Music industry watch

Real doesn't eat its own dogfood

In a quiet admission that MusicNet sucks ass, Real has started its own (read: Listen's Rhapsody rebranded) music download service. Not as cool and with more DRM than Apple's iTunes, RealOne Rhapsody plans to sell tracks at $.79 a piece on top of a $9.99/month subscription. A subscription fee on top of charging per download -- are you guys smoking crack?

I suppose you get to use Rhapsody's overly bloated player to listen to as much on-demand content as you want, for your subscription fee. Seems like an overly complicated model, with an overly complicated and bloated player. Sounds like an ideal application for Real.

Posted by Mayhem at May 28, 2003 12:33 PM