Given Apple's near-total dominance of the portable MP3 player market, there's not always much hope for alternative pairings of MP3 players and online stores. Nevertheless, iriver and Real are giving it a shot by introducing a Rhapsody-specific version of their (quite good) clix gen 2 MP3 player, according to Engadget.

This means that if you buy the player and sign up for Rhapsody - or just buy individual tracks from Real's service - the clix will display the right album art, album reviews, let you rate what you just bought, and even "discover new music" using personalized channels that sync up each time you connect to the service.

This combination gives you a different menu than the usual iTunes/iPod walled garden, given that Rhapsody offers a subscription service. And you can probably bet that (for once) compatibility between the player and the service is guaranteed.

As far as cell phones are concerned, aside from some high-end Windows Mobile handsets, none work with "Rhapsody to Go," though to be fair, Apple's iPhone isn't exactly cheap either.

iriver and Real team up for clix Rhapsody [Engadget]