New York - RightsFlow, a provider of licensing and royalty services, said on Tuesday that it has signed a deal to provide bulk mechanical licensing, and administration and reporting support for the Rhapsody digital music service. The deal covers publishing rights for Rhapsody in the U.S. read more

Mountain View, Calif. - Google (NASD: GOOG) announced on Wednesday the launch of a new music-focused search feature, "OneBox," which adds streaming songs via Lala and MySpace's (NYSE: NWS) iLike, along with links to an artist's website. Along with Lala and iLike, Google will also include links to digital music services Pandora, imeem and Rhapsody (NASD: RNWK). The feature will in many cases allow users to listen to the full song they are searching for right there from the search results page; licensing issues mean that some songs will only feature 30-second samples, and that subsequent searches after a song is streamed in full once will only provide a 30-second sample.read more

Seattle - RealNetworks (NASD: RNWK) has seen more than 500,000 downloads of its Rhapsody streaming music application for Apple's (NASD: AAPL) iPhone and iPod touch, which requires that users pay a $14.95 per month subscription fee for unlimited streaming, All Things D reported. "Although we are pleased to see excitement and interest in the Rhapsody iPhone app, it is too early to tell how this will translate into subscriber numbers since we suspect many of the people who downloaded the app are current subscribers already or are trying Rhapsody for the first time with the seven-day free trial," spokesman Bill Hankes told All Things D. read more

Seattle - Apple (NASD: AAPL) has approved a Rhapsody streaming music iPhone application submitted by RealNetworks (NASD: RNWK) for distribution in the App Store. The free application is available only as a seven-day trial to users who are not also subscribed to Rhapsody's $15-per-month subscription plan for portable devices. The service provides access to Rhapsody's library of over 8 million songs, and offers links to purchase tracks from the iTunes Store. The company said it plans to release a Rhapsody application for Android yet this year, and is exploring opportunities on Windows Mobile and Palm Pre. read more

Seattle - RealNetworks (NASD: RNWK) and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) MTV announced on Monday that their Rhapsody music service joint venture will exclusively preview Jay-Z's new album, "The Blueprint 3," for two weeks prior to its official release on Sept. 11. The preview stream will also be available from MTV's The Leak. Rhapsody will also be the exclusive retailer of the album from Sept. 8-10, and will host two exclusive bonus tracks read more