Real Launches Rhapsody.com and "Web Services"

David Card | December 05, 2005, 08:35 AM

Today, RealNetworks is rolling out a Web-based version of its industry-leading music service, Rhapsody.com, and the first steps in an initiative to enable music content Web services. I played with Rhapsody.com over the weekend on a Mac -- yes a Mac -- and it does a great job of mimicking the on-demand streaming features of the full subscription service. It's streaming only. No downloads tethered either to a computer or a device, and no jukebox. It delivered graceful and snappy on-demand and radio performance, and the same deep, rich content that surrounds the music in the real Rhapsody. (MusicNow, prevously owned by Circuit City and recently acquired by AOL, is another on-demand service that at least in theory can support Macs.)

I'm a big believer in free trials (paid content conversions multiply by six, for those who use 'em), but Rhapsody 25 is only a pale imitation of the Rhapsody experience. A real, week-long trial to full on-demand streaming and radio would be a much better way to acquire new customers, if perhaps more expensive to implement. But Rhapsody.com makes it that much easier to try out some features.

Rhapsody Web Services are the first step towards real music-based Web services. Right now, they're links and RSS text feeds of Rhapsody music content. No real music yet. No SDK, or APIs yet. But the initiative is intriguing, and early adopters are supposed to include MSN, Comcast, and the Rollingstone.com site that Real runs.

This combo of a Web product and the potential for Web services is the same spin AOL is putting on its MusicNow acquisition, which replaces a pretty robust but out-of-date product from MusicNet that has several hundred thousand subscribers. AOL said it could move faster, and integrate music more widely into its other offerings, if it went Web-based. Seems like Microsoft is going the same route with Rhapsody.