Legal music downloads services should become the future of the music industry, so they're worth keeping an eye on for us burners. As maybe one day they will offer us services that beat file sharing networks for a reasonable price. Listen.com which is mainly into streaming music has now received a very welcome investment from Real Networks, known from the Real Player and Real media files.
Listen.com struggled trough the last two years and decimated its staff and needed the money. In return the service will use Real media for serving music to its costumers. Real Networks is also shareholder of Musicnet, that also offer legal music downloads, but with a CD burn option.
"Listen was on the market for financial help," said P.J. McNealy, research director at GartnerG2, a division of the Gartner research firm. "Real's investment was opportunistic. But it benefits both companies." |
In its early days, Listen.com also received investments from all five of the major music labels, but the sum amounted to less than 2 percent of the company's total financing, executives said.
"This investment demonstrates RealNetworks' commitment to bringing our advanced technology to consumers, and signifies our belief in the promise of a legitimate market for digital music," Richard Wolpert, executive strategic advisor at RealNetworks, said in a statement.
Unfortunately the Real Player, the software that is needed to play the streams is known for its annoying installation system, that installs a lot of unneeded extra's and tries to take over system settings if you're not very carefull.
A better version of the software is available, but must be purchased. We will have to see if Listen.com will benefit from this service. Read the entire story here.
Source: News.com
