Rhapsody takes aim at iTunes in bid for iPod owners' money

Published: June 30, 2008, 1:20 pm

Tags: aapl, apple, ipod, itunes, rhapsody

Filed under: Competitive strategy, Apple Inc (AAPL), Marketing and advertisingConceding that Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL)'s iPod will be the digital music player of choice for the foreseeable future, online music downloading service Rhapsody is rolling out a $50 million marketing effort to convince iPod users currently using iTunes to make the switch to Rhapsody. Partner sites include Yahoo, Verizon Wireless and iLike, and the downloads will be in the mp3 format so they can be played on iPods.Rhapsody is a joint venture of Real Networks and Viacom, so it's one of the few online music providers that has the muscle to compete with Apple. But I doubt that they'll be able to. In just a few years, Apple has made itself the biggest seller of music in the country, and sales of music downloads grew about 35% in the most recent quarter, according to the company's 10-Q.iTunes seems to be pretty entrenched, and I just can't see anything compelling coming from Rhapsody that would motivate anyone to

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