You can also search using an artist's name or, in the advanced search, by keyword, artist, album, or track. RealOne lets you browse for artists alphabetically or by genre. For example, as of this writing, RealOne MusicPass offered 80 solo songs by Tom Waits, but all were from older records-the newest of the seven was 1980's "Heartattack and Vine." Still, we often couldn't find new content. Like Pressplay and Music Now, RealOne MusicPass rarely offered all of the songs on a given album. RealOne MusicPass returned songs from three of the artists, which was par for the course Pressplay won with five, while BurnItFirst, offering a limited selection of Christian music, scored a perfect goose egg. To compare the quality and depth of RealOne MusicPass's catalog with other similar services, we searched for a list of 14 popular and obscure artists. Sorry, Mac users, there's still no version for you. As of this writing, it boasts of having 75,000 songs in its catalog, which puts it about equal with Pressplay but way behind eMusic and Rhapsody. Real sells the RealOne MusicPass package separately from RealOne's other premium content. Instead, Real licensed the services (including tunes from BMG, EMI, Warner, and Zomba) of MusicNet, repackaged them, and included them as a paid service with the RealOne Player (which is a hybrid video player, jukebox, online radio tuner, disc burner, and Web browser). RealOne MusicPass, despite its name, is not RealNetworks' invention. We love the commercial-free radio stations, but we don't appreciate downloads that can't be burned to CD or transferred to a portable player. It was one of the first for-pay music services online, and it's already showing its age.
But RealOne MusicPass, bundled with the RealOne Player, needs a features upgrade-and fast.
For a monthly subscription fee (starting at $9.95), you can download up to 100 songs per month from the service, called RealOne MusicPass, and you can stream 100 more.
For better or for worse, Real now offers a for-pay alternative. Having a hard time finding free music downloads? If the RIAA has its way with Napster and its ilk, you're out of luck. We have updated our reviews to reflect the name change. RealOne Music has changed its name to RealOne MusicPass, but its features currently remain the same.
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