More competition for iTunes Music Store
It’s still no iTunes Music Store, but RealNetworks has a terrific idea with its new Rhapsody To Go feature that, for $15 a month, offers the ability for users to transfer an unlimited number of songs to portable music players. TRealNetworks offers free tunes to boost sales
April 27th, 2005 at 9:57 am
I don’t see any real difference between this and “Napster to Go,” which has been out for a while.
As good a deal as it may be, there are some crucial sentences in the article:
“Only nine music players are currently compatible with the portable service.”
and
“The biggest hurdle of all is that the only device that matters [iPod family] ain’t going to support this anytime soon… That throws a big honkin’ monkey wrench into the works.”
and what people need to make sure they under when signing up:
“The music stops working once the subscription ends.”
April 27th, 2005 at 1:28 pm
“The music stops working once the subscription ends.”
iTMS music keeps going and going and going……
I’d rather go back to vinyl than spend money on music that is going to expire!
April 27th, 2005 at 2:49 pm
Since I have both a Windows machine and a Mac at work, I decided to try out Real’s Rhapsody a couple months ago.
At first, it seemed kind of nice to have access to a huge catalog of music which I could stream to my PC at work. However, after a couple months of using the service, I decided to cancel.
My biggest complaint with the service is that you have no way of knowing what new music has been added. It lets you browse by genre and things like that, but what if I want to listen to the new album by Beck? The only way to know if it’s available is to search.
Or, let’s say I want to see what came out last week. No can do.
Their recommendations and things like that are really lame and the interface is unappealing. I do give them fairly high marks for usability, though iTunes is still vastly superior.
Unless you have a small music collection, the “To Go” services from Real and Napster don’t seem that appealing. Why pay $15 per month at the risk of losing your collection should you decide not to continue? Further, the only way you can listen at home is via streaming. Want to actually download tracks and burn to cd? You’ll be paying extra, to the tune of $0.89-$1.35 per track.
I think it’s wiser to $15 per month on downloads from iTunes, which you can do anything you want with (with the exception of putting the downloaded tracks onto a player other than an iPod… at least not without doing the old “burn and re-rip” trick.
To me, I just didn’t see the value in the services Real or Napster are offering.
April 28th, 2005 at 5:18 pm
iTunes offers a simple, effective interface, no doubt about it. But its strength is in selling you music you already know. (Beck’s latest hit or all the No. 1 songs by Nirvana or whatever.)
For EXPLORING music, I’ve found a Napster subscription to be a valuable resource. (Somebody at work says, “I’ll bet you’d like Hugh Masekela. You say, ‘WHO?’”) iTunes gives you a mini-sample of a song, then forces you to pay for a full download. Napster lets you download the WHOLE song (or an entire album or everything Hugh Masekela ever recorded) without charge beyond the monthly fee. In an instant, you have the ability, without financial risk, to explore a deep library of music you didn’t even know you needed. That’s where the value is.
So if you have ecclectic tastes, if you love trying out new music, if you need to provide a special soundtrack for an evening (an all-Dean Martin spaghetti dinner!), if you might want to hear more than 15 new songs every month or if you enjoy listening to complete albums (rather than buying just one or two songs from a disc) Napster’s one-price monthly fee might pay for itself.
Will people really pay for a music subscription? Maybe not. But then, that’s what we said about radio.