You may remember Rhapsody as the people who brought you the $15 unlimited music plan where, as long as you paid $15 every month, you could download as many songs as you wanted. Well, that plan had DRM (digital rights management) so iPod users and users of MP3 players who didn’t have a Plays For Sure-player were out of luck. They have no seen the light and changed their ways to become more like the highly popular iTunes Store.

For just 99 cents you can buy an individual song and $9.99 will land you most complete albums. This is really similar to the iTunes Store, which has been the industry standard. Speculation is that they changed their pricing structure to combat iTunes Plus, Apple’s solution to DRM free songs. Also to combat iTunes is the ability to listen to the whole song before you purchase it compared to 30-second clips iTunes offers. On personal experience, the songs are lower quality than what you would purchase when you stream them due to the fact that people could record the songs the old analog way.

Also introduced was a partnership with Verizon Wireless with their VCAST service. For $15 per month, Verizon subscribers with compatible phones can download as many songs to their phones as they want. In other words, this is the same plan as the old Rhapsody, just now partnered with Verizon Wireless. This plan does include DRM when you have an unlimited plan, but there is an alternative. You can still purchase songs for 99 cents on the VZW/Rhapsody store on your computer DRM free or when you download music over the air for $1.99, it will also include a higher quality, DRM-free download. Confused? So are we.

To sum it up: Rhapsody says no to DRM except on the $15/month plan. This is a step in the right direction and hopefully all the music providers will cave in to DRM-free music.

Via [Ars Technica] and [Broadband Reports]

Image from Rhapsody

Post from: Our Digital Music