Rhapsody Roundup

Earlier this week, we reported the news that Real Networks' Rhapsody music service was going web-based, allowing Mac and Linux users to access the streaming subscription service through the browser.

Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation has responded to the move with an editorial at the EFF's Deep Links blog entitled "Beginning of the End for Music DRM". Here's a snippet:

What strikes me about this announcement is the implicit rejection of DRM that it represents. After all, while Real touts Rhapsody as primarily a "streaming" music service, everyone knows that it is trivial to turn a "stream" into a "download" by using widely available software tools... So it seems clear that Rhapsody has managed to talk its major label licensors into allowing them to concentrate on attracting customers, rather than shackling them in a misguided attempt to restrict the music that is already available on P2P networks for free.

That's a good sign. We've been saying for years now that the music industry needs to pay more attention to fattening the carrot, and less to brandishing the stick.

The debate over digital rights management has been raging in the mainstream press lately, largely because of the Sony rootkit debacle, but also because we're reaching a sort of critical mass with online music. More and more people are buying hardware players like the iPod, logging on, and downloading music — whether they're paying for it or not. The music industry has been half-heartedly going after the P2P crooks for a while, as Fred mentions in his piece, but those days may soon be over.

The only limiting factor of P2P's growth is that you still need to be at least a little bit technically savvy to take advantage of free (and illegal) music resources on the web. So, the casual consumer is going to keep walking in and out of the CD store at the mall while the college kids and those in the know are at home downloading gigs and gigs of MP3s. And, when Mr. Joe CD Shopper wises up and realizes that he doesn't have to leave the house to get the new 50 Cent, where do you think he's going to grab it? The iTunes Music Store? Not likely...

The majors "fattening the carrot," as Fred puts it, is a step in the right direction.