Rhapsody’s officials announced their new "Music Without Limits" campaign, which will enable
them to sell tunes in DRM free MP3 format through partners such as Yahoo! and Verizon.
Since its launch in 2001 and up until now the online music
service offered streaming on-demand access to a massive digital music library,
with a set of restrictions for the downloaded files. The monthly fees varied
from $13 to $15, and even though the offer was rather affordable and
significantly large, its market success was narrowed by its subscription
service which wasn’t compatible with Apple’s globally popular iPod player.
With its initiative, Rhapsody is aiming to reduce the gap
set by iTunes with its 70 percent of the United States digital music market.
This seemed to be the best way of dealing with the market’s
preferences and the explanation given by Neil Smith,
vice president of Rhapsody, sums it up pretty well: "We're no longer
competing with the iPod. We're embracing it," he said, as quoted by BBC
News. He also added that iTunes’ success is also determined by the people’s
tendency to stick with things that they are used
to, comparing Rhapsody to TiVo’s early years, when people who used it loved its
applications and thought it was a huge help while the ones who didn’t experience
it, didn’t quite understand its use.
The decision to offer music
downloads without any copy restrictions will involve all four major record
companies – Warner, EMI, Universal and Sony.
A similar strategy was adopted in
the past few months by other music selling Web sites such as Amazon and
Napster, in order to increase their chances at a larger market share.
Rhapsody’s new offer will provide
MP3 tracks at a cost of 99 cents and whole albums for $9.9.
The Rhapsody service is owned by
RealNetworks and several partnership deals have been signed with companies such
as Yahoo, iLike and MTV, in order to ensure a massive exposure and a good distribution
process. Another deal will enable Verizon’s clients to immediately download their
purchased tracks from Rhapsody onto their PCs, using the carrier’s Wireless
Vcast music service.
The deal with iLike,
introduces Rhapsody to the company’s more than 28 million registered users,
which will be able to sample whole songs thanks to the new arrangement. This new
option is expected to make the site very popular, as up until now users were
only able to listen the first 30 seconds of a track, making it hard to reach a
decision on whether it is worth paying for the song or not. Once the sampling
session will be over and users will decide on clicking the buy button, three
options will appear, allowing the subscriber to choose between Amazon, iTunes
and Rhapsody for purchasing the song.
In order to attract people to check out the Web site and try
out its new features, the company decided on offering $10 credits for the first
100,000 people who sign up the subscription page. The amount is enough for ten separate
tracks or for an artist’s whole album.