What's Wrong With Digital Music Stores?

RealNetworks went all Crazy Larry on us recently, kicking off a limited-time promotion in which it sold tracks for the insane price of 49 cents per song at its Real Player Music Store. Competitors hover at 88 to 99 cents per tune. Why the fire sale? Real's trying to drum up sales at its music store, and consequently help promote its Harmony software, which lets you play tracks from the store on portable players using a number of different digital rights management schemes.

That pricing won't last, of course, because Real's basically selling tracks at a loss. I'll be sad to see it go. Whatever your opinion of Real, you have to agree that this deal (high-quality, 192-kilobits-per-second AAC files; $5 albums; broad compatibility) looks much more like the type of music store we want than anything else out there. Digital music has come a long way in the past year, but it still has light years to go. This month I'm discussing some of the problems that need to be addressed.

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