RCN starts Net music service

RCN Corp., which provides cable television and telecommunications services in parts of Boston and 15 suburbs, yesterday launched a music-over-the-Internet service that offers unlimited computer-based access to 700,000 songs for $8 a month with free song downloads.

In deploying the new service with Synacor Inc. of Buffalo, N.Y., RCN is pulling the plug on its two-year-old partnership with Real Networks Inc.'s Rhapsody unit, which charges $2 a month more and 79 cents per song for downloading songs for storage and playback on a computer.

Real, located in Seattle, also has sales relationships with Comcast Corp. and other cable companies; the service requires subscribers to open their own Rhapsody account charged to a credit card.

In contrast, RCN broadband Internet subscribers choosing the ''RCN Interaction" music service -- provided by Synacor's Portelus system using MusicNet's library of songs, but marketed under RCN's brand -- will have the cost added directly to their monthly RCN bill. RCN will offer a $1 one-month trial for the ser-vice.

The move by RCN, which is headquartered in Princeton, N.J., comes as Internet companies and music labels continue to search for ways to market paid, legal music downloads in the face of record labels suing illegal file-swappers and their Net service providers. RCN's gambit also comes as the company, five weeks after making a long-expected Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing to escape crushing network-construction debts, has been trying to stress that it remains a viable, innovative alternative to giants like Comcast.

''Music is the one form of digital content that consumers have shown they will pay for online, outside of adult pornography," said Bruce Leichtman, principal analyst with Leichtman Research Group in Durham, N.H., which follows the broadband Net sector. ''The next question is: How do you do it and how do you deliver it? Paid digital content is still in its infancy, and it's still evolving."

As of April, Real reported attracting over 450,000 paying subscribers for its Rhapsody and RealNow services, having added 100,000 customers in each of the prior two quarters. Subscribers can ''burn" some songs on compact discs to play on stereos, but the service is mainly designed for people who want to listen to personalized online playlists of songs as they sit at or near their home or office computer. Real's subscriber base represents less than 2 percent of the 28 million US households with broadband Net service.

Apple Computer Inc., which has sold more than 2 million of its portable iPod music players, estimated yesterday that iPod owners have bought more than 97 million songs to date for a typical price of 99 cents each.

Elad Nafshi, RCN's director of Internet and phone product management, said being able to market and bill the music service as an RCN offering was a key factor in the company's move from Real to Synacor.

''We were not able to get that in Rhapsody," Nafshi said. ''We're really trying to sell an integrated product where you choose premium features" in the same way as adding cable TV or phone extras, he added.

Synacor also helps RCN offer a service in which broadband Net subscribers rent spam, virus, and security software for $2 to $6 a month, also added straight to their broadband bill. RCN is preparing to roll out a online video-game rental service as well.

Susan Kevorkian, a digital music research analyst with International Data Corp., said the RCN offer is ''very competitive on price, and you only have to deal with one bill instead of two."

IDC forecasts that the number of US residents using various legal paid music downloading services -- including pay-per-song services like iTunes and monthly subscription services -- will jump to 31.4 million in 2008 from 3.7 million last year.

RCN is offering the music service across its national service territory, which includes over 200,000 subscribers in markets in metropolitan New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In Massachusetts, RCN serves the Boston communities of Allston, Brighton, Hyde Park, Roslindale, and West Roxbury; and Arlington, Brookline, Burlington, Dedham, Framingham, Lexington, Natick, Needham, Newton, Somerville, Stoneham, Wakefield, Waltham, Watertown, and Woburn.

Peter J. Howe can be reached at howe@globe.com.