Yahoo, RealNetworks Offer New Alternatives To Apple iTunes Model
In the quest to break Apple Computer's grip on the legal online music market, the best approach has seemed to be to try an entirely different model. Instead of selling individual songs outright for 99 cents each, as Apple does, some other companies are renting songs to users who pay a monthly subscription fee.
But the subscription services have had trouble gaining any real traction. So two big players, Yahoo and RealNetworks, are taking interesting steps to change the game. Yahoo has introduced a new service that's priced at just a third of what competing rental services charge, and Real is offering some music free to entice new customers.
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As a music-subscription service, Yahoo's Music Unlimited is preferable to Napster or Rhapsody, Walt says, adding that it doesn't undercut Apple since it's a different business model.
I've been testing these two new services, and of the two, I strongly prefer the new Yahoo Music Unlimited to Real's revamped Rhapsody service. Yahoo's offering is bolder, and it works much better. In fact, even though it is still in a beta, or test, phase, I regard Yahoo Music as the new champ among subscription services. Whether it can dislodge Apple is another matter.
The upside of the subscription model is that customers can fill their computers and portable music players with vast quantities of songs for much less money than it would cost at Apple's online iTunes store.
But there are big downsides to the rental model. First, all the songs you ever downloaded will die and become unplayable if you stop paying your monthly subscription anytime in the future. Second, the subscription fees -- $15 a month currently -- are pretty stiff, especially for younger users. Third, the rental services are far more complicated than iTunes, because they sell several categories of songs, with different rules for using them, and offer multiple subscription plans with different privileges.
Finally, the songs you rent from the subscription sites won't play on the world's favorite and best portable music players: Apple's iPod models. The rental sites are all built on underlying Microsoft software that doesn't work on iPods.
Yahoo Music Unlimited is accessed through a new, free, music jukebox program called Yahoo Music Engine. You can get a whole year of the service, including the right to download rented songs to a portable player, for an annual payment of $60. That's just a third of what competing services typically charge. If you prefer to pay monthly rather than annually, it costs $6.99 a month, which is still less than half of the typical $15 monthly fee.
In my tests, I found the Yahoo service simple and easy to use. Signing up with my credit card was a snap, as was downloading and installing the program. If you are a subscriber, you can buy nonexpiring songs outright for just 79 cents on top of your monthly or annual fee.
The software itself is straightforward. Unlike many other iTunes competitors, the Yahoo program doesn't require you to switch to a different screen to see the progress of song downloads. As in iTunes, a progress bar is visible no matter what's going on in the main window.
I downloaded a bunch of rental songs, and transferred them to a compatible music player, the iRiver H10. The Yahoo software immediately recognized the player. The first transfer attempt stalled, so I had to quit the program and restart. But then the transfer went flawlessly. The company promises to fix that problem before the software is final.
Yahoo has other nice touches. It lets you easily personalize the service, so you mainly see music and artists that match your tastes. And if you use Yahoo's instant-messaging service, you can actually see, and play, the songs on a friend's Yahoo Music account. If you like them, you can download your own copies instantly. I tested this, discovered an artist named Shuggie Otis in someone else's collection, and snagged some of Shuggie's tunes for myself.
Unlike the Yahoo offering, Real's new Rhapsody service and player aren't in the test stage. But they gave me far more trouble than Yahoo did. And Real's prices are much higher, at $180 a year, compared with Yahoo's $60. Buying non-expiring downloads costs 89 cents, versus 79 cents from Yahoo.
Rhapsody does have one major new feature. It gives nonsubscribers 25 free "streams" of music a month, which is a novelty in the business.
But the new Rhapsody jukebox program, needed to access the service, just wouldn't work properly in my tests. On an HP Pavilion, it crashed and froze so often that it was unusable. So I installed a fresh copy on a second machine, an IBM laptop.
This time it ran OK, but I had trouble transferring music to the iRiver H10 portable player. It refused to transfer seven of the 20 songs I tried to move over, giving me two different error messages.
A big part of the transfer problem probably lies at the feet of Microsoft, whose digital-rights software has proved clunky in my tests in the past. But Yahoo uses the same Microsoft software underneath the covers, and had no trouble with it at all.
So if you have a spare $60 this year, you want to try renting music, and you don't have an iPod, Yahoo is the way to go. If you love your iPod and want to collect music whose longevity doesn't depend on paying a subscription fee years into the future, stick with Apple.
雅虎、Real挑战ITunes霸主地位
要想打破苹果电脑(Apple Computer)对正版网上音乐市场的控制权，最好的办法恐怕就是引入一种全新的经营模式。一些公司正在朝著这个方向做一些尝试，它们将歌曲的使用权租赁给支付月费的订户，这种经营方式与苹果电脑以每首0.99美元的价格向消费者出售歌曲的使用权截然不同。
但这种向订户租赁歌曲使用权的经营模式并没有受到市场的踊跃追捧。于是，业内的两大巨头雅虎(Yahoo)和RealNetworks想到了走低价路线来改变这种不利的局面。雅虎新推出的在线音乐服务的收费仅是业内平均水平的三分之一，而Real为了吸引新客户则走得更远：免费提供一些歌曲的使用权。
我一直在试用这两种刚面市不久的服务。我个人认为Yahoo Music Unlimited比Real的Rhapsody要好得多。Yahoo Music Unlimited的优惠幅度更大，效果也要显著得多。尽管仍然处于试用阶段，但我认为Yahoo Music是新推出的订户服务中的佼佼者。不过，至于它能否撼动苹果电脑的统治地位，这就不好说了。
对于那种向订户租赁歌曲使用权的经营模式，其优势在于消费者可以把大量的歌曲下载到他们的电脑和便携式音乐播放器中播放，而且花费要比订购苹果电脑网上商店iTunes的服务少得多。
但这种租赁模式也存在著明显的不足。首先，如果在将来的某个时候停止支付月使用费，你之前下载的所有歌曲就会无法使用。另外，目前每月15美元的收费还是够贵的，对于那些比较年轻的用户来说尤为如此。还有，这些租赁服务使用起来比iTunes要复杂得多。例如，它们把出租的歌曲分为不同的种类，每类歌曲在使用时存在著不同的限制；而且，它们还根据对用户权限作不同的设定提供了多种收费方式。
此外，这些歌曲无法在世界上最受欢迎、品质最佳的便携式播放器──苹果电脑的iPod上面播放。这些歌曲租赁网站都是用微软(Microsoft)的软件建设的，因此不支持iPods。
用户可以通过一个名为Yahoo Music Engine的免费音乐播放软件进入Yahoo Music Unlimited。用户可以订购收费为60美元的一年期服务，这项服务授权用户可以把出租的歌曲下载到便携式播放器中。这个费用仅相当于业内收费平均水平的三分之一。如果选择每月支付，收费为6.99美元，比业内15美元的月租金要便宜一半还多。
在测试过程中，我发现雅虎的租赁服务简便快捷、比较容易上手。用信用卡注册，下载并安装程序都在一瞬间完成。你可以在支付月费或者年费的基础上以每首0.79美元的价格拥有一首歌曲的永久使用权，这样就可以免除歌曲使用权到期后不能播放的烦恼。
这款软件本身也很直观。与iTunes的其他竞争对手不同的是，使用雅虎的程序，你不必切换到另一个窗口检查歌曲的下载进度，它和iTunes一样，无论你的主窗口处于什么状态，都能看到一个进度栏。
我下载了一些歌曲，然后把它们传送到iRiver H10音乐播放器里面。雅虎的软件立刻认出了这款播放器，但第一次传输努力失败了，我不得不退出这个程序，然后重新启动程序。之后的传输非常顺利。雅虎承诺在发布正式版本之前会解决这个问题。
雅虎的软件还有一些不错的功能。它可以让你轻松进行个性化设置，这样你看到的就都是合你口味的音乐和艺术家。如果你使用雅虎即时聊天工具，你可以看到你朋友Yahoo Music帐户中的音乐，并播放它们。如果你喜欢它们，你可以立即下载到自己的电脑中。我测试了一下这个功能，从一个朋友的收藏中找到了艺人Shuggie Otis，并把他的一些音乐下载到我自己的电脑中。
Real的新版Rhapsody服务和播放器已经正式发布，但它们实在难以同雅虎的服务相媲美。首先，Real收取的租金年费为180美元，而雅虎的租金只有60美元。下载无限期使用权的歌曲需支付每首0.89美元的费用，而雅虎的收费只有0.79美元。
不过，Rhapsody确实提供了一个非常重要的新功能，那就是每月向非订户提供25首免费收听的歌曲。这在业界算是一个创举。
但Rhapsody的播放程序在我的测试中却差强人意。在惠普(HP) Pavilion电脑上，该程序时常没有反应。于是，我在IBM的笔记本上重新安装了一遍这个软件。
这次它的表现还算可以，但我在把音乐传送至iRiver H10播放器时遇到了麻烦。我试图把20首歌曲导入至iRiver H10，其中有7首传输失败，并弹出了两个不同的出错对话框。
问题很可能出在微软的软件身上，我在过去的测试中就发现微软的数字版权软件存在著缺陷。但令人奇怪的是雅虎用的也是微软的数字版权软件，却一点问题都没有。
因此，你今年如果有60美元的零花钱，想尝试一下音乐租赁下载服务，而且你用的不是iPod，那么雅虎的服务或许是你的最佳选择。但是，如果你对iPod情有独锺，而且也不想受到使用权过期这个问题的困扰，那么还是继续选择苹果电脑吧。
