I’ve been a fan of Real Networks’ Rhapsody subscription music service since 2001. The problem is, most of the public isn’t.

If the New York Times is to be believed, the service’s subscription base remains stuck at about 750,000, roughly where it was a year or two into service. Today’s announcement that Rhapsody is launching a digital download service with MTV is as much an indictment of subscription services as it is a new product launch.

It’s all the more puzzling because Rhapsody has long offered both a pay-per-download service that gives customers the option of either owning songs outright or "renting" them by the month on their mobile phones and other mobile devices

Why hasn’t Rhapsody’s subscription service — and more broadly, subscription services in general — taken off?

I haven’t seen definitive data about that. But my guess is that there are two primary reasons:

1) People just aren’t used to renting music yet. They understand tangible CDs  or downloads. Not paying for music they never really own. Even though that’s exactly what they do with TV programming and Blockbuster DVDs.

2) The "all you can eat" subscription services like Rhapsody are really "some of what you eat". Few people have computers hooked up to their stereo systems, which is what you need to do to enjoy Rhapsody online subscription services. Rhapsody-to-Go is an interesting concept, but who wants to pay an extra charge on top of their existing subscription music service?

But suppose you were able, for $10 a month extra on your cable service, to access millions of songs instantly and permanently (as long as you keep paying) your iPod, your computer and your phone — and for 25 cents a song you could own it forever? Suppose any of these devices gave you the same, unrestricted access?

That’s where I believe we’re going. It’s going to take the record labels, music publishers, cable companies and hardware makers working together — no easy matter, admittedly — to make that happen. And it will happen when the music industry’s financial situation gets horrifying enough — perhaps a few more years down the line. 

The question is whether Rhapsody can hang on long enough to see it happen.  

See Also

• Rhapsody Runs Hard Just to Stay in Place
• Rhapsody music store to compete with Apple’s iTunes

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Yahoo! Entertainment and Lifestyle General Manager Karin Gilford will explain at Digital Media Summit on Monday how Yahoo! TV grabbed 3 million more unique visitors in April than arch rival AOL Television in April.

Gilford said in a brief chat that Yahoo! climbed to the top of the online television category by focusing on launches of original online shows and working closely with cable networks to promote their programs.

"We’re in a world where everybody has a library of movie trailers, TV shows and full-length movies online," Gilford said.  "How do you rise above the crowd?"

Gilford will give Yahoo’s answer to that question on Monday in a fireside chat with Hollywood Reporter Deputy Editor Andrew Wallenstein.

AOL Video Vice President Peter Kooks will undoubtedly have a different take when he appears on a panel exploring strategies for jumpstarting consumers’ demand for video-on-demand.

Both Yahoo! and AOL undoubtedly benefited from the end of the Hollywood writers’ strike as starved consumers accessed their favorite shows any way they could.

According to comScore Media Matrix, Yahoo TV led the category with 15.6 million visitors, a 38% jump from the previous month, followed by AOL Television with 12.5 million visitors and MySpace TV with 12 million visitors.

But video was also partly behind Yahoo’s fall to Google as the most-visited U.S. website in April. Helped by YouTube, Google Sites edged Yahoo Sites for the first time, 141.1 million visitors to 140.6 million visitors, comScore said.

comScore Vice President Leslie Darling will lead of Digital Media Summit on Monday with new findings about reaching the online video 3.0 audience.

See Also

• Digital Media Summit

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