According to company reps, the strategy is designed to turbocharge the digital music industry in three ways, by:

° Accelerating the move away from proprietary Digital Rights Formats by making music from all major labels available in the DRM-free and interoperable MP3 format;

° Empowering music fans to conveniently stream full-length songs, and buy MP3s, anywhere they want including the most popular music sites and social networks on the Web;

° Integrating digital music directly with mobile phones through a deep partnership between Rhapsody and Verizon Wireless.

"Until now, legal digital music has suffered from severe limitations on where consumers could buy it and how they could use it," says Rob Glaser, chairman and CEO of RealNetworks. "'Music Without Limits,' fixes those problems and will make digital music easier and more valuable for consumers."

Beginning today, consumers can purchase MP3 music from Rhapsody and its partners that is free of digital rights management (DRM) software that restricts how and where people can play their music. Any song or album purchased at www.rhapsody.com/mp3 can be played on any MP3 player.
Visitors to the Rhapsody MP3 Store can listen to full-length songs instead of the 30-second samples found on other sites. And purchased tracks and albums can be downloaded into Rhapsody, RealPlayer or iTunes.

The Rhapsody MP3 catalogue will include more than five million songs from all four major music labels -- Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group, and EMI -- and a number of independent labels. Glaser says the Rhapsody MP3 Store places a strong emphasis on the digital album with merchandising centers for "new album releases," "old favorites," and "who's on tour." Most albums will sell for US$9.99 and tracks for $.99.

Beginning in the weeks ahead, consumers will be able to enjoy full-song playback (up to 25 songs per month per person) whether they are on Yahoo! Music or MTV.com, CMT.com or VH1.com, and they will have the ability to seamlessly go from playing a song on those sites to purchasing a DRM-free version of that music, says Courtney Holt, executive vice president of digital music and media for MTV Networks' Music Group.

Rhapsody and iLike, a social music discovery service, have created a new model that will monetize music consumption on the top social networks for labels and artists. To give iLike's enormous audience a taste of the popular Rhapsody Unlimited subscription service, Rhapsody will power free, full-song playback across iLike.com and iLike's leading music applications on r social platforms, including Facebook, MySpace, hi5, Orkut, and Bebo.

Full-song streaming will be available for free to iLike users until a monthly threshold of 25 plays is reached, at which time iLike users can choose to sign up for a Rhapsody account or enjoy 30 second song samples until the end of the month. Artists and labels will be paid royalties each time their music is played via Rhapsody's existing agreements.

Finally, Rhapsody and Verizon Wireless have announced the availability of a joint service, V CAST Music with Rhapsody, that gives customers unlimited access to music on a growing number of V CAST enabled mobile handsets that support subscriptions.

Prior to the initiative, Rhapsody had focused on a subscription service, allowing unlimited song streaming for $13 to $15 a month, rather than selling downloads. But Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith told [url=http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080630/wr_nm/rhapsody_dc]Reuters[/url] that the fact the service has not been compatible with the iPod had limited Rhapsody's reach.

"We're no longer competing with the iPod," Smith said. "We're embracing it."

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