dvrbulletin.com

Tivo to Deliver Rhapsody Music

Tivo announced on Tuesday that it was partnering with RealNetworks to deliver its Rhapsody music service available to TiVos.

TiVo users will be able to search Rhapsody’s 4 million-song catalog and use the “Thumbs Up” and “Thumbs Down” buttons to rate the music.

Tivo already has free music available, via Live365, but these are live streams from existing Internet music channels. Many channels are indepedent webcasters or local radio stations streaming online. And the quality of the streams aren’t the best. Many stream as low as 56Kbps, which isn’t a great stereo experience, especially if you have a home theater in your living room.

Also users of Tivo via Live365 can’t rate music, or search for their favorite tunes. Rhapsody is essentially a competitor to the much more successful iTunes, so this is a great win for Rhapsody to extend their brand reach into the living room.

The Rhapsody service will cost $12.99 for TiVo subscribers. Which begs the questions. How many users will sign up for this? Are TiVo users hungry to access premium music from their Tivos? Or will they continue to use their iPods or iTunes. Or, gasp, even their steroes?

The one downside with Rhapsody is the depth of their music collection. iTunes has lots of top tier music from popular artists. According to Wikipedia, iTunes has over 6 million songs available for purchase. Rhapsody is a catch-up music service with 4 million.

In any event, I’m definitely interested to see how many subscribers Tivo and Rhapsody get. Plus, I’ll order the service as soon as possible and write up my review here.

Posted in Tivo