Yahoo! Music Unlimited (and its customers) is the latest victim of the digital media shakeout. However, unlike the shutdown of Sony's Connect service which left customers stranded with DRM-laden tracks, Yahoo has struck a deal to send its existing subscription customers to the PlaysForSure-friendly Rhapsody music service from RealNetworks. The shift will occur sometime in "the first half" of 2008 and leave Yahoo Music Unlimited's payment plans and music libraries in tact for customers "for a limited time." Eventually, Yahoo's legacy customers will be required to sign up at Rhapsody's relatively higher rates of $12.99 per month (Yahoo charged $8.99 per month or as little as $5.99 per month for a year paid in full). So, do you still think that the subscription model is a good thing? Just wait, the shake-out has only begun.

Update: To be clear, Yahoo Music will continue to offer streaming audio, music videos, web radio and other advertising-supported music offerings while integrating Rhapsody into its online portal. Only the subscription service is being shut down.

Though not what we'd deem "common," outages extending beyond a few hours have been known to happen to the services we love so dearly, and it seems that some Rhapsody users have become the latest to fall victim to an inexplicable lapse in service. Over at the Real forums, a number of customers have been unable to sign into their accounts for up to two days, and no amount of chicanery has solved the quandary. To make matters even more frightening, many are getting a message that their account simply is nowhere to be found, and customer service doesn't seem to be getting anyone very far. Also curious is the fact that new accounts (as in, ones created while current customers are unable to login) seem to be working just fine, but we here haven't personally experienced any of the login difficulties. What gives? Any of you out there pulling your hair out over this? Got a secret for getting logged in that you'd like to share?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Update: This in from Real: "Our engineer and support staff became aware of a login issue affecting a small number of users yesterday. They're hard at work to fix the problem for the folks being affected." No ETA for the fix though, and it definitely sounds like more than just a few users, but your mileage may vary.

Around a hundred employees at RealNetworks are dealing with the news that their job is no longer available, and about 35 of those positions were in Seattle, Washington while the others were in Asia / Europe. According to company spokesman Bill Hankes, the firm made cuts "across the board to reduce redundancies built up as a result of six acquisitions made over the past two years," and he also added that these were the "first layoffs the company has made since those purchases." As it stands, around 1,700 employees are left, and no further job cuts are "planned."

[Via PaidContent]

Rhapsody America (the new Real / MTV partnership) wasn't the only thing that Real had up its sleeve today. Hot on the heels of the Universal snubbing of iTunes, and consequent announcement that the company would begin selling music via other outlets, comes today's news that the Rhapsody / Universal Music partnership has officially launched, at least in a limited "test" form, with the aim of selling UMG's catalog of thousands of tracks -- sans DRM -- via the Real Rhapsody service, charging $.89 per song for subscribers and $.99 for non-subscribers. Currently, only a select group of artists are up for grabs, including 50 Cent, Amy Winehouse, The Pussycat Dolls, The Police and Johnny Cash, though the plan is to make Universal's entire catalog available in the future. This announcement makes what we all knew was coming now abundantly clear -- the gloves have come off.

Here's a new one on us. Instead of suing companies for infringing on its patents, like all the cool kids are doing, Media Rights Technologies has sent cease and desist letters to Apple, Microsoft, RealNetworks and Adobe for "actively avoiding" the use of its technology. According to MRT, the DMCA's language on copyright protection circumvention -- defined as "to descramble a scrambled work, to decrypt an encrypted work, or otherwise to avoid, bypass, remove, deactivate or impair a technological measure, without the authority of the copyright owner." -- requires those companies to use its product, since its X1 SeCure Recording Control technology has been proven to plug the "digital hole," and therefore allows them to uphold the DMCA. "We've given these four companies 10 days to talk to us and work out a solution, or we will go into federal court and file action and seek an injunction to remove the infringing products from the marketplace," says CEO Hank Risan. RealNetworks spokesman Matt Graves calls the letters "a rather novel approach to business development," and lawyers are calling the effort "out there" and "a play for publicity." We call it a riot, and while it's not likely to go far -- not even the far-reaching and vaguely worded DMCA is likely to hold this one up for long -- we're at least grateful to MRT for mixing things up a bit in the boring old tech lawsuit game.

Those RealNetworks folks are all about sharing these days, with Sonos, Sansa, iriver and now TiVo integration for their Rhapsody music service. TiVo seems like a pretty natural fit, and it sounds like TiVo and Real are doing it right, allowing access to the entire Rhapsody catalog from any broadband connected TiVo in the home. The functionality is based on Real's Rhapsody DNA API, allowing the TiVo to stream songs and flag tracks for playback on the PC. You can also access your PC music library from the TiVo box, but don't get too excited: Rhapsody and TiVo won't be rolling this stuff out until "later this year."

We got the skinny from the RealNetworks folks on some of their plans for continued hardware integration in pursuit of the celestial jukebox holy grail. They're going to be partnering with iriver on a couple of new audio players that will both integrate Rhapsody software -- one an update to the clix and one a Wi-Fi enabled MP3 player allowing users to both download and stream music from the Rhapsody catalogue over the air. The Wi-Fi player (pictured above) is apparently not going to be the W10, as RealNetworks sources tell us the new player is yet unnamed; it's going to come with a 3-inch touch-sensitive QVGA display with a flash-based UI, include support for VoIP and roll out in 2GB and 4GB capacities. The clix 2 (pic after the break) is going to update the clix with an improved screen and slimmer design and launch in 2GB and 4GB capacities. Both of the players will offer FM tuners, in-line and voice recording, photo and video playback, and 25+ hours of battery life. No word yet on price, but these players are expected to roll out in the US in Q1.

Apple has certainly struck gold with its finely tuned iPod+iTunes system, and Microsoft is seemingly ditching that whole PlaysForSure effort in exchange for the upcoming Zune Marketplace, so RealNetworks has joined the bandwagon by narrowing its focus (and hopefully the scope of incompatibility issues) by teaming with SanDisk to produce the Sansa Rhapsody. While the company already nailed down a partnership with Slim Devices, it's now venturing into the saturated DAP market by co-engineering an e200 with specialized Rhapsody software -- dubbed Rhapsody DNA -- to ensure the device consistently plays nice with Real's services. SanDisk is looking to release 2, 4, and 6GB editions of the Rhapsody-friendly Sansas, as well as offering its expandable 8GB e280 model for those toting the heftiest of subscription playlists. Aside from the (supposedly) guaranteed compatibility, these special units will apparently come stocked with 32 hours of tunes from a plethora of record labels that goes MIA if not synced with a Rhapsody account within 30 days. While there's no hard deets on pricing nor availability, we don't envision SanDisk charging anything extra just for keeping it Real.

[Via GigaOM]

It looks like Navio Systems have made good on their promise to open up the iPod to non-iTMS content, at least according to a report by Business 2.0, which says that the company is planning to enable its customers to offer iPod-compatible, copy-protected videos by the end of June. Although the details of Navio's methodology are not entirely clear, it seems that their engineers have deconstructed Cupertino-neighbor Apple's FairPlay DRM in order to create a separate-but-equal copy protection scheme that content providers can use to offer their own encrypted products to iPod owners. You'll remember that RealNetworks employed a similar tactic with their Harmony technology, which allows songs purchased from the RealPlayer Music Store to play on iPods, and which Apple did their part -- albeit unsuccesfully -- to thwart by way of firmware updates. Will Navio's technology spark a similar firmware arms race? Only time will tell, but we can't really see Steve and friends just sitting back listening to Beatles tunes while other players start eating away at iTunes' market share.

[Via iLounge]