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GFitzy · May 28, 2003, 12:54 PM

Let the price war begin, do I hear $0.50 a song??
Realnetworks

boardsurfer · May 28, 2003, 01:00 PM

It is still a subscription service AND you have to pay more to burn CD's? Dont think so.

Until someone matches Apple's pricing scheme, I dont think they have any reason to consider a price change. Maybe the labels wouldnt let them change the price anyway.

maxelson · May 28, 2003, 01:02 PM

Not to mention this: RealNetworks make CRAP for SW. Sorry. I ain't going to pony up for anything this coimpany makes until they can manage to make their flagship product usable.

macbarry · May 28, 2003, 01:05 PM

Whoops! Real's 79 cents/song only looks like 20 cents less than iTMS' 99 cents. If you read the details to be able to download a song for 79 cents the hapless Rhapsody customer must also plunk down a $9.95/month subscription fee. You'd need to buy 50 songs in a month to see a price break on Real's service. Here's hoping the mass media remembers to report THAT little detail...

Powaqqatsi · May 28, 2003, 01:09 PM

Rhapsody you say eh...

tikki · May 28, 2003, 03:10 PM

How is the music encoded? Please please tell me they aren't real media files.

boardsurfer · May 28, 2003, 03:28 PM

Originally posted by maxelson:
Not to mention this: RealNetworks make CRAP for SW. Sorry. I ain't going to pony up for anything this coimpany makes until they can manage to make their flagship product usable.

True dat

tikki · May 28, 2003, 03:33 PM

Originally posted by maxelson:
Not to mention this: RealNetworks make CRAP for SW. Sorry. I ain't going to pony up for anything this coimpany makes until they can manage to make their flagship product usable.

it USED to be usable. I remember when real was an awesome piece of software. I could listen to Broadcast.com and get all the NHL games. Those were the days

Bloatware ruined Real.

istallion · May 28, 2003, 03:50 PM

They're probably still using windows media 8. I doubt they're reencoding all their content just because of NIH syndrome. They may add the real codec and encode new music with it

.

$120 a year is steep but there is the advantage that you can listen to the whole library and don't have to pay for one-hit wonders.

Sarc · May 28, 2003, 04:19 PM

damn ... the computer industry has to hire a new creative group for their names ... Rhapsody ???

msh · May 28, 2003, 05:48 PM

I read the quote on the side. ... no problems playing high quality audio on broad band. What about dial up users? How will the quality be for them? Will they pay the same amount for low quality streams? or Will they just have to deal with skips and such?

At least with ITMS on dial up, you just have to wait longer for your tunes to download. You get the same value for your +ACQ-0.99 as a broadband users does.

Superchicken · May 28, 2003, 06:20 PM

You know Real could TOTTALY change around their perception if they just ran a few commercials appologizing for their pesky add bugging, and unbloated their software, if apple partnered with them and developed the UI they could TOTTALLY woop M$, Real is becomming irrelivant since M$ joined the fray sadly, if Real wants to remain a real player

they need to shape up their image so they look like a white night to the evil M$.

itai195 · May 28, 2003, 07:46 PM

Originally posted by maxelson:
Not to mention this: RealNetworks make CRAP for SW. Sorry. I ain't going to pony up for anything this coimpany makes until they can manage to make their flagship product usable.

Not related to their music service, but I think Real has made inroads here. RealOne is much less intrusive and more responsive on Windows than past versions of RealPlayer were. On OSX it's also quite nice. Less intrusive than Quicktime even, because Quicktime always bugs me to buy the Pro version.

istallion · May 28, 2003, 08:36 PM

Originally posted by msh:
I read the quote on the side. ... no problems playing high quality audio on broad band. What about dial up users? How will the quality be for them? Will they pay the same amount for low quality streams? or Will they just have to deal with skips and such?

At least with ITMS on dial up, you just have to wait longer for your tunes to download. You get the same value for your +ACQ-0.99 as a broadband users does.

I saw no reason for them to block dial-up users. Their player queues up songs you want and downloads them as fast as possible. If you want to play songs that haven't been cached, it puts it at the head of the queue and plays like regular stream.