RealRhapsody: Corporations that don't pay attention

Posted by kevin Fri, 10 Jun 2005 17:05:54 GMT

RealRhapsody is something of an interesting case to me. I’ve been using it for a good year now, and looking at previous reviews, it’s obvious that their design hasn’t been updated in 3 years.

They have a great selection, but the user interface was written by a programmer who hadn’t seen the light of day in years. It’s not terrible, it’s just not usable. Which should be important.

I’m more and more frustrated when I see things like this, that seem like an obvious ‘free money’ situation to the business eye. Given their popularity among the top-something subscription music services, staying ‘cool’ and being usable need to be top priorities, or they’ll fall by the wayside.

I fail to see how a company that sells and makes several million (or hundred million, whatever) can’t even do a good enough job to keep their lead. Is anyone being creative in corporate America?

I’m also frustrated by the lack of releases for other systems besides windows. Given that NONE of the subscription services work on mac, whichever one releases for mac will enjoy fairly good ‘forced’ subscription numbers. It couldn’t take them more than a week or two (which becomes a month with testing) to port it to another system. It’s written mostly in flash, for crying out loud (I think). Shoddy.

Technorati Tags: music