RealNetworks seeks musical alliance with Apple...

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Comments

  • Reply 21 of 33
    blablablabla Posts: 185member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Cuilla

    If they succeed (and so far they are with regard to digital downloadable music). They can play the same role that Microsoft currently plays in operating systems.



    Depends on what you mean by succeeding. RNWK alone is streaming over 12 million songs/week, and grew subscription numbers by 20 % over a period of 3 months. Then you got a bunch of other players in the field. Yes, if you only use those "pay per song" number, Apple probably still got a 70% market share, but I question the usefulness of that statistics alone.



    I bet RNWK will grow the number of subscriptions to about 600 000 users by the end of the summer, resulting in yearly revenue of $72 million. Thats comparable to the current yearly sales of iTMS. ( Of course iTMS is also growing sales). What Im saying, is that the music dl war is far from over.



    Seems to me, right now RNWK is a bigger player than Roxio Napster and all other non-Apple online music stores.
  • Reply 22 of 33
    a_greera_greer Posts: 4,594member
    The only way apple should do this is if this could be a setup for a "friendly takeover" of real, then inflick their full quality control on real and maybe make the whole thing good, but dear god please make it FAST on windows!! (speed is the only drawback to itunes on windows)
  • Reply 23 of 33
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by blabla

    Depends on what you mean by succeeding. RNWK alone is streaming over 12 million songs/week, and grew subscription numbers by 20 % over a period of 3 months. Then you got a bunch of other players in the field. Yes, if you only use those "pay per song" number, Apple probably still got a 70% market share, but I question the usefulness of that statistics alone.



    I bet RNWK will grow the number of subscriptions to about 600 000 users by the end of the summer, resulting in yearly revenue of $72 million. Thats comparable to the current yearly sales of iTMS. ( Of course iTMS is also growing sales). What Im saying, is that the music dl war is far from over.



    Seems to me, right now RNWK is a bigger player than Roxio Napster and all other non-Apple online music stores.




    You have good points. I still wonder if the subscription model will end up being the biggest part of the market. I don't really want to subscribe. It seems like a poor value model for me as a consumer. But I might not really be representitive the market as a whole. Currently the market is siding with Apple. This can, of course, change. We'll see.
  • Reply 24 of 33
    quagmirequagmire Posts: 558member
    I was told by my friend that the ipod has a chip in it to allign itself for realone. But apple turned it off for some strange reason.
  • Reply 25 of 33
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Maybe Apple should just BUY Real? Get the Real streaming technology (and content partners).



    I don't know.
  • Reply 26 of 33
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Cuilla

    Maybe Apple should just BUY Real? Get the Real streaming technology (and content partners).



    I don't know.




    And have to absorb all the consumer and corporate support options, create an upgrade path from RealOne to QuickTime, maintain the Real Rhapsody service, etc? I thought Apple wanted to be leaner and meaner...



    How much is Real Networks worth anyway? $2B+. Apple's not about to spend that kind of cash for something it already has an answer to.
  • Reply 27 of 33
    kirklandkirkland Posts: 594member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Chris Cuilla

    You have good points. I still wonder if the subscription model will end up being the biggest part of the market. I don't really want to subscribe. It seems like a poor value model for me as a consumer. But I might not really be representitive the market as a whole. Currently the market is siding with Apple. This can, of course, change. We'll see.



    Consider this about subscriptions, though: To fill a top-of-the-line iPod with 10,000 songs would cost, to use baseline iTunes amounts, up to $9,900. That's enough money to subscribe to one of the currently $10-a-month services for over 80 years, downloading as much as you want. A veritable celestial jukebox.



    That's obviously a simplistic example, but I agree with those who think that low-cost subscriptions to broad catalogues are, in the end, a more sustainable (and more inexpensive for consumers) service than pay-for-what-you-eat. And I say this as an iTunes customer who has bought over $500 worth of music from Apple.



    A Rhapsody deal could help Apple stave off the real threat to iTunes: the Janus technology that will roll out this summer, allowing those subscription tunes to be used on modern WM9-compatible portable players.



    Kirk
  • Reply 28 of 33
    kirklandkirkland Posts: 594member
    Real's Rhapsody product could become Apple's response to Napster Premium, the model for which is the real long term threat to Apple. Apple has vowed not to enter the subscription business, which I think is a longterm bad move, but that's neither here nor there. By creating a system where subscription tunes from Rhapsody can be synced to the iPod, with basic FairPlay control, would allow Apple parry Microsoft's Janus initiative.



    Under Windows Media Audio with Janus, a consumer could pay $10 a month and fill a player like the big iPod with music with no extra expense. In the end, I think the sheer cost savings of such a plan for consumers will win over a majority of the market. Of course, that price will probably rise to $15 with the arrival of Janus, due to the increased piracy fears, and there's still the problem of getting all the tracks available on these services. But a revenue stream is always preferable to a sell-through product. Janus will shake things up, and Apple needs a riposte.



    FairPlay subscriptions from Real is an excellent step. It would provide the iTunes music standard with a bulwark against Janus and create a "choice" scenario for iPod customers, thus making the iPod a better buy. With iTunes Store and the Real Store and Real Streams, and Apple iPods and HP Digitial Music Players, even though it's all Apple product when you scratch away the surface, buying into the Apple music market no longer looks like an accursed "single vendor lock-in."



    If I were Apple I would be actively courting other stores to switch to, or add an option for, AAC/FairPlay downloads. All the stores offer a bit of differentiation ? for instance, MusicMatch encodes at 160 kbps, not 128. Apple need not monopolize the software space in this model, so long as they make sure every player is an iPod, Apple-branded or not.
  • Reply 29 of 33
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kirkland

    Consider this about subscriptions, though: To fill a top-of-the-line iPod with 10,000 songs would cost, to use baseline iTunes amounts, up to $9,900. That's enough money to subscribe to one of the currently $10-a-month services for over 80 years, downloading as much as you want. A veritable celestial jukebox.



    Fair enough, and I am only thinking of my own situation where I already owned around 9000 songs (my CD collection). I've purchased SOME music (less than 100 songs) from iTMS. I would imagine many people already have large CD collections to begin with. Though the younger generation may not.



    I do think it might not be a bad idea for Apple to offer a subscription plan. But Stev has said a few times that people don't want that. I am guessing he's saying that from a position of knowledge...having actually surveyed and understood the market. But who knows. He could be wrong too.
  • Reply 30 of 33
    david rdavid r Posts: 135member
    I've been a Rhapsody subscriber for about a year. I use Windows at work and I work in a basement level complex which means no radio stations get down there. Rhapsody has saved my sanity, it's honestly an amazing service. It's worth every penny of the $10/month I pay them considering that I run it for about 8 hrs a day.



    I'd love to have access to it from my mac.
  • Reply 31 of 33
    aquaticaquatic Posts: 5,602member
    Quote:

    First, MS has NOT crushed everyone at everything. They are currently failing (quite badly) with the XBox for example.



    It's doing great with XBox. Sure it's in the red now, but it's already overtaken Nintendo. Nintendo is lucky they have as rabid a fan base as Apple (which crosses over a lot I bet...I'm hardcore Nintendo.) MS already kicked Nintendo in the balls when they bought and killed Rare. Perfect Dark...
  • Reply 32 of 33
    rampancyrampancy Posts: 363member
    Has anyone here read Tomas Jogin's recent blog entry about Real Networks? I would have thought someone would have posted a link to it by now given all the attention being heaped on to Real, but I haven't seen it brought up in this forum yet.



    jogin.com: Real Obnoxious



    Quote:

    At start-up, Real Player sometimes recreates shortcuts in the start-menu, just in case you'd forgotten about it since you last deleted it. Whether you selected Real Player as the default player for CD or not, Real Player will assume you'll want to start playing a music CD's content in Real Player, when inserted. That goes for DVDs too. Real Player also assumes that the most common usage, and thus the default start-up view, is the Media Browser, where you can browse for video and audio-clips.



    When you installed Real Player, it assumed that you were interested in news, upgrades and offers, but even if you unchecked those options, Real Player still assumes you're interested in receiving updates and other messages from Real. It also assumes you'll want to add any newly downloaded media to Real Player's media library, whether it's the default player or not. Also, whether you were interested in updates or not, Real Player assumes you want it to periodically download and install important updates.



    What really opened my eyes were his posts about the replies he got from other people who used to work for Real.



    Quote:

    Similar things happened with the design of the player itself. If the web team was bad, the player team was from hell. The player team was completely dominated by engineers with a total gearhead hacker mentality. They had zero respect for users and viewed the player as "their" product. Our design brief was to integrate Real's four or so consumer applications into a single product. We spent over 8 months and $1.5M designing this. However, Real's engineers had such deep "not invented here" syndrome that there refused to implement a single element of our design. They made clear to us that they saw it as their job to determine how the application functioned and that "no designer can tell me about users".



    My apologies if this has been posted here before.



    I don't know, but this is the reason why I *don't* want Apple to partner up with Rob Glasser & Co.
  • Reply 33 of 33
    chris cuillachris cuilla Posts: 4,825member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Aquatic

    It's doing great with XBox. Sure it's in the red now, but it's already overtaken Nintendo.



    I'm not sure I'd say "great". XBox may have temporarily overtaken Nintendo, but even so, they are fighting with Nintendo for a distance 2nd and 3rd. Sony is top of the heap (by far).



    This (fairly recent) article (http://gameinfowire.com/news.asp?nid=3404) suggests XBox's climb is not guaranteed.
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