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Real Cuts Prices for DRM-Restricted Music
Flint Dragon writes "A story on MSNBC details RealNetworks' next step in converting iPod users from iTunes to their own online music store. Not only can you play music downloaded from their site on your iPod now, you can, for a limited time, purchase music for 50% cheaper (.49/song, 4.99/album)! This is the price that I'm willing to pay for. Too bad it won't last..."
Bait and switch? It's called a "sale". A bait and switch ios when they're sell you sometihng more expensive than the advertised item.
Mod point free since 2001
You should really try Real 10. It's a whole lot nicer than previous versions, and not "in your face" at all. They even have a pretty good Linux client.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Sure there is. Go here, http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Real_Alternati ve.htm
Plays all the Real content that I have ever been interested in (which I can admit is very little.)
(Additionally there are links to a Quicktime Alternative and Media Player Classic at that site as well.)
Could you please explain to me how you can't do this with DRM'ed music?
1. YOu can back it up as many times as you like. Right now i have 1 bought DRM song on 3 different computers.
2. YOu can make compilations. iTunes even provides a nifty little playlist generator
3. iTunes lets you also burn copies of your play lists TO CD!~!!! or you can hook up your stereo out to a tape deck and go old school with mixed tapes!!!! The DRM does not prevent you from doing this.
It does prevent you from sharing the raw source of the file with your friends. Since there is no digital compilation format you can't exactly send an mp3 digital compilation to people unless it was one giant file. But who wants to do that?
You're an idiot.
--------========+++Dont Feed The Lab Techs+++========--------
Real sells 192kbit MPEG 4 AAC encoded music now. The new encoder/player/thingy defaults to that format. Looks like they're dumping the crappy ra format, finally.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Quoted from Rhapsody:
"MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Windows PC, 350 MHz, 350 MB HD Space"
Or you could just punch your favorite artist in the gut and tell him to get a day job because you're not willing to pay for his music.
It would be faster and kinder to do it directly, rather than going through Russia to do it.
(AllofMP3 is a mafia organization that doesn't have the artists' permission to represent them. It's supposed to be okay because they mail a small percentage of the pennies they charge back to artists...but they're not required to do so and artists have no recourse if they don't. By supporting it, you're supporting "legal" rights infringement via a gray market loophole. And that's FAR worse than supporting the RIAA -- at least RIAA member artists get SOME of their royalties, damnit)
Hey freaks: now you're ju
For a more specific example, let's say they make 30 cents per 99 cent transaction with the 70 cents remaining going into care and feeding their servers, bandwidth costs, RIAA fees, etc. If they sell that same song for 49 cents, they're going to be in the hole 21 cents per transaction.
Bottom line: Twice as many songs at half the price would make them lose more money than the same number of songs at half the price.
Be glad life is unfair, otherwise we'd deserve all this.
Enough guesses. Here's a quick summary of how this Harmony stuff works so we can all be on the same page. - Real does not change any software or firmware on the iPod. - Real's store tracks get re-wrapped in FairPlay, then transferred to the iPod. There's no way for the iPod to tell the difference between an iTMS-originated track and a RealMS-originated track. They are functioally equivalent. - Just like iTunes, you can burn CDs from the tracks you download from the RealMS. -The download quality from Real is actually BETTER than iTMS - 192Kbps vs. 128Kbps. This means that when you burn the tracks to audio CD to 'clean'/(backup/share with your friends/whatever) you will end up with a better sounding audio CD because you have a more detailed (higher bitrate) source file. Nuff said. If you don't get it now, you never will.
I just found out about this place yesterday. I haven't bought anything from them yet, but music by the pound in nearly any damned format I want sounds good to me!
Check out the Sydney Morning Hearld article for more info. I really can't believe we here at /. missed this in April!?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!