The High Cost of Selling Cheap Music Services

After writing about how Napster renegotiated its deals with record labels to offer its music subscription service at a lower price, I called RealNetworks (RNWK), which offers the Rhapsody service, to see if its executives were excited about cutting similar deals that would allow it to offer its own $5-a-month music service. For years, after all, people trying to popularize music subscriptions–which allow you to listen to anything you want for a monthly fee–have been telling me the concept is great but the price the record labels want is too high.

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This is a section of the AllThingsD Web site featuring posts that have been curated from around the Web: pieces we’ve read, discussions we’ve followed, stuff we like. Five posts are included here each weekday, but only the headline and the first two sentences. We link to the original site for the rest. The section is explicitly labeled, so it’s clear that content comes “from other Web sites.”

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