's finally a new way to use music, and not just an extension of a CD culture.
And yeah, it's cool that the artists I like will get some cash, too. But then again, most of them have been on emusic for years...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
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.
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
This has probably already been pointed out, but I see everyone comparing Real's service with iTunes on a per-song basis. Despite the fact that Real doesn't even cleanly defeat iTunes on that basis (you have to download lots of songs for that to work out) I haven't yet seen anyone bring up the fact that iTunes music is cheaper per album. I've seen many album containing 16+ songs in iTunes for $9.99. That's significantly cheaper than Real's .79 per song + monthly subscription fee.
The second point I want to make is that RealPlayer sucks butt on the Mac platform so Real stands to make zero inroads into the Mac market. I don't know what Real is like on Windows or elsewhere, but the Mac software is mediocrity in action. I wouldn't use Real's service at half that price unless they improved the lousy piece of dung that they pass off as their player. (Let's see, I close the main window and the application's menu bar disappears so I have to force-quit the damn thing. That's the hallmark of quality software.)
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
"6. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS
You shall promptly notify Listen in writing upon your discovery of any unauthorized use or infringement of the Subscription Services (or their contents) or any patent, copyright, trade secret, trademarks or other intellectual property rights of Listen or its licensors."
Great, we are paying to be Real's beta testers.
"5 (d) Stolen Account Information Your Responsibility
You are solely and entirely responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your password, and for any and all activities that occur under your account."
So if somebody hacked its site and downloaded user info en masse I am responsible as well?