The Rhapsody streaming music service from RealNetworks may be coming to the iPhone soon, according to a post on the RealNetworks blog. The iPhone app is finished and being sent off to Apple for review this week. There's a video demo of the app, and it looks like a decent front end for the subscription-based service. An Android app is also in the works.

The iPhone app isn't too flashy, but appears well-designed, offering all of Rhapysody's basic features, like searching and playlists. The app's best feature is a song queue that you can fill up and save as a playlist, which looks quite useful. There's also a music guide that shows current charts and what's new this week, and also allows you to browse by genre.

This is all good news for Rhapsody's 750,000+ subscribers, but I have to wonder whether an app that seemingly provides an alternative to Apple's own iTunes Music Store won't just be hit with one of Apple's notorious "duplicate functionality" rejections. Considering that the FCC is currently inquiring into a similar rejection of Google Voice, and that there are other streaming music apps on the store already - albeit free, and not with Rhapsody's extensive song library - it seems likely that Rhapsody will get a pass. Apple's been trying to clean up its review process, but the whole thing is still unpredictable, so this should be interesting to watch.

RealNetworks is probably the most visible company to come out with a DVD ripping utility. There are dozens, if not hundreds of other applications that let you copy the data from DVDs to your hard drive. But being high profile is sometimes all it takes to land yourself in court -- which is exactly where RealNetworks has found itself, even though the company's RealDVD software includes DRM restrictions that keep you from sharing ripped movies with your friends.

RealNetworks launched RealDVD last fall, but it was only on sale for a brief period before it got sued into partial oblivion by groups representing movie studios. Now the court trial is set to begin.

One interesting tidbit is that the RealDVD software, which lets you rip movies to your hard drive, is just the tip of the iceberg. The New York Times reports that RealNetworks has developed an application for Linux-based set top boxes like DVD players that would let you insert DVDs and save movies to a hard drive for later viewing without the use of a computer. If RealNetworks wins the case, you could see this feature showing up on set top boxes that would sell for under $300.

RealNetworks executivies may have thought that the company was releasing a lawsuit-proof DVD ripper when it decided to add mandatory DRM to its RealDVD application launched last month. After all, while the software lets you rip DVD movies and save the video on your hard drive, it makes it extraordinarily difficult to share the media with other users, or even to watch it on a portable device or another computer you own.

The movie studios apparently saw things differently because they filed a lawsuit last week and received a temporary injuction against RealNetworks that prevents the company from selling the software. During a hearing on Tuesday, a US district court judge made that injunction indefinite. The next hearing won't be scheduled until November 17th or later, which means that RealDVD will be unavailable for at least a month.

Honestly, I'm still not sure why anyone would pay $30 for a DVD ripper when there are so many free, (and DRM-free) options available. But the case is interesting, because RealNetworks is insisiting that by leaving the CSS encryption intact it is not violating anyone's copyrights.

If this argument is upheld in court, it could be seen as both a win and a loss for supporters of DRM. On the one hand, it would help bolster the argument that DRM prevents piracy and that utilizing DRM is a valid option for studios that want to abide by the law. On the other hand, it would mean that companies like RealNetworks can create software that uses DRM to get around exactly what the movie studios wanted to use it for in the first place - to keep people from making copies of DVDs.

Either way, it would be yet another instance of companies and courts telling users how they can and can't enjoy the media they've legally purchased. But it's not at all clear how the courts will rule on this case yet.

[via NewTeeVee]

You know how RealNetworks confidently launched a commercial DVD ripping program and then went and pre-emptively sued a bunch of movie studios to demonstrate in court that the software doesn't infringe on copyrights? Yeah, the studios sued back. And while the courts figure out how to deal with the whole mess, RealNetworks has been ordered to stop selling the RealDVD software.

NewTeeVee reports that this is just a temporary shutdown until Tuesday. The purpose is to give the judge time to review the details of the case.

Meanwhile, there are still plenty of applications that will let you rip DVDs for free, although few, if any, keep a DVD's CSS encryption intact the way that RealDVD does. So if you're a big fan of DRM, especially the heavy-handed kind that will only let you watch a ripped movie on a single computer, you might want to wait until this legal battle is worked out. If you prefer being able to watch movies your own way, you might want to check out Handbrake or Fair Use Wizard.

Say you're a major multimedia software company and you've just released a product that you absolutely know is going to tick off copyright holders, like say, major movie studios. You could wait around and for someone to file a lawsuit saying that your software, like say, a DVD ripper, violates their copyrights. Or you could try to resolve the issue before it gets to that point and file your own pre-emptive lawsuit. And that's exactly what RealNetworks has done.

A few weeks ago the company announced a public beta of RealDVD, an application that lets you make backups of your DVDs for viewing on a PC. Unlike free alternatives including DVD Decrypter and Handbrake, RealDVD utilizes Digital Rights Management so that you can only watch your video on a single PC. That move was likely intended to help make the software lawsuit-proof.

Today RealNetworks officially launched the commercial version of RealDVD, which costs about $50 (although there's a limited time $20 off deal, so you can pick it up for $30 today). And the company has also asked a federal court to rule that RealDVD is legal since it copies an entire DVD to a hard drive, including the CSS encryption that prevents users from making unauthorized copies. In other words, sure, you can backup your DVDs with RealDVD, but you won't easily be able to rip a DVD and post it on the internet for anyone else to download.

Love DRM or hate it, (wait, does anybody actually love DRM), the argument does make sense. And it could make RealDVD the first DVD backup solution to hold up in court. You know, if RealNetworks wins.

[via paidContent]

RealNetworks has launched a DRM-free MP3 music store. The Rhapsody MP3 store has music from all four major labels, with over 5 million tracks available for download. Most songs are priced at 99 cents, and most albums cost $9.99. That's about the same price that Apple charges for DRM-free AAC audio files, but a bit more than Amazon MP3 charges for many songs and albums.

All songs will be encoded at 256kbps, and will be playable on any device that can handle MP3 audio. RealNetworks isn't killing off its DRM-restricted music service, but rather, plans to have the two services peacefully coexist. You can pay $12.99 a month to stream unlimited music to your computer, or you can pay per download to save songs that you can play forever.

RealNetworks is also rolling out a service that will let Verizon Wireless customers download music for their handsets. For $15 a month, users will be able to download an unlimited number of songs (with DRM) on a Windows PC and sync those songs with their cellphone. Currently seven handsets are supported, with several more coming soon.

The Rhapsody MP3 store is offering a $10 credit to the first 100,000 customers who purchase an album by July 4th. You need to sign up for an account and fork over your credit card information to qualify. But hey, free music, right?

[via CNet]

Several companies that broadcast internet radio streams, including RealNetworks, Yahoo!, and this blog's parent company, AOL owe ASCAP millions of dollars. That's according to a federal court in New York. While the court did not determine the exact amount of money owed, ASCAP estimates that the fees could climb as high as $100 million.

ASCAP stands for the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers, and the group represents over 300,000 songwriters who are currently receiving no compensation when their music is streamed by the three media companies. This despite the fact that the radio streams are supported by advertising, which means AOL, RealNetworks and Yahoo! are making at least some money through their streaming music operations.

This whole issue is separate from the dispute between the RIAA and online radio stations last year. The RIAA represents recording artists, while ASCAP covers songwriters.

[via CNet]

Yahoo! is preparing to dump its Yahoo! Music Unlimited service and replace it with a partnership with RealNetworks' Rhapsody. A few weeks ago we reported on a rumor that Yahoo! was exploring the idea of launching a DRM-free music store to compete with Apple and Amazon. It looks like the company decided to go another direction.

Both Yahoo! Music Unlimited and Rhapsody allow users to access a large library of on-demand music for a subscription fee. But while Yahoo! has been charging $5.99 to $8.99 per month, Rhapsody charges $12.99 per month. Existing users will have their accounts automatically transferred to Rhapsody, with their music libraries intact. But when you're contract runs out, you'll be charged the higher rate.

Yahoo! and Rhapsody are also exploring collaboration on other projects, including music downloads.

It looks like RealNetworks is expanding its online video game holdings. PaidContent reports that the company best known for its audio and video player is buying Gametrust for under $50 million.

This doesn't mean RealNetworks plans to release the next Halo. Gametrust focuses on casual gaming. You know, the sort of games that you open in a web browser, play for a few minutes, and then move on.

Gametrust's Game Frame platform powers other online gaming portals including MiniClip and Shockwave.

MTV is expected to announce today that it will partner with RealNetworks, merging the two company's online music services.

This probably means the end of MTV's URGE music site, which probably won't affect much of anyone. As far as we can tell, you could count the number of URGE subscribers on one hand. And you might not need all your fingers.

Anyway, URGE had been a partnership between MTV and Microsoft. But Microsoft has been focusing on its Zune Marketplace since launching its iPod competitor. So it makes sense for MTV to partner up with RealNetworks, the company behind the subscription-based Rhapsody music service.

Whether MTV/Rhapsody will make a dent in Apple's market share remains to be seen. But so far Apple has yet to offer a subscription model for iTunes, so it should be interesting to see if Rhapsody's pay a monthly fee for all the music you want model will gain any traction with MTV's brand name and music library.

Verizon Wireless has also signed on to distribute MTV/RealNetworks content to mobile devices.

Real Networks is joining Google's quest to let you interact with online media while you're offline. On the one hand, this seems like technology that would have been great five years ago when fewer people had always-on internet connections. But it would also have been a lot harder to implement these tools back in the era of 56k modems.

In June, Real Networks will launch a beta of their updated RealPlayer. Robert Scoble caught up with Real Networks VP Jeff Chasen for a preview.



If the four minute video doesn't do it for you, Scoble has also posted a much longer video of the complete interview.

At the ongoing LinuxWorld conference, RealNetworks announced that it will be releasing open source software that will allow Linux user to listen to and view audio and video files encoded in Microsoft's proprietary Windows Media formats. Currently Linux users are able to view Windows Media files only through closed-source components, but a deal Real inked with Microsoft after last year's anti-trust settlement paved the way for the announced open source solution, which will be released through Real's Helix Community. Novell joined RealNetworks to announce that it would be bundling the new software with Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, to be released later this year. Real is also planning to bring its Rhapsody music store to Linux, and will possibly be supporting the AAC audio compression format used by Apple.

Google and Mozilla know how to push their software out to the masses. People love their software, and do pretty much anything to get it out there, either through word of mouth, or through distribution deals with the likes of Dell and other major players in the technology industry.

Google and Mozilla have teamed with RealNetworks to distribute their popular software even further. For the past few years Google has already had a partnership with Real for software distribution. Now another multi-year deal was recently struck between the three companies, giving users the option of downloading and installing Firefox, and the Google Toolbar when they are downloading RealPlayer. Hooray for Google and Mozilla! More exposure for these killer applications.

In a hard-fought battle, RealNetworks appears to have won a major patent victory to protect their technology. This is a patent that already faced a struggle with the Patent Office itself, just to get filed in 1999 (and it took 5 years to do that). But it now looks like the "streaming through a congested network" magic is owned by RealNetworks... Despite a previous patent by Apple for the same thing used in QuickTime. Personally, I always thought Real had better streaming, QuickTime had better downloadable quality. The billion-dollar question: who cares? Will this really affect Real's bottom line? Rob Glaser (CEO of Real) has essentially said he's not going to go after the "big hair porcupines" in the industry using the technology. Hm, that would probably be Apple, Microsoft, and Adobe. Who does that leave, YouTube? Developers aren't rolling their own codecs, for the most part, these days. During the go-go 90's I saw all sorts of wacky streaming implementations, but you don't hear a lot about this now that broadband keeps growing. You do hear about different protocols (like Bittorrent) for moving data, but streaming tech this old doesn't get headlines. Yet that appears to be what Glaser is hoping for, as in the New York Times he's quoted as saying, "We're hoping that people will say, 'Oh, I get it,' and that this will boost the identity of Helix." Well Rob, one can dream, eh? This sounds a little like those patent-to-profitability games dying tech companies play. They're bleeding money after innovating, so they sue everyone on old patents to make some cash. Sounds like Real doesn't want to play that game, but will they have to?