Users of Rhapsody know it as a subscription service. You're limited to listening on your computer or on an increasing number of devices around the home—the best by far being the Sonos Music System. But Rhapsody is now Real's flagship player, subscription service and a la carte music store rolled in one. If you don't subscribe, you can still buy individual tunes or albums. The tracks can be played on most MP3 players, even, Real insists, iPods. (Due to various political and technological reasons, however, iPod compatibility can be iffy.)

Real has done something nice for the freeloaders: pay nothing, and you can still listen to up to 25 songs for free each month. The idea is that, while shopping, you can determine that you really like or really hate an album before you buy it, rather than relying on the gut feelings you get from the standard 30-second snippet.

Stepping up from the free application, you get the basic Rhapsody subscription service for $10 a month. Now you have two music options, downloading songs to listen to as long as you subscribe, or buying songs outright. Real offers incentives to buy—89 cents instead of the standard 99 cents per song, and albums for $8.99, a dollar off. You can now also manage music you've ripped from CDs (or downloaded from elsewhere) alongside your Rhapsody content, meaning everything you want to listen to is in one place.

The big non-surprise was Real's introduction of Rhapsody To Go for $15 per month. This is similar to Napster To Go, a plan the industry calls "portable subscription content." Songs you download from this service can be listened to on the computer, streamed around the house and, now finally, loaded onto certain portable players to take anywhere. For the moment, Real says it only supports the Creative Zen Micro and the iRiver H10, but if you already own a Dell Pocket DJ or one of iRiver's H300 series players, my educated guess is that they could work, too.

Do these full-meal-deal services have what it takes to knock Apple's iTunes off of the mountain? Maybe not yet. But they’re getting closer. If you can find it in you to switch from an iPod Mini to a Creative Zen Micro—and can muster a little patience for the early software that’s not as easy to use as iTunes—you might find something you like.