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RealNetworks' GoldPass content subscription service officially became RealOne on Tuesday, bringing with it added content, a new media player, and the much ballyhooed MusicNet digital music subscription service.

RealOne, which is GoldPass "supercharged and under a different name," as the service's Vice President of Music Services and Programming Erik Flannigan said Monday, boasts content from 20 new content and service providers, including ABCNEWS.com, CNN (Cable News Network), FOX Sports.com, and The Wall Street Journal.

It's also based on RealNetworks' new RealOne Player, which combines the company's RealPlayer and RealJukebox products with a media browser.

But perhaps the most talked-about feature of the reborn service is the inclusion of the long-awaited digital music subscription service MusicNet. Formed by RealNetworks, AOL Time Warner, Bertelsmann, and EMI Group, MusicNet is one of a host of new pay-to-play online music services to arrive in the wake of Napster.

Pay to Play

RealOne is charging subscribers $9.95 a month for its service, and for an additional $9.95 a month users can sign up for MusicNet and receive 100 downloads and 100 music streams, Flannigan says. Additionally, consumers can subscribe to RealOne Gold for $19.95, which combines both services, he says. Either way, the music downloads only run on a 30-day license, however, and cannot be moved to MP3 players or burned to CDs.

With all the free music content still available on the Internet, Flannigan says that the service caters to people who got left on the sidelines of the digital music download revolution and want easy access to music from a constant provider.

"I don't think our initial audience will be a hardcore Audiogalaxy member who has more time than money," says Flannigan, referring to the popular music download service offered by Audiogalaxy.

And although MusicNet doesn't allow users to move their downloaded content to MP3 players, Flannigan notes that the MP3 player market is still small and that the service will evolve as users come to demand more from it.

"Portability is not an 'if' experience, it's a 'when' experience," says Flannigan.

Online Radio

Besides downloads, the MusicNet service also offers 48 channels of commercial-free radio. RealNetworks' new RealOne Player will show users contextual information for songs that play on the radio channels, such as album covers and artist information, provided the songs are also in the music service's catalog.

The RealOne Player is set to be the company's standard player and is now the default media player download on the company's site, Flannigan says.

While RealNetworks is busy beefing up its existing content services with GoldPass's evolution into RealOne, many other Internet companies are striving to get into the pay-for-content business model, especially on the music front. Listen.com, for instance, launched its new music subscription service just Monday, with the hopes of securing major-label content in the near future.

RealNetworks believes that it has an advantage over its competitors, however, not only in that it's offering a music service that already boasts major label content, but also because it already counts on some 400,000 users who subscribe to GoldPass.

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