Real now offers burnable music files for 79 cents trough Rhapsody service
Posted on 28/05/03 15:49 by Jan Willem                             
Real now offers burnable music files for 79 cents trough Rhapsody service

It seems the good days for music enthousiastics are coming closer. RealNetworks has announced today that it will offer downloads of music files for 79 dollar cents, and the files can be recorderd to a CD. This is the lowest price currently available but unfortunately to US customers only. For $9.95 a month, people will be able to access more than 330,000 digital music tracks on demand, with about 200,000 songs available for CD burning at 79 cents per song. The service also combines custom radio and custom-CD mixing features.

Listen.com's decision to offer low-cost CD burning as part of the overall RHAPSODY experience is based on the success of a promotion offering 49-cent CD burns in February and March. During that promotion, there was a dramatic increase in sign-up rates from music fans interested in RHAPSODY's unique combination of unlimited listening and low cost burning, and subscribers' burning activity increased by more than 300%. Offering new CD burn pricing will make the service more appealing to an even wider audience of music fans.

The new CD burning price is available to consumers who have subscribed to RHAPSODY through Listen.com and a number of participating distributors that offer RHAPSODY to customers under their own brand, including Audiogalaxy, Charter Communications, Gateway, JamBase.com, RCN Corporation, Speakeasy, Verizon Online, and RealNetworks, which last month announced that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Listen.com, the creator of RHAPSODY. The parties expect the acquisition to be final in the 2nd or 3rd quarter


This development shows that there is space to lower the prices of music and for the general public this will probably be a very attractive offer. There are no technical details in this article, but it is likely that files can only be downloaded in a RealNetworks music format and are likely DRM (Digital Rights Management) restricted.

Source: Yahoo.com

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By twouters, Wednesday 28 May 2003 16:02
Well, this still brings the price of a cd with about 18 numbers to 14.22$, which is about what you're paying now for a cd... and the quality will be less. ( if it's mp3 format). All non-broadband users additionally still have to pay their phone bills, which will amount to about an hour a song, which will add something between .5$ and 1$ a song to the price... So the service is only good for people with broadband inet connections. The costs r still way 2 high.
By erzug, Wednesday 28 May 2003 16:18
True, but you're getting the 18 tracks YOU want as opposed to a few that you might like on a particular CD.
By sorti, Wednesday 28 May 2003 17:19
sortiWe need to move music piracy into the mainstream to end the music business they deserve it, without the RIAA music will continue to be made, enjoyed and sold. Music is now mostly to the benefit of corporate middle men, who don't add any value. A problem is with all the crazy copyrights will outlive any corporation, so the problems the RIAA have created will outlive them and all of us too. In the past music, print and movies could become part of the historic record but now thanks to the Mickey Mouse Copyright acts with copy protection (DRM) the future generations will have no way to learn about our culture because it will all be locked up somewhere and encrypted. Think of works like the bible locked up in an encrypted PDF format with no way to decrypt it. Or even know what it is; it will just be a chunk of data sitting on some disc.
By theEye, Wednesday 28 May 2003 20:42
>> Music is now mostly to the benefit of corporate middle men, who don’t add any value. true, true
By onlinetracker, Thursday 29 May 2003 05:32
onlinetrackerexcept corporate middlemen are the reason you get to listen to the wide range of musical talent you have. Otherwise, you'd be listening to the local tuba player belting it out of his moms basement.
By DeadMan, Thursday 29 May 2003 06:14
DeadManGuess what. A % of that 79c or whatever you pay for a 'legal' music download still goes into the RIAA's coffers.
By FunkyMonk, Thursday 29 May 2003 08:11
Yeah, but I doubt the artists ever see any of that dough. onlinetracker is dead wrong though. Just take a look at any free legal mp3 page (mp3.com, soundclick.com, etc) and you will find a world of different good music. Music wants to be... and my guess is it wants to be free too.
By sorti, Thursday 29 May 2003 11:17
sortiMost anyone can record and encode their music and distribute it via the internet. It does not take a record deal to get your music out there. Most corporate middle men do not create talent or content but exploit them. Like other industries that have become obsolete and replaced with something better it’s time to end the music industry before they do any more damage. I can’t imagine there could be a billion people making and distributing unique music because I’m from a time when the music business controlled everything.
By mmortal03, Sunday 01 June 2003 11:17
ah, but if you weren't paying for your internet bill, you would be paying for the gas to get to the cd store. That is, unless you walk there, but then you would be paying for the extra energy expelled...
[edited by mmortal03 on 01.06.2003 11:18]
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