RealNetworks Pushes Music With BackWeb

It was easy to see where RealNetworks was going after its deal with BackWeb (http://www.backweb.com): push delivery of music.

On Friday, RealNetworks (http://www.real.com) announced it had launched "Real.com Music Delivery", a way to deliver music to RealJukebox users.

RealNetworks integrated BackWeb's push technology into RealJukebox so users can get music delivery to them, rather than going out and getting it themselves.

Users select 7 different music categories from different genres and the service will later send them up to 8 new CD quality songs.

Downloads come through the background while consumers are surfing.

"Real.com Music Delivery provides yet another powerful vehicle for ourmany content partners to promote, merchandise and deliver great musicprogramming," said Mark Hall, vice president, Media Publishing Division,RealNetworks. "And, it enables them to connect with the more than35 million RealJukebox users who are interested in having fresh, high qualitymusic automatically delivered directly every day."

Push has been a much maligned technology that fizzled a few years ago. This is the latest attempt to revive it.