Best Buy, Real and SanDisk To Launch Music Service

M00NIE writes "Best Buy has announced it's going to join forces with Real and SanDisk to launch a new online music store. The new technology apparently makes use of Sansa music players that support Rhapsody DNA subscriptions." From the article: "As far as technical details go, Best Buy's new service is going to be identical to Rhapsody's current offering of WMA-protected audio files with the additional features provided by Rhapsody DNA. Rhapsody DNA is based on Real's Helix DRM and gives users the ability to access their content across different types of devices, and provides what RealNetworks describes as an "end-to-end music experience" similar to the closed ecosystem approach that Apple uses and Microsoft will be using with the Zune."

Comments

Re:WTF with Double Irony Points

[c0d3g33k]

Quoth Tackhead: "MTP mode (yuck, Media Transfer Protocol means "works on XP only, and you can only transfer files by politely asking WMP10/11+ for permission") and UMS (woohoo, USB Mass Storage, it mounts like every other USB drive on every OS in the world) mode."

I have an Sansa e200 player. For what it's worth, MTP also works well with recent versions of Winamp, so WMP isn't obligatory. Yes, it's still on Windows, but it's a little less painful than being forced to use WMP. The WinAmp support for audio players seems quite nice.

UMS - a woohoo is indeed relevant - at least the player can be used on Linux too.

In all honesty, though, I'll be happy when the Rockbox firmware is viable.