Filed under: Audio, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
rhapsody posts
Filed under: Audio, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch
Real Networks submitting Rhapsody music service for iPhone. Duck!
Now this will be interesting to watch. RealNetworks, not always best of friends with Apple, is submitting an iPhone app so subscribers can access the Rhapsody music service.The app is designed to be full-featured, and will let Rhapsody subscribers get easy control of the on-demand music service. Real Networks has described the app's operation on its Rhapsody blog:
The Rhapsody app is designed to stream music over 3G, EDGE or Wi-Fi networks. If approved, it will require a Rhapsody To Go account, which is US$15.00 per month. Spotify, a similar European music service, also has an app awaiting approval for the iPhone.You'll see a menu bar across the bottom of the screen, as is found in many apps. You'll have the option to check out the queue, your library, browse the Rhapsody library (ahem, all 8 million + songs of it), search, and settings. The app has all the functionality of the client, or Rhapsody.com, only super portable.
Apple already allows the Sirius/XM app, which is a different, but still a paid subscription service, and of course Pandora, Last.fm and other streaming music services.
All these apps are competition to iTunes, so the world will be watching to see if Apple draws the line with RealNetworks, or keeping a careful eye on the FCC, approves it.
Filed under: iPod Family, iTS, iTunes
Digital Music Vendor Showdown
Wired has a good article up about the various digital music vendors: Urge, Napster, Rhapsody, eMusic and iTunes. They compare and rate the services. In the end, they chose iTunes as their editor's pick, pointing out that although iTunes has no subscription plan at this time, its combination of easy-to-use shopping plus the huge catalog of music, TV and video makes iTunes the most compelling digital vendor. At the bottom of the pack was Napster with its three-device playback restrictions and limited device compatibility. eMusic won on pricing (about $0.25 apiece, if you buy all the tracks you're allowed) and their DRM-free tunes.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Audio, iPod Family, iTS, iTunes
Best Buy Digital Music Store is latest to take on iTunes
Have you heard the big news? Best Buy, RealNetworks and SanDisk have teamed up to launch a new digital music store, powered by Real's Rhapsody 4.0 - doing their part to save digital music everywhere from extinction. To help kick things off,
Before you go thinking all this glorious music is free, let me fill you in on the pricing. You get a free 2-month subscription to the music store when you buy a SanDisk Sansa, which will set you back $139 for the 2gig model and $249 for the 8gig model. The subscription is for unlimited tunes. The catch? If you don't sign up for a not-free subscription after 2 months, you won't be able to listen to those songs anymore. The basic subscription service will normally be priced at $14.99/month but you can also just "buy" individual tracks for 99 cents each, just like iTunes.
I don't know about you, but I prefer my digital music services and devices to have names I can pronounce and easy acronyms for when I'm feeling particularly lazy, so BBDMS + Rhapsody 4.0 + SDSe200RRMP3(p) = headache, whereas Apple + iTS + iPod = the true Best Buy.

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