Real worming their way into Apple

This article talks about it in detail, but RealNetworks is releasing a software plug-in that will allow songs downloaded from Real’s online music service to be played on the iPod. This isn’t with Apple’s permission either. This will probably cause Steve Jobs to get a little pissed, and I’m sure we’ll see little games of cat and mouse with future software updates, but in all I think it’s a good thing.

That’s really hard for me to say too. I HATE Real with a passion, but I hate DRM and locking people into one player even more. I feel that the industry should settle on one downloadable format that everyone can agree on. Then I would be able to download a song of off Napster, or MusicMatch or Real and then be able to play it on any player that I wanted to. This crap of Apple ITMS songs only playing on iPods, and Napster songs only playing on Napster devices needs to stop. But marketing bastards (Ed Brill withstanding) will never let it stop. And that’s a shame. Boycott DRM, or at least download DRM you can crack, like Apple’s FairPlay. 🙂 Thank you HYMN.