SanDisk and RealNetworks team for real music

by Stan Beer

Tuesday, 19 September 2006

Flash memory turned portable music player maker SanDisk has teamed up with media software company RealNetworks to offer new SanDisk players preloaded with music.

Under the agreement, the new SanDisk Sansa e200 series of MP3 players, with a range of 2G to 8G of flash RAM, will be sold pre-loaded with with 32 hours of music from the RealNetworks Rhapsody subscription service.

RealNetworks has deals with most of the major music companies.

Subscribers to the RealNetworks service will be able change the pre-loaded music every month for US$14.99 to music of their choice and also allow the service to make choices for them based on their historical preferences.

The RealNetworks service is compatible with the Microsoft PlaysForSure DRM and, thus, is not be compatible with Apple's iPod and will not be compatible with Microsoft's upcoming Zune player.

The arrival of Zune with the news that it will not be compatible with Microsoft's own PlaysForSure DRM means that the music downloads and portable music player market, threatens to become fragmented into a three-way battle between Apple, Microsoft and the rest.

Complicating matters further is a growing movement which demands the removal of DRM copying restrictions on legally downloaded music.{moscomment}

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