Coming just a day after Apple’s landmark of 10 million iTunes sold, RealNetworks have announced that they are serving up to 500,000 songs per day on their Rhapsody service.
Relaunched in May 2003, Rhapsody has a different business model to iTunes – for $9.95 per month, a subscriber can choose as much as they want from the 25,000 albums available on the service. 265,000 of the tracks are available for burning onto CD, at an additional cost of 79c each – the lowest in the market. Only subscribers to the service are able to burn tracks.
The Rhapsody service has music from all five major companies, and more than 175 labels – and features exclusives such as the Rolling Stones.
In a new move, customers will be able to sign up for a free 14 day trial in Best Buy stores across the US – this should increase the Rhapsody profile as well as increasing “footfall” in the stores, where users may come in to sign up for the service, but buy something else during their visit.