I will likely re-encode all of the CDs (3 of 12 boxes to go) into...
Ughh... I consider myself a big music fan, and after I discovered music subscription, I knew I had seen the future. In 10 years, there's no way people are going to be encoding boxes of CDs, nor are they going to be buying hundreds or thousands of tracks via music stores like iTunes. If someone isn't really a music fan and only wants to listen to the same few songs over and over again, then the Walmart or iTunes store will be fine for them.
Not for me... I currently subscribe to Rhapsody, and I'm looking at Napster and the new Virgin Digital Music Club service. I strongly dislike the concept of DRM, but with subscription music, I find it a non-issue. I don't actually buy the music, and so as long as the service provides the functionality I want, DRM is not an obstacle. Believe it or not, after a month or two of "renting" the music, I was glad I didn't own it. Here's why:
Economics. As a music lover, I take advantage of the subscription service to listen to hundreds of new tracks every week. If I had to buy each one individually via Walmart or iTunes, I would go broke quickly.
Music Discovery. The Rhapsody service I subscribe to is really well put together. I've discovered lots of new favorite artists by browsing from artists I already like and from editorial recommendations. Music stores might offer similar advantages, but they generally cut you off after 30 seconds.
Music Library Management. This is what I was getting at in my response to the parent message. I've got boxes of CDs too, and they've been collecting dust ever since I started renting music. I would say roughly 80% of my CDs are available for stream and download via Rhapsody. That saves me days of in and out with my CD drive. When a new album comes out, all I have to do is go to the artist's page and start playing it. No need to whip out my wallet and buy a bunch of new tracks, or worse yet, buy the CD and rip them to the format du jour.
Having said all of that, there are still some issues that need to be fixed to make music renting even better:
Portability. Rented music is tied to the PC. This is the biggest problem, but all the services are working on device solutions, so hopefully this won't be an issue for much longer.
Incomplete Licensing. You won't find the Beatles on any subscription service yet (or download store, for that matter.) Lots of artists and labels are still holding back from allowing their stuff to be distributed online. I'm hopeful that this will also be resolved soon as well. In the meantime, all the labels and artists that do participate are making extra dough.
Sound Quality. In general, the sound quality is good. But as an audiophile, I won't be happy until it's lossless. This will take longer, both because the average consumer won't demand it, and because the the bandwidth is expensive. But hopefully this too will come to pass.
OS Support. None of these services work with Linux (or Mac, if you care about that.) That would be nice... but ultimately, I expect the service to operate directly with my stereo and my car stereo and my cell-phone/music device. So the OS will be embedded, and I won't really care what it is.
Not only funny but true. Microsoft's future has always depended on new ways to squander compute resources. I think of my in-laws, who only use their PC for e-mail and solitaire. My brother in-law works for Microsoft, and comes in to fix his parents' computer every few months when it has ground to a halt from viruses and spyware. He dutifully upgrades them to the latest OS and service packs, only to find things in total disarray the next time he visits. Of course, I have endless entertainment as I get to bust his chops every single time! I've got his christmas present picked out already.
Seriously... In order for Linux to take over most of the home PC market, the Walmart Linux PC should have an "XP-like" desktop with two shortcuts: solitaire and evolution (ok, Mozilla too). Most people with home PCs use them for those three things. All of this home video editing, digital media manipulation stuff that requires powerful CPUs is way beyond the average joe. Let them play Solitaire in peace!
If they really wanted to foster "development, delivery, and adoption," they'd use open standards instead of their proprietary specs.
Indeed... this from TomsNetworking: "The VIIP program is based on "proprietary specifications" created by AT&T and is designed to "stimulate and foster" applications and devices compatible with AT&T's VoIP services."
I thought I would check this service out quickly. I trusted them with my name, email, street address, and credit card #. Hopefully that won't come back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, I hadn't seen the catalog before giving out this info either. It didn't seem to be available from the free trial page I arrived at. Feeling adventurous, I took the plunge anyway.
As I suspected, the music selection is extremely limited, and of pretty terrible sound quality, despite being encoded at relatively high bitrate. The first thing I tried was a Bob Marley track "Sun Is Shining" from the "Natural Mystic" album released on the Avid label (not Island Records). It sounded like a cassette dub... really awful. It was MP3 encoded at 154kbps VBR, so the source must be the problem. I went to Amazon to check if this album was legit, and one of the comments there said it was a bootleg, and to avoid it since proceeds would not go to the artist's family. Strike One!
Wanting to be fair to the service, I only went for tracks of their "Featured Artists", figuring that they would have some quality control going on there. Bob Marley was a "Featured Artist", so they deserved that first strike. The next artist I tried was Moby. I thought it would be less likely that they would be ripping off an artist who was still alive... Well, I clicked on the "Moby" link and waited. And waited. Mozilla says: "Waiting for www.emusic.com..." After a few minutes, I gave up trying to score a Moby track. Strike Two!
Ok... I'm starting to lose hope. Let's give them another chance. I tried Willie Nelson next. Hmmm... still nonresponsive. Could it be that they've been slashdotted? Somehow I wasn't seeing thousands of slashdotters whipping out their wallets like I did, so I tried another strategy. I logged on from another machine. All of a sudden, things are pretty snappy again. Hmmm... what's up with that? Anyway, I tried perusing the classical selection. I couldn't really find anything exciting to listen to, and the search was difficult because they have everything arranged by sub-genre and album name, instead of composer. I did settle on a track from the piano recital of some dude I've never heard. It was ok I guess, but no way am I staying with this service I thought. It's just too lame. Strike Three!
Ok, game's over, or so I think. I click on the account link and wait. And wait. And wait... Oh Phew! There's the account page. I quickly click on the "Cancel" link. Still slow, but I'm relieved when the next page comes up asking the primary reason why I'm cancelling. All of the reasons are equally enticing, things like "I'm having technical problems" and "Not enough music in my favorite genre." I settle on one and click on the "Cancel My Subscription" link. Then I got this message:
Your eMusic account has been set to cancel at the end of this billing period. Your credit card will not be charged again(emphasis mine). If you have any downloads remaining, you may finish downloading them until the end of your current billing period.
Wait a minute! I thought this was supposed to be a free trial. If those mofos charged my card I'm going to go ballistic! I'm not so sure this is the kind of service that I want to encourage...
If Microsoft wants to go to a totally closed shop mentality as far as every single piece of hardware is concerned, they will probably quickly find Apple overtaking them.
Whoa, I was there right with you until that last line. Let's see, exactly how is Apple different from a "totally closed shop mentality as far as every single piece of hardware is concerned"? The very reason that Apple has been so marginalized is that they did not take advantage of the economies of scale inherent in open standards at a critical time in the birth of the PC age. They won't make the same mistake at the birth of the "all your data are belong to us" DRM age. I see Apple adopting the new technology along with everyone else, assuming they're allowed to.
Perhaps if your goal is to become as fit as Stephen Hawking, but through lack of exercise rather than disease.
I don't know... what about all those IE users who will be playing whack-a-mole with their pop-up windows? That could cause some serious neck strain, what with pointing your nose in all those directions! Maybe if the nouse catches on, IT departments will make it mandatory to use Mozilla to avoid this new type of injury: What do you call carpal tunnel of the neck?
Now, real Mac ISVs like Adobe, Wolfram, Stone Design, they're actually active and timely with updates.
Interesting that you include Adobe as a real Mac ISV. I think the Apple-Adobe relationship is a perfect example of the difficulties of being a Mac ISV, particularly for media software companies such as Adobe (and Real).
Notice that Adobe has dropped Premiere for Mac. Why did they do that? There are two reasons: First, like it or not, Windows has become an acceptable platform for digital video work, which makes it an important market for Adobe. Second, Apple decided to compete head-to-head with Premiere by developing the Final Cut Pro product. Perhaps they felt the need to do this to further differentiate the Mac from their PC competition once Premiere ran on both platforms, but the net result is that Apple pushed a top-tier ISV off their platform by shoving in to an already small Mac software market.
Being successful as a Mac ISV comes down to one thing: Can you sell enough high-margin software in the relatively small Mac desktop segment to cover your development costs and make a profit? Adobe Premiere is a very expensive, high margin product, and yet they abandoned the Mac after Apple started competing with them. Who wants to compete head-to-head with Apple on their own platform? Now look at Real. On the Mac, they're competing head-to-head with Apple on a product that they give away. Where's the business sense in that?! It is a wonder that Real makes a player for Mac at all.
Heh... you're funny. Why shouldn't Apple do this? Hmmm... maybe because Apple would prefer that Quicktime were used instead of RealMedia. There is a war on between MS, Apple, and Real to have their proprietary format become the defacto standard. Fortunately, for music at least, all of the above are losing to MPEG AAC, which is an open standard.
What if Apple started to support RealMedia and Real's DRM in the quicktime player? Actually, Real would probably welcome it. They don't have a hugely successful, vertically integrated digital music business to protect, so they would have no reason to refuse to license their DRM.
I encourage all the Apple fans to think carefully about what position they take on the issue of format and DRM. The world is not necessarily a better place when one company wins it all. If not for some mismanagement and missed opportunities in the early 80's, Apple might've been the dominant monopoly in the computer business that everyone fears and loathes. It appears from the way they're handling their music business that they would still very much like to be that company.
Interesting addition to the question, but unfortunately it is based on a presumption that is not technically correct. Both Apple and Real use the same compression format (MPEG AAC) in their music stores. This is not a proprietary format. It is a standard. It can be decoded with a cheap ASIC, which is why it is a popular choice for portable digital music devices.
I believe what RealNetworks objects to is that Apple is not licensing their "fairplay" DRM technology to allow other legal music download stores (such as Real's) to offer their product to iPod owners.
The important question here is: "Why can't all of the technology companies unify under one common, open DRM solution so every device works with every music store and vice versa?" However, this question is probably better posed to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates than to Rob Glaser. When are those guys going to do a slashdot interview?
The reason that nobody can unite behind a single DRM technology is that certain technology companies would either like to own the music download and device business completely (Apple), or they would like their DRM solution to become the defacto standard so they can become a toll collector on all digital music transactions (Microsoft). Personally, I don't like either of those possibilities, and I'm glad to see a company putting a wrench in those plans, even if it's RealNetworks.
The only problem with this design is that the support legs are not in the magic chicken style, which is very useful in certain situations, such as during a flood, when one might want their dwelling to walk to higher ground!
There have been a lot of posts so far about how dumb Mark Cuban is because he thinks the solution to piracy is to release content at extremely high bitrates. While it is true that you could transcode HD content to manageable bitrates, you would surely need to decimate the frame size to do so, and when you do that, you're not talking about HD any more. Sure you're still talking about piracy, but once you lose the high definition, Mr. Cuban doesn't worry about it anymore, since the concept of "low resolution" isn't vibrating on his wavelength.
The main thrust of this blog is talking about how the heck we're going to deliver HD to the home. I think it's laughable that he would consider delivering content on hard disks instead of DVDs... um let's see, the hard disk costs at least 500x to manufacture and is full of moving parts that are likely to fail the more the device is moved around. Oh, and it doesn't slip into a thin envelope like a DVD a la Netflix. Considering flash drives is at least technically feasible, but there, the manufacture cost multiple is even higher and it will be quite a number of years before we have something big enough for an HD TV show, let alone a movie.
DVDs (and optical media in general) are extremely cheap to manufacture, and very robust. They will last until something even cheaper and more robust comes along, or in the case of IP delivery, the convenience factor is good enough that you can charge the consumer enough to cover the transmission cost and still make a profit.
Mr. Cuban is foolish to discount VOD. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the decade, most people will get their media fix (even HDTV) the instant gratification way, pulling it off the network. Some companies are already providing VOD movies to the PC... see starz.com. PVR and US Postal Service (Netflix) are working as a stopgap until the bandwidth is in place. Nobody wants to piddle around with discs and drives when we can just push a button on our remote.
Let's get one thing straight here. For the actual audio compression, Apple uses 128kbps AAC for ITMS downloads. AAC stands for "Advanced Audio Compression", not "Apple Audio Compression" or anything else. AAC is an MPEG standard, just like MP3, only better. RealNetworks uses 192kbps AAC in their store. It's the same damn format. The quality will be slightly better, if you have some nice headphones to plug into your iPod, you'll probably hear the difference.
The only new thing that Real has brought with Harmony is that they've enabled tracks bought from the Real store to play on the iPod by wrapping the AAC tracks with FairPlay DRM. The fact that the tracks cost $0.49 and are encoded at a higher bitrate makes this a good buy for anybody who isn't an Apple groupie or against DRM on principle.
If you don't trust Real, then don't buy from them, but I fail to see how this is anything but a net positive for consumers. I'm amazed that there are people screaming "Please! Give me a monopoly in the digital music market!"
Slashdot Mirror
I was smugly chuckling to myself about this also, until I read this.
I will likely re-encode all of the CDs (3 of 12 boxes to go) into...
Ughh... I consider myself a big music fan, and after I discovered music subscription, I knew I had seen the future. In 10 years, there's no way people are going to be encoding boxes of CDs, nor are they going to be buying hundreds or thousands of tracks via music stores like iTunes. If someone isn't really a music fan and only wants to listen to the same few songs over and over again, then the Walmart or iTunes store will be fine for them.
Not for me... I currently subscribe to Rhapsody, and I'm looking at Napster and the new Virgin Digital Music Club service. I strongly dislike the concept of DRM, but with subscription music, I find it a non-issue. I don't actually buy the music, and so as long as the service provides the functionality I want, DRM is not an obstacle. Believe it or not, after a month or two of "renting" the music, I was glad I didn't own it. Here's why:
Economics. As a music lover, I take advantage of the subscription service to listen to hundreds of new tracks every week. If I had to buy each one individually via Walmart or iTunes, I would go broke quickly.
Music Discovery. The Rhapsody service I subscribe to is really well put together. I've discovered lots of new favorite artists by browsing from artists I already like and from editorial recommendations. Music stores might offer similar advantages, but they generally cut you off after 30 seconds.
Music Library Management. This is what I was getting at in my response to the parent message. I've got boxes of CDs too, and they've been collecting dust ever since I started renting music. I would say roughly 80% of my CDs are available for stream and download via Rhapsody. That saves me days of in and out with my CD drive. When a new album comes out, all I have to do is go to the artist's page and start playing it. No need to whip out my wallet and buy a bunch of new tracks, or worse yet, buy the CD and rip them to the format du jour.
Having said all of that, there are still some issues that need to be fixed to make music renting even better:
Portability. Rented music is tied to the PC. This is the biggest problem, but all the services are working on device solutions, so hopefully this won't be an issue for much longer.
Incomplete Licensing. You won't find the Beatles on any subscription service yet (or download store, for that matter.) Lots of artists and labels are still holding back from allowing their stuff to be distributed online. I'm hopeful that this will also be resolved soon as well. In the meantime, all the labels and artists that do participate are making extra dough.
Sound Quality. In general, the sound quality is good. But as an audiophile, I won't be happy until it's lossless. This will take longer, both because the average consumer won't demand it, and because the the bandwidth is expensive. But hopefully this too will come to pass.
OS Support. None of these services work with Linux (or Mac, if you care about that.) That would be nice... but ultimately, I expect the service to operate directly with my stereo and my car stereo and my cell-phone/music device. So the OS will be embedded, and I won't really care what it is.
Not only funny but true. Microsoft's future has always depended on new ways to squander compute resources. I think of my in-laws, who only use their PC for e-mail and solitaire. My brother in-law works for Microsoft, and comes in to fix his parents' computer every few months when it has ground to a halt from viruses and spyware. He dutifully upgrades them to the latest OS and service packs, only to find things in total disarray the next time he visits. Of course, I have endless entertainment as I get to bust his chops every single time! I've got his christmas present picked out already.
Seriously... In order for Linux to take over most of the home PC market, the Walmart Linux PC should have an "XP-like" desktop with two shortcuts: solitaire and evolution (ok, Mozilla too). Most people with home PCs use them for those three things. All of this home video editing, digital media manipulation stuff that requires powerful CPUs is way beyond the average joe. Let them play Solitaire in peace!
If they really wanted to foster "development, delivery, and adoption," they'd use open standards instead of their proprietary specs.
Indeed... this from TomsNetworking: "The VIIP program is based on "proprietary specifications" created by AT&T and is designed to "stimulate and foster" applications and devices compatible with AT&T's VoIP services."
I haven't even seen the catalog yet. :)
I thought I would check this service out quickly. I trusted them with my name, email, street address, and credit card #. Hopefully that won't come back to bite me in the ass. Anyway, I hadn't seen the catalog before giving out this info either. It didn't seem to be available from the free trial page I arrived at. Feeling adventurous, I took the plunge anyway.
As I suspected, the music selection is extremely limited, and of pretty terrible sound quality, despite being encoded at relatively high bitrate. The first thing I tried was a Bob Marley track "Sun Is Shining" from the "Natural Mystic" album released on the Avid label (not Island Records). It sounded like a cassette dub... really awful. It was MP3 encoded at 154kbps VBR, so the source must be the problem. I went to Amazon to check if this album was legit, and one of the comments there said it was a bootleg, and to avoid it since proceeds would not go to the artist's family. Strike One!
Wanting to be fair to the service, I only went for tracks of their "Featured Artists", figuring that they would have some quality control going on there. Bob Marley was a "Featured Artist", so they deserved that first strike. The next artist I tried was Moby. I thought it would be less likely that they would be ripping off an artist who was still alive... Well, I clicked on the "Moby" link and waited. And waited. Mozilla says: "Waiting for www.emusic.com..." After a few minutes, I gave up trying to score a Moby track. Strike Two!
Ok... I'm starting to lose hope. Let's give them another chance. I tried Willie Nelson next. Hmmm... still nonresponsive. Could it be that they've been slashdotted? Somehow I wasn't seeing thousands of slashdotters whipping out their wallets like I did, so I tried another strategy. I logged on from another machine. All of a sudden, things are pretty snappy again. Hmmm... what's up with that? Anyway, I tried perusing the classical selection. I couldn't really find anything exciting to listen to, and the search was difficult because they have everything arranged by sub-genre and album name, instead of composer. I did settle on a track from the piano recital of some dude I've never heard. It was ok I guess, but no way am I staying with this service I thought. It's just too lame. Strike Three!
Ok, game's over, or so I think. I click on the account link and wait. And wait. And wait... Oh Phew! There's the account page. I quickly click on the "Cancel" link. Still slow, but I'm relieved when the next page comes up asking the primary reason why I'm cancelling. All of the reasons are equally enticing, things like "I'm having technical problems" and "Not enough music in my favorite genre." I settle on one and click on the "Cancel My Subscription" link. Then I got this message:
Your eMusic account has been set to cancel at the end of this billing period. Your credit card will not be charged again (emphasis mine). If you have any downloads remaining, you may finish downloading them until the end of your current billing period.
Wait a minute! I thought this was supposed to be a free trial. If those mofos charged my card I'm going to go ballistic! I'm not so sure this is the kind of service that I want to encourage...
If Microsoft wants to go to a totally closed shop mentality as far as every single piece of hardware is concerned, they will probably quickly find Apple overtaking them.
Whoa, I was there right with you until that last line. Let's see, exactly how is Apple different from a "totally closed shop mentality as far as every single piece of hardware is concerned"? The very reason that Apple has been so marginalized is that they did not take advantage of the economies of scale inherent in open standards at a critical time in the birth of the PC age. They won't make the same mistake at the birth of the "all your data are belong to us" DRM age. I see Apple adopting the new technology along with everyone else, assuming they're allowed to.
Perhaps if your goal is to become as fit as Stephen Hawking, but through lack of exercise rather than disease.
I don't know... what about all those IE users who will be playing whack-a-mole with their pop-up windows? That could cause some serious neck strain, what with pointing your nose in all those directions! Maybe if the nouse catches on, IT departments will make it mandatory to use Mozilla to avoid this new type of injury: What do you call carpal tunnel of the neck?
Now, real Mac ISVs like Adobe, Wolfram, Stone Design, they're actually active and timely with updates.
Interesting that you include Adobe as a real Mac ISV. I think the Apple-Adobe relationship is a perfect example of the difficulties of being a Mac ISV, particularly for media software companies such as Adobe (and Real).
Notice that Adobe has dropped Premiere for Mac. Why did they do that? There are two reasons: First, like it or not, Windows has become an acceptable platform for digital video work, which makes it an important market for Adobe. Second, Apple decided to compete head-to-head with Premiere by developing the Final Cut Pro product. Perhaps they felt the need to do this to further differentiate the Mac from their PC competition once Premiere ran on both platforms, but the net result is that Apple pushed a top-tier ISV off their platform by shoving in to an already small Mac software market.
Being successful as a Mac ISV comes down to one thing: Can you sell enough high-margin software in the relatively small Mac desktop segment to cover your development costs and make a profit? Adobe Premiere is a very expensive, high margin product, and yet they abandoned the Mac after Apple started competing with them. Who wants to compete head-to-head with Apple on their own platform? Now look at Real. On the Mac, they're competing head-to-head with Apple on a product that they give away. Where's the business sense in that?! It is a wonder that Real makes a player for Mac at all.
Heh... you're funny. Why shouldn't Apple do this? Hmmm... maybe because Apple would prefer that Quicktime were used instead of RealMedia. There is a war on between MS, Apple, and Real to have their proprietary format become the defacto standard. Fortunately, for music at least, all of the above are losing to MPEG AAC, which is an open standard.
What if Apple started to support RealMedia and Real's DRM in the quicktime player? Actually, Real would probably welcome it. They don't have a hugely successful, vertically integrated digital music business to protect, so they would have no reason to refuse to license their DRM.
I encourage all the Apple fans to think carefully about what position they take on the issue of format and DRM. The world is not necessarily a better place when one company wins it all. If not for some mismanagement and missed opportunities in the early 80's, Apple might've been the dominant monopoly in the computer business that everyone fears and loathes. It appears from the way they're handling their music business that they would still very much like to be that company.
Interesting addition to the question, but unfortunately it is based on a presumption that is not technically correct. Both Apple and Real use the same compression format (MPEG AAC) in their music stores. This is not a proprietary format. It is a standard. It can be decoded with a cheap ASIC, which is why it is a popular choice for portable digital music devices.
I believe what RealNetworks objects to is that Apple is not licensing their "fairplay" DRM technology to allow other legal music download stores (such as Real's) to offer their product to iPod owners.
The important question here is: "Why can't all of the technology companies unify under one common, open DRM solution so every device works with every music store and vice versa?" However, this question is probably better posed to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates than to Rob Glaser. When are those guys going to do a slashdot interview?
The reason that nobody can unite behind a single DRM technology is that certain technology companies would either like to own the music download and device business completely (Apple), or they would like their DRM solution to become the defacto standard so they can become a toll collector on all digital music transactions (Microsoft). Personally, I don't like either of those possibilities, and I'm glad to see a company putting a wrench in those plans, even if it's RealNetworks.
The only problem with this design is that the support legs are not in the magic chicken style, which is very useful in certain situations, such as during a flood, when one might want their dwelling to walk to higher ground!
There have been a lot of posts so far about how dumb Mark Cuban is because he thinks the solution to piracy is to release content at extremely high bitrates. While it is true that you could transcode HD content to manageable bitrates, you would surely need to decimate the frame size to do so, and when you do that, you're not talking about HD any more. Sure you're still talking about piracy, but once you lose the high definition, Mr. Cuban doesn't worry about it anymore, since the concept of "low resolution" isn't vibrating on his wavelength.
The main thrust of this blog is talking about how the heck we're going to deliver HD to the home. I think it's laughable that he would consider delivering content on hard disks instead of DVDs... um let's see, the hard disk costs at least 500x to manufacture and is full of moving parts that are likely to fail the more the device is moved around. Oh, and it doesn't slip into a thin envelope like a DVD a la Netflix. Considering flash drives is at least technically feasible, but there, the manufacture cost multiple is even higher and it will be quite a number of years before we have something big enough for an HD TV show, let alone a movie.
DVDs (and optical media in general) are extremely cheap to manufacture, and very robust. They will last until something even cheaper and more robust comes along, or in the case of IP delivery, the convenience factor is good enough that you can charge the consumer enough to cover the transmission cost and still make a profit.
Mr. Cuban is foolish to discount VOD. There is no doubt in my mind that by the end of the decade, most people will get their media fix (even HDTV) the instant gratification way, pulling it off the network. Some companies are already providing VOD movies to the PC... see starz.com. PVR and US Postal Service (Netflix) are working as a stopgap until the bandwidth is in place. Nobody wants to piddle around with discs and drives when we can just push a button on our remote.
Let's get one thing straight here. For the actual audio compression, Apple uses 128kbps AAC for ITMS downloads. AAC stands for "Advanced Audio Compression", not "Apple Audio Compression" or anything else. AAC is an MPEG standard, just like MP3, only better. RealNetworks uses 192kbps AAC in their store. It's the same damn format. The quality will be slightly better, if you have some nice headphones to plug into your iPod, you'll probably hear the difference. The only new thing that Real has brought with Harmony is that they've enabled tracks bought from the Real store to play on the iPod by wrapping the AAC tracks with FairPlay DRM. The fact that the tracks cost $0.49 and are encoded at a higher bitrate makes this a good buy for anybody who isn't an Apple groupie or against DRM on principle. If you don't trust Real, then don't buy from them, but I fail to see how this is anything but a net positive for consumers. I'm amazed that there are people screaming "Please! Give me a monopoly in the digital music market!"