THE CUTTING EDGE/TECHNOLOGY NEWS : CheckOut.com, RealNetworks Partner in Deal

CheckOut.com, a Web site for learning about and buying music, games and movies, scored a partnership deal with RealNetworks, the leading technology provider for streaming music and video images over the Internet, the companies announced today.

CheckOut.com will pay Seattle-based RealNetworks $7 million annually to be the default retail link for users of RealJukeBox, a tool for finding, downloading and recording music from the Web or from CDs.

The “beta,” or test version of the product, has been downloaded by about 10 million people; the final version will become available today at https://www.realnetworks.com.

CheckOut.com’s biographical information on musical artists, links to the artists’ Web sites and online chat “takes a two-dimensional experience and makes it three-dimensional,” and will stimulate casual browsers to become music buyers, predicted Richard Wolpert, CheckOut.com’s acting chief executive.

Wolpert, former president of Disney Online, and grocery magnate Ron Burkle, partners in the Los Angeles-based Yucaipa investment company, joined Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz to launch Los Angeles-based CheckOut.com in August.

Analysts called the move sensible for both companies, particularly for CheckOut.com.

“RealNetworks’ technologies are becoming the de facto standard for viewing streaming media content over the Internet,” said Greg Vogel of Bank of America Securities in San Francisco.

But Ken Cassar, an analyst with Jupiter Communications in New York, cautioned that many people download technologies such as JukeBox, known as “plug-ins,” but rarely use them, so the actual benefit of being the default retail link may be less than the companies suggest.