Old Tricks In The Futile Battle Against iTunes

Silicon Alley Insider:

Rhapsody is set to take on Apple's (AAPL) iTunes, Amazon's (AMZN) MP3 store, and Napster (NAPS) with a new, long-awaited DRM-free music store, launching today. The RealNetworks (RNWK) - MTV joint venture has deals with all four major record labels (and several indie labels) to sell more than 5 million DRM-free MP3s via the new store. Its unique feature: Instead of 30-second samples, you can listen to full-length songs before you buy them.

Rhapsody will also power full-length music sampling (up to 25 songs per person, per month) and MP3 sales for iLike (including apps on Facebook, MySpace, etc.), Yahoo (YHOO), MTV Networks (VIAB), and Verizon Wireless.

Read the whole story: Silicon Alley Insider

Comments

[Sundialsvc4]

Gee, another record-store just opened up. It's about time.

It continues to amaze me how the recording industry fights so hard and so long against "a distribution mechanism that reduces 'Cost of Goods Sold' to almost zero point zero-zero."

I can go into any store and buy a plastic disk containing a small pre-selected group of DRM-free songs. I pay a lot of money for it and, by the time all the costs-of-goods-sold are settled, the record label gets a very small amount. Disks are heavy, bulky, expensive, and so-on.

Contrast: Internet. No cost. No delay. No warehouses. Perfect accounting. You can make good money selling a song for one thin dime because you get to keep nine-and-a-half cents.

Quit quibbling. Ditch DRM like the dodo-bird that it is, and start selling billions(!) of songs for a dime.