Rhapsody, the digital love-child of Real Networks and MTV, is best known for its DRM'd subscription music service. As such, the globe's population of sheep-white-earbudded, sidewalk zombies have been completely off limits to its charms. Until today. While its DRM'd subscription deals remain in place, Rhapsody is now offering unprotected MP3 downloads via its Rhapsody MP3 store and via partners including Verizon's VCAST over-the-air service and Yahoo. We're talking 5 million DRM-free tracks (generally priced at $0.99 per song, $9.99 per album) from Indies and the four majors. Uniquely, all tracks can be previewed in full before downloading. Rhapsody VP, Neil Smith said, "We're no longer competing with the iPod, we're embracing it." Perhaps, but Rhapsody's planned $50 million marketing assault on iTunes with the help of MTV's TV networks doesn't exactly make them best of friends. We're not DRM-free across the industry yet (in fact, far from it), but things are certainly moving in that direction.

Update: Signup now with the Rhapsody MP3 store and get a $10 credit which can be applied to your first album.

[Via Reuters]

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.

Like a dump truck backing up onto our virtual doorstep, Philips dropped an enormous pile of new GoGear units on us at CES today. We're not really sure what's what here (really, there's a bunch) but we were intrigued to read about the Rhapsody compatibility that some of the players are sporting. Hit up those read links if you're in the market.

Read – Philips GoGear Audio Video Players
Read – Rhapsody-compatible Streamium and GoGear models

Every once in a while we'll come across a mystical product that gets scooped really early in its development cycle, goes years without release, and makes a CES cameo or two before becoming available to the now-underwhelmed throngs. Such is the case with Haier's Ibiza Rhapsody, a decidedly metallic PMP that features WiFi, Bluetooth, and support for both Rhapsody and AOL Video. Granted, those are still somewhat impressive specs even by 2008 standards, but the capacities top out at 30GB (weak sauce) and the physical appearance of the device is definitely an acquired taste. Anyway, we happened to catch the Ibiza Rhapsody in final retail packaging in our travels and stopped for a few brief sentence to snap a shot or two; do enjoy them, won't you?

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.

It's been nearly a full year since we first heard about the Ibiza Rhapsody, Haier's Linux-based, WiFi-enabled PMP, and it looks like all that bake time paid off -- Crave got their hands on the $330 30GB model and found it to be well-implemented and quite versatile. The 2.5-inch PMP supports MPEG4, WMV, M4V, AVI, and H.264, and offers wireless access to Rhapsody's streaming Channels anywhere there's WiFi -- and allows users to save songs to the players' drive with one click. A2DP support, a wireless podcast directory, and support for AOL Wireless video complete the package and make for much more effective and interesting uses of integrated WiFi and Bluetooth than in some other media devices we've seen. Too bad that squarish touchpad controller still brings the ugly with a vengeance. No word on when Haier will be shipping these out in bulk, but interested parties can hit up Amazon for pre-orders.

[Thanks, KC Kim]

It looks like Rhapsody could soon be seeing a pretty big increase in traffic, as the company has just teamed up with Wendy's to give away up to 100 million free song downloads. To get in on that action, you'll have to purchase a medium or large-sized combo meal between now and December, with which you'll receive a code that'll entitle you to a free song download of your choice. What's more, you'll also be able to enter the "Combo Up to Download" sweepstakes, which'll give you a shot at a 50-song download bundle from Rhapsody, or one of one hundred SanDisk Sansa e280R Rhapsody players. Those that frequent Wendy's on a daily basis apparently won't be able to take full advantage of their fast food ways, however, as the promotion is limited to just 25 downloads per user.

After a month or so of delays, Samsung has finally launched its P2 media player in the States; and it's not putting the 3-inch touchscreen sporting, flash-based, Bluetooth-enabled DAP out there all by its lonesome. Today Samsung announced MPfreedom, a website with info and customization doohickeys, and of course content partnerships with the likes of CinemaNow, Rhapsody and Napster. As we heard before, Samsung is also going to be supporting the player through "Blue Wave" firmware upgrades, the first of which is due for December, and will include Bluetooth phone call and file transfer integration, along with AAC compatibility -- currently only WMA and MP3 are supported -- and some other frills. Samsung is emphasizing its 3-inch, 16:9 display that can run video at 30fps (WMV and MPEG-4), and of course the touchscreen "EmoTure" tap 'n slide interface. The player is available in 2GB, 4GB ($199) and 8GB ($249) capacities, in your choice of black, white or red. There's 35 hours of music playback or 5 hours of video on the battery, and Samsung tossed in an FM radio for good measure.

Yep, TiVo is re-announcing support for Rhapsody today, finally ready to roll out to Real / TiVo crossover customers. Real's hardware integration list, which includes iRiver, Nokia, SanDisk, Sonos, etc., gets finally getting another notch in the bedpost, and you get to thumbs up / down your music selections (thanks, TiVo peanut) couchside. It doesn't sound like you can do much more than stream tracks and Rhapsody radio from the cloud, though, so if you're expecting some crazy TiVo-centered device syncing or portable media integration, think again. And say, while we're on the topic of TiVo updates, not that we want to look a service-supporting gift horse in the mouth or anything, but we're still waiting for TiVoToGo and TiVoToComeBack for our Series3s and HDs, y'hear TiVo?

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about technology, multimedia, and digital entertainment:

The iPod and iTunes haven't ostensibly suffered for (and have arguably gained from the) lack of a subscription music service. However, while such services have proven a tough sell to consumers at large, they have their benefits. One is the general liberation from the 30-second sample, a tiny prison of time that makes it difficult to engage in meaningful music discovery, the silver lining in the digital cloud that has been raining on the music industry for so many years.

In contrast to Rhapsody, Napster and Microsoft's Zune Pass, which offer several ways within their software for subscribers to hear full tracks in which they might be interested, Apple has recently turned "out of band" for music discovery. The high-profile announcement with Starbucks at the introduction of Apple's latest round of iPods brings the portable devices to where the free music is rather than vice versa. Among Apple's portable music players, the automatic track identification works only with the iPod touch and the iPhone. However, the flat-panel televisions in New York City Starbucks locations also note PCs and Macs as suitable (and prevalent) clients for purchasing music played at the popular coffee retailer.

An encouraging aspect of the collaboration between Starbucks and Apple is that the right company is making the brown product. However, one hot spot of trouble brewing in this Half-n-Half is that one can listen to the music only at a Starbucks location. This begs whether Apple would continue such a partnership when the iPhone finally gets access to 3G (perhaps to the scandalous exclusion of AT&T) or whether it or another device such as the iPod touch embrace WiMAX. But extending access to Starbucks' percolated playlists need not wait for such wireless advances. The two companies could enable access via a simple option in iTunes that would stream Starbucks' Hear Music XM station -- or an equivalent -- via any broadband connection.

We got a few minutes to chat (once again) with Real's Rob Glaser today, who was kind enough to answer a few lingering questions about Real's freshly announced music alliance with MTV and Verizon called Rhapsody America.

• On Urge and integrating with Rhapsody, "The Urge brand will be retired... but we wanted to be welcoming and loving to existing Urge subscribers" who are now making the migration to Rhapsody.
• On Rhapsody and MTV's strange bedfellows partnership: "Philosophically we have very similar views...", Real intends to leverage "MTV's expertise in genres and content curation", but technologically Real's Rhapsody platform will continue to be what the venture builds off.
  
• For example, one unannounced iteration of that integration would be with "MTV's Top 20 video countdown -- you'll be able to see the countdown and get music directly in Rhapsody."
• On PlaysForSure: "PFS is a legacy system that Microsoft abandoned when they went to Zune." With the Clix2 Rhapsody, Real and iRiver "picked up the mantle of innovation that MS chose to abandon."
• Will real continue to support PFS? "Yes, as long as there is a high volume of devices and we can extend them, we see no reason to stop supporting the legacy architecture."
• On DRM-free music sales: "We think in the long term DRM-free music delivers the best consumer experience, solves the interoperability problem, and better connects with consumers psychologically." Damn skippy.

Cross-marketing is great and all, but we'd rather know how we factor into this new partnership between MTV, Real and Verizon Wireless. Turns out a few things will be changing from the get go. For one, Urge customers can dive into Rhapsody starting today, using their existing login info to get their feet wet in the #1 subscription service. Rhapsody users will also be enjoying a bit of MTV, VH1 and CMT content, but it's not perfectly clear what or when they'll be getting it. Real also confirmed that it'll be keeping its current partnerships with the likes of Best Buy, SanDisk and TiVo. For Verizon's part of the action, they'll be giving you Rhapsody versions of your over-the-air purchases in a few months. Otherwise, the future is unclear. According to the press release, Rhapsody is "the exclusive digital music service for Real and for MTV Networks' premier music and pop culture brands in the United States." That said, MTV hasn't really said anything too solid on its exit from Microsoft cahoots with its current Urge offering, so we'll just have to wait and see how this all pans out.

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.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Wal-mart's welcome entry into DRM-free MP3 sales isn't the only thing going on in the online music space this morning. Apparently MTV and Real have decided to team up against Apple's juggernaut, and will be announcing a merged online store at 11AM ET today. They've even got Verizon and Vodafone signed up for mobile distribution, says the Journal. At this point it's still unclear how this will impact MTV's Urge partnership with Microsoft, and Real's Rhapsody service, but we just hope they're aware of the fact that things are basically looking DRM-free or bust at the moment, 'cause the market really doesn't need too many more also-rans.

Update: We're tuning into the press conference call as we speak, so standby for updates.

• MTV, Real and Verizon are launching a new integrated music service.
• MTV and Real are spinning off a new company called Rhapsody America, partnering with Verizon Wireless. V CAST as mobile platform.
• Rhapsody America will by run by Urge's Michael Bloom. Kicking off marketing at MTV Video Music awards September 9th.
• Verizon promises 8GB of phone music storage this year, and 16GB in 2008. Most likely refers to removable storage via (micro)SDHC, since they mentioned a current 4GB cap, and don't offer any 4GB phones.
  
• Not just songs, the service will also include ringtones, album covers, ringback tones and music videos.
• Urge is sticking around on Windows Media Player 11 until further notice, they're currently in talks with Microsoft.
• Over-the-air downloads likely to be "important part of the service going forward." Emphasis is on being able to access your music collection wherever.
• All of Real's DRM-free efforts (including the Universal DRM-free trial launch today) will be included in Rhapsody America. They think 2008 is when DRM-free will start to go mainstream.
• Will most likely support subscription and purchase models.
• No word on price or when the service is going to be available.