If it was any company other than Real I might care. But since I have had to deal with years of their crappy software and downloading system, at this point I'd be happy to see them lose a lawsuit. I think that this music store of theirs is probably going to be a last ditch effort to save the company. IIRC Quicktime overtook Real media recently as the number 2 internet media, behind WM, and my guess is that Real will continue to become less and less relevent until they simply ceast to exist.

Plus the fact remains that Apple doesn't make any money off of their online store. So unless Real has worked out some kind of better deal wit h the record companies, I don't see the financial benefit from running one, other than the proliferation of a proprietary media format.

The one interesting idea behind Real's store seemed to be that you downloaded the music in their format, and then their software would convert it to any other format on the fly. Pretty cool concept in theory, but much better would be a new open music standard with broad support.

Little chance of that I'd say.