The Law of Diminishing Returns

I joined up with Real Player's SuperPass thingee a few years back. I honestly don't remember why. It was around fifteen bucks. It gave me access to various stuff from a variety of entertainment sources. I got Big Brother's 24 hour live telecast one year, for example. It was o.k., although I don't watch Big Brother. I got some video from NASCAR.com that let me see parts of a few races I missed. That was nice. Still, it was all coincidental and any value I got from the service had nothing to do with why I signed up. So I tried to cancel once. They asked me why. I told them I just didn't use it. They gave me two free months. At the end of the two months I tried to cancel. They offered to knock the price down to $9.95. I caved. Didn't matter that I never used it. I was getting a deal! (It's a healthy tip that I've used several times in the past few years. You'd be surprised how good a deal you can get if you tell people you want to cancel their service. And if you get no deal, you can always sign up again.)

So then I found out that I got two free music downloads ((my choice) and a free game download (their choice) every month, as part of the service. That made it more attractive, but I still found I couldn't justify paying for a service I almost never used. So I tried to cancel again. They offered to knock the price down to $6.95. I caved. And a month later, I'm just about ready to try to ditch it again, because I don't use the service, don't have room to download games I don't really want, and never seem to remember to download my two songsd a month.

That brings us to tonight. Tonight, Real networks informs me that I now get 10 music downloads a month with no additional charge. Any ten songs in the entire Real Music Store catalog. Every month.

I'm paying $6.95 a month to receive $10.00 worth of music downloads, plus whatever service I can find from the SuperPass. I'll take it. Yes sir. That's the kind of deal I can get behind.