On the contrary, Real does sell WMA format tracks “outright” on RealPlayer Music Store. (There is no effective difference between transcoding from RealAudio/HelixDRM to WMA/WMDSRM and encoding directly to WMA/WMDRM, other than that doing the latter is a waste of effort and results in an inferior sounding file. In both cases you are still using the WMA codec and packaging it in WMDRM.) MSFT allows anyone to license, at no cost, its WMDRM packaging software. Anyone can obtain the license from MSFT’s website. It does have some T&C’s, of course, but nothing that would prevent someone like Real from launching a service based on the technology, which of course is precisely what MSFT likes to see happen.

I don’t know what Real is going to announce next week either, but it would not surprise me at all that it’s a portable subscription service based on WMA and WMDRM. First of all, it is highly possible (though I don’t know for sure) that Rhapsody uses neither RealAudio nor HelixDRM. Real keeps this quiet, and remember that Rhapsody existed before Real acquired it from Listen.com. Secondly, Real is in the process of abandoning its server technology – they have already made much of it available under open source license. Real is a service provider – that’s where their business is headed. Just as Sun now offers PCs with Intel chips that can run Windows, I believe that Real is going to give up its platform technology and throw its lot in with MSFT.