Slashdot Mirror
Real Cuts Prices for DRM-Restricted Music
Flint Dragon writes "A story on MSNBC details RealNetworks' next step in converting iPod users from iTunes to their own online music store. Not only can you play music downloaded from their site on your iPod now, you can, for a limited time, purchase music for 50% cheaper (.49/song, 4.99/album)! This is the price that I'm willing to pay for. Too bad it won't last..."
To get me to use Real. They'd have to start paying me, and even then it would take some convincing.
Cause we all trust real enough to give them our money even though we don't trust them enough to install their crap.
Hopefully step three is supporting Macs. For me, that's the ???? before step 4: Profit!!
I thought that these companie barely even made a profit at $1 per song. A limited time low, loss-inducing cost might attract customers for a while but the low switching cost between services means that they won't stay when prices going up, especially if your sound quality is not as good.
Some how I don't think their conversion-to-iPod feature is going to last, at least not once the new revision of iPod software comes out.
But I'd refuse to take DRM music even if it were free. The Audio Home Recording Act gives me the right to make backups of my music, to make compilations of my music, and to share those compilations with as many friends as I'd like, as long as I don't charge anything.
ANY system that interferes with those rights is unacceptable to me.
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
Bait and switch? It's called a "sale". A bait and switch ios when they're sell you sometihng more expensive than the advertised item.
Mod point free since 2001
Could someone tell me why Apple is so upset about Real being able to its music work in the iPod? Apple has said their Music Store is not meant as a profit center, so isn't it better for them (in the sense of selling more iPods) that the store's compatible with Real?
Of course this is of little interest to me since Real's not supporting Macs and I'm certainly not going to switch to Windows on their behalf.
I don't think Real stockholders are going to think much of the bleeding, and when prices go back to $ 0.99 each I doubt that most people will stay with Real, given their software's general level of obnoxiousness and hard-sell promotion. Apple, for all its faults, has a very classy and nicely done music store I think most people will prefer by a huge margin.
D
I find it exceedingly amusing, and telling, that RealNetworks, after years of pushing proprietary audio and video formats, is now fighting Apple's use of proprietary hardware. They have to market to iPod users because mp3 players using Real format music have been blown out of the water.
Its too bad their software was always ad-ridden garbage. They will have to do a lot more than a loss-leader sales ploy to get my trust back.
You mean Apple might sell more iPods? That's terrible news for Apple, because we all know they really make their money selling $0.99 songs.
so these people are *losing* quite a bit of money on this; or maybe the music industry is pitching in? I am sure they are not really happy w/ iTunes getting as big as it is.
MS conspiracy theorists will have a feast.
*somebody* has to be pitching in... isn't real a fairly small company?
-Facun.This is a great move by Real. I will definatly be a buyer since there are many albums that I have been on the fringe of buying but have now wanted to spend 12-15 bucks on, but would def be wiling to spend 5.
This move will help increase competition in the market and I think will be beneficial to the consumers in the long run. As much as I like Apple, I like good old competition more cause it means better products at lower prices! Gotta Love Capatalism!
My Web Site - www.ocean-liners.com
..then a new 'firmware' update comes out for the iPod and your new library quits working...
Until the dust settles I'd not buy anything from real in hopes of it working with my iPod. Not like they support my platform anyway (Mac)
As a rock-in-roll Physicist once said, No matter where you go, there you are.
Real, have you looked at your player software?
And is there an easy way of downloading your free player without you trying to get me to download your non-free player every step of the way?
No matter if you as an individual have issues about either of these companies. This is a good example of the free market working as intended. Too bad all industries don't compete internally like this.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
How much is RealNetworks losing money from each song they sell? The article mentions an analyst saying they will be losing money. How much of the $0.99 does Apple pay out to the record industry?
Real seems to be implying some kind of guarantee that their music will play on the iPod... Apple has already stated that won't be the case for much longer...
Will users with iPods who buy these cheapo songs be left holding the bag (a bag of useless songs), or will songs they buy and upload to their iPod now work no matter how Apple "updates" their iPod?
-- "A chicken is an egg's way of making another egg."
And still morally wrong and illegal to steal. How do we expect the RIAA, MPAA, etc to embrace technology when the most public geeks make comments like that? Sure music is overpriced and a lot is crap, but it's still stealing. At least iTunes and Real are going about this the right way.
That said, I'll NEVER install anything from Real on my system. It's as bad as Bonzi Buddy to get rid of.
Burn karma burn, slashdot inferno...
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
is the fact that Real has already announced that they will lose more money this quarter because of this stunt. (Here is the link to CBS Marketwatch: http://cbs.marketwatch.com/news/story.asp?guid=%7b 0A42057C-77BB-4F6A-AA44-3BAF401EFEC9%7d&siteid=mkt w&dist=nbs)
Take a look at their stock price today too and see what investors are thinking about this. (see it on the MSNBC link page). While I like the idea of cheaper music, this really smacks of desperation.
No trees were harmed in the composition of this; however, numerous electrons were inconvenienced.
Who is going to buy DMR'ed music from a company that is struggling financially with no guarantee that the RM part of the DRM will function in 6 months.
Their ads should say...
RENT AN ALBUM FOR $4.99
ACT NOW, THIS FUNCTIONALITY WON'T LAST
What the heck is wrong with $0.99 per song? You pay more than that for a bottle of soda, for crying out loud! If you want to be able to LEGALLY download music off the 'net, you need to support valid attempts to bring that to you. As more money flows into these companies from Internet distribution methods, the Internet supporters inside music companies will grow in power (potentially overshadowing those who are trying to stop it).
Once those supporters are in power, the reign of RIAA terror may finally end. Or at least reach an equilibrium similar to the one that existed prior to MP3s.
On a different note, best 99 cents, ever!
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Bah! Still ~10x higher than allofmp3.com. And they give you the real non-DRM non-proprietary crap... Even lossless if you like.
And their legality is just 'questionable'.
LilMikey.com... I'll stop doing it when you sto
Considering that in order to use Real's music you must transfer it using Real's Harmony software and any errors you get will be in that software... I think people would generally be more likely to blame Real rather than Apple.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
lowering the price to $.49 or less per song seems more reasonable to me. people dont understand that by purchasing music online in mp3 (or equiv) format that they are ok with crap sounding music and if they are ok with that, what is going to keep record companies from spending less money on production when they know the music is headed for a compressed format anyway?
spend money here
After reading the headline, I thought, "Wow, for once this makes sense." What I mean is, they are selling an inferior product at a lower cost. This is standard business practice, and as long as they openly admit to the DRM, I've no problem with it.
Then I RTFA and changed my mind. This isn't giving the people a choice of an inferior product for a lower cost, this is a "sale" to try and win people away from iTunes. It's only supposed to last an undefined "limited amount of time." Probably until they feel they've won enough customers from apple. I guess it still makes sense business-wise, but I don't like it as much.
"...At the end of the day"..."when everyone goes home, you're stuck with yourself." RIP Layne Staley
While better audio codecs have been advanced (MP3, ogg, FLAC...) it seems that the real audio format has maintained its position at the end of the pack. While I am not such an audiophile that I feel like researching expert information on audio quality, it seems that I notice a great difference when listening to an .ra file as opposed to an MP3. Getting half the quality for half the price seems like a wash to me. That is, unless they are either distributing music in another format or have advanced their own encoding process. However, even an advance in the Real Audio format seems negligible. While it is nice that the files are currently compatable with the iPod, it still seems Real is taking the "too propritary" road.
Now before I get tossed into the flamebait category, I do understand that iTunes, MusicMatch, and the rest of the competition is fairly proprietary in their own right. But iTunes, and to a degree MusicMatch, are quite a bit less intrusive applications than RealPlayer.
Further, does anyone remember the user privacy sagas that Real has been through? Does anyone really trust Real to safeguard your information? I don't know about the rest of you, but Real lost my trust a long time ago. They could give out $0.01 songs and $0.10 albums, and that alone would scare me away.
Just go here and download songs for mere pennies. No limited time BS. No DRM.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't there laws against "predatory pricing"? Deliberately selling your product at a loss in order to undercut the competition, then raising the prices once your market share is big enough?
That's right, I read at +2 and post at +1. Not even I care what I have to say.
I still use my ultra-cheap alternative: allofmp3.com. They operate using a Russian broadcast license...
Instead of 99 cents a song, you pay a penny per megabyte. Often you can pay as little as 5 cents for a 128 bit MP3. Other formats and bitrates are available.
Best part? Since it's a Russian "broadcast", the RIAA doesn't get any of it. Tasty!
I'm right there with you. I can already buy cheaper music that can play on an iPod. No reverse engineering is needed: the format is called MP3, you may have heard of it. The prices range from free to whatever. Finding something I like involves a little extra digging, sampling, and detective work... but I actually find that more interesting than being spoonfed Very Popular Radio Hitz complete with useless yet encumbering software designed around the premise that I am a thief. I keep a few bucks in a Bitpass account, a few bucks in my Paypal account, it's all pretty easy.
Another technologically advanced method I find usefull: I actually have the data in question mailed to me on a cunning media called a compact disc. It serves the same purpose as the download and acts as an archive to boot. Why it even plays on numerous standalone devices I happen to own. And since I again opt for the more unusual sources over the semidigested pablum that drecks all over the radio and tevee, I don't have any problems with DRM and usually pay around 50 cents a track anyway. It may be a minority but who's spending smarter money? I've had numerous opportunities to get free iTunes tracks. No interest. Why muddy up my collection?
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
Real sells 192kbit MPEG 4 AAC encoded music now. The new encoder/player/thingy defaults to that format. Looks like they're dumping the crappy ra format, finally.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Like they say, you get what you pay for. I'd rather pay $.99 a song and get to keep it rather than paying $.50 for a crippled song that comes from a company with a dodgy past. Somehow I doubt this will cut into Apple's sales that much.
I agree with that completely. I have no problem whatsoever with paying 99 cents for a song and I do so when I hear a new song I like.
I'm suprised that the RIAA is allowing this. 4.99 an album is quite a bit less than the $12 or so that cds go for. If I am going to buy an entire album, I usually buy the cd. This might change that though.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Ok, I'm sure this is all covered somewhere at the two sites but...
1. Can we copy the file we bought to different devices (i.e. PC/ipod/mp3 player)?
2. Will it allow us to modify the format to/from mp3/wma/ogg/etc?
3. What is the quality compared with "normal" downloads (from gnutella/limewire/etc)?
4. Can we "re-download" a song if our copy get destroyed/lost/mangled?
5. What other advantages/dis-advantages are there?
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= - The Celtic - =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
This is a reasonable price for downloadable music... They are saving the price of the media, the packaging, the shipping - all of the things that cost the real money and dont just line the recording companies pockets...
What was so hard about that?
NetInfo connection failed for server 127.0.0.1/local
And don't give me that typical crap line of "I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so I'm not depriving them of a sale." If you don't really want it, or can't afford it, that doesn't justify copyright infringement. And I fully support the RIAA's actions against you, because by your own admission, you are not their customer.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
While I have no intention of buying anything from Real (they don't support Mac OS X with this scheme), and I've never bought anything from iTMS (as I live in Canada), as an iPod owner I'm still somewhat excited -- this may be good for me as an iPod owner inn an indirect way.
Apple has in the last few weeks released two iPod firmware updaters (one of which was released in the past week) -- but both have contained updates only for the 4G iPods. I bought my iPod two months too soon, and thus own the 3G iPod, for which Apple appears to have no interest in providing any software updates for.
However, if things go as many here predict, Real may force Apples hand in pushing out firmware updates for the older iPods to ensure they don't work with Real's system. And to ensure users actually apply these updates, they'll have to offer some form of incentive in the form of new features or other improvements beyond breaking compatible with Real's Harmony.
So if Apple does do something about this, iPod owners (particularily hose of us who don't have the new 4G iPod) may end up winning anyhow :).
Yaz.
Can someone provide me a link or any information that breaks down how and how much Real and iTunes is giving back to the artists?
I heard somewhere approx 60% of the mp3's that you buy now were the exact same ones that your got free from Napster a few years ago. So whose getting this money, cause lets not forget the whole reason why the RIAA claims to be protecting our music from ourselves, "to make sure the artists can still comfortably produce new songs".
It just seems a little fishy still, being that downloading music used to be a crime, but because someone started charging for it, its okay now.
You know if you buy a stolen car from a guy on the streets, its still stolen whether you or not you physically boosted it yourself.
The SACD? What's wrong with flying the band/singer in to play at your house? SACD is for cheapskates!
I think of Real as more or less of a spyware / adware company that packages their crap with a marginally useful media player. To me, no better than KazzaGold. And, since it's marketed to the same crowd of users (i.e. the AOL crowd), I end up paying very little attention to what they are doing at Real.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
The Sherman Anti-Trust Act and the Robinson-Patman Act sorta address predatory pricing but it is a very subjective thing. Just selling products at a loss is not enough. You have to prove intent, feasibility to recoup losses, etc. Like most anti-trust violations it is really something that would only come up after the fact. You don't typically see companies with 5% marketshare being brought up Anti-Trust charges.
It is limited: you can only make 7 copies of the exact same playlist. You'll have to reorder it or otherwise change it to make 7 more, and so forth.
Personally, I don't find that limit at all onerous.
Do not speak unless you can improve on the silence.
Gee, another wonderful (albeit DRM-laden) online music store where I could pay for my music instead of using Kazaa. Available only to US residents. How long is it going to take to move these store out of the US? iTMS keeps promising. There's only 2 options here, and none of them I like (proprietary software being the primary reason). *launches Kazaa*
Quoted from Rhapsody:
"MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Windows PC, 350 MHz, 350 MB HD Space"
Or just copy the CD...
Not having fullscreen today in a video player is just unacceptable. But on the plus side the player does seem nicer/less bloated. I just checked and I'm still on 8 (whats currently avail in deb sid). So maybe the fullscreen option is finally there in 10. Btw, mplayer will play my realvid files but if you skim through the video it loses sync which doesn't happen in real. Any fix for that?
http://www.petitiononline.com/mod_perl/signed.cgi? r4apple
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
Actually, I have done end user support. And I've had to fend off calls the other way around, mostly, where the hardware was at fault and the customer is complaining about the error being with the software because the error is on the screen.
People tend to blame the program running when it throws out an error message, in my experience.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
How about I support changing the law instead? They can't put ALL of us in jail. Remember, even prohibition lasted four years in the US. NOBODY wanted prohibition, and lots of people DIED in the violence related to that little social experiment. I think we've come a long way as a society (some notable failures do exist) towards civilized discourse since those days, and I don't see any way that the balance of power can shift back in favor of the RIAA companies for the long term. The only question is how difficult they have to make it legally for people who are obtaining free music before everyone demands widespread changes to the current state of copyright law.
Law is a pendulum. It swings in one direction, and then it goes back the other way. Earl Warren's SOCTUS went way out in left field in the 60's with supplementing the rights of the accused, e.g. Miranda and Gideon v. Wainright. In the 70s, everything went back the other way, with law enforcement gaining more freedom to investigate hippies, crooks, and revolutionaries.
The late 90's saw a surge in laws friendly to copyright holders and big business interests. I am confident that the latter half of the noughts will see a corresponding rebound that favors the interests and rights of individuals.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Plain and simply I will never buy online music until I can get lossless CD quality recordings for less than I can buy a physical CD.
... but I'll be able to listen to my lossless version on my home system and I'll be able to reencode if a better format comes out in the future.
I understand DRM and don't have a big issue with it when it comes down to it (I don't -like- it but as long as it gives me my fair use I'll live with it).
I'm simply not willing to pay for lossy encodings. I would rather pay $9.99 for an album that is CD quality than $4.99 for a lossy encoded version. I would prefer it to be like FLAC where it is a compressed file, but nothing less than CD quality. CD is the -minimum- I am looking for. However I should be able to buy for $4.99 + a small added bandwith charge.
Will I rip down to a smaller format for my portable player? Sure
Until then, since I buy less than 1 disc a month, I'll stick with hardcopy.
It is more productive to voice thoughtful opinions (reply) than to judge (moderate) others.
I'm a little confused as to why a lot of Slashdot readers are so supportive of the Apple/iPod thing. Attempting to force owners of iPods to buy their content through the iTunes store no better than the printer manufacturers who try to force you to buy ink refills from the manufacturer. It's the equivalent of Sony selling you a DVD player that only plays DVDs.
If I bought an iPod, and someone offers to sell me songs that will play on my iPod, and Apple then does something so that the iPod will no longer play those songs, why is that OK? Where's the slashdot overreaction to this unwarranted control of hardware I own?
paintball
I've bought a couple of CDs and a few individual tracks from the iTunes music store (not to mention all the freebies I've downloaded). They sound fine, even when burned onto CDs to play on the Bose in the car. It's a bit of a pain sharing them between computers (PowerBook and PC at home and PC at work), but hey, blank CDs are cheap.
Of course, in general it's still cheaper for me to buy CDs through a service like BMG or Columbia House. I order maybe 10-20 per year from BMG and end up paying between $5 and $8 per CD. Then I can rip those myself to whatever quality I'd like and avoid the ridiculous prices that most stores charge. Sure, there's the whole shipping delay, but I'm a patient guy.
That said, if I could import music purchased from Real's music store into iTunes (and from thence to the iPod), I'd jump on the $0.49 thing in heartbeat. But I use iTunes for everything now, and I'm not about to start running multiple different media players just for the grins of saving a few bucks. That's my choice, and I'm sticking to it.
Zero, one, infinity. The "7 copies" rule just illustrates how divorced from the reality of computing DRM is. DRM is fundamentally, monumentally, stupid. You can have this information....but you can't have this information. STUPID.
This whole thing is about DRM ubiquity. Real is scared to death of the Windows DRM so they go after Apple. Makes sense in a twisted sort of a way.
Real and Virgin are going after Apple for "not licensing Fairplay to them". The more likely scenario is that Apple wouldn't license Fairplay to them unless they used it exclusively and both Real and Virgin have their own DRM schemes and that wouldn't help them to get their DRMs into the market. Apple licensed Fairplay to Motorola. I'm sure that it is an exclusive contract that means that more users will be using Fairplay.
Real wants people to use their DRM and so does Virgin. So, they both complain that Apple refused to license Fairplay to them, when the more likely scenario is that Apple refused to license Fairplay to them without them agreeing to the contract, like Motorola did.
So, Real releases Harmony, which will allow their DRM'd files to be played on the number one media player, the iPod, by faking out the Fairplay DRM software to think that the Real DRM is the same as the Fairplay DRM. Whether this is legal or not stands to be proven. Then Real undercuts the standard prices by half and sets about creating FUD about how Apple is evil and won't let them play together and starts a "freedom of music" site designed to attack Apple only. Seems far fetched.
Virgin meanwhile attacks from their end, in France, and says that they've been shut out by Apple, the obvious monopoly (hardly) that they are.
This is a DRM war. The one that has more media that supports their DRM out in the market is going to win in the long run.
A couple of points that the Real site is misleading about:
1. The price to burn a track to CD is $0.79 not $0.49.
2. The price per album is 1/2 of what it cost before, as low as $4.99, so not all albums are $4.99.
Seems that they are trying to open the iPod to their proprietary DRM format, which isn't really open at all either.
Also bear in mind that Apple is guaranteed to release an update to the iPod software that will disable the Harmony software from helpiong to keep the DRM working on the iPod too.
iTunes also has over 1 million songs in their library while Real has almost 7 hundred thousand.
Who will win? Only time will tell. Seems to me that Real is playing dirty to try and make a minor inroad that won't pay off in the long run. How long can they support losing money in order to try to bring people over?
Very true. One interestiong thing of note, it seems that the info about what you burned on to CDs is not stored on the computer but on Apple's servers, so therortically apple knows exactly how many times you burned what track.....I wonder how they "share" that info with?
I don't know why everyone keeps saying the sound quality for Real's downloads is bad. It's actually *better* than iTunes, which is only 128Kbps. Both Real and Apple use AAC encoding (m4a, m4p). Let's ease up on the FUD, shall we?
Current standard film still records at 24 frames per second. If you watch closely during any sequence that has any action in it you will see how poor and antiquated that frame rate value truly is. And yet because we have become accustom to it nobody seems to question it. (Except for that crazy Lucas guy who wants everyone to convert to digital video.)
Audiophiles similarly have become accustom to all sorts of crazy arguments about what you can and can't hear. CD's arn't as "warm" as LP's, tubes are better than transistors, high quality MP3's don't sound like the CDs. However I'm quite sure that if you were to sit down two people who had not heard any given track that was played on a CD and then on a very high quality compressed format they would be hard pressed to pick which was which. (Given that it's a 50/50 chance a more controlled method of testing would have to be done but I think you get my point.)
Now I still personally will never pay for any stripped down, DRM crippled, poorly encoded music but I don't think that using a compressed format, done right, is a bad thing at all.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
You can also just reorder it, then reorder it back to the earlier order, then burn some more.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
All Apple has to do is send out a warning that music purchased from other places not selling MP3's will not work, then throw the switch...
I think the majority of people would blame Real, not Apple - they know where they bought the songs from. It has the potential to be a huge blunder for Real with very little risk for Apple should they decide to counter.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Enough guesses. Here's a quick summary of how this Harmony stuff works so we can all be on the same page. - Real does not change any software or firmware on the iPod. - Real's store tracks get re-wrapped in FairPlay, then transferred to the iPod. There's no way for the iPod to tell the difference between an iTMS-originated track and a RealMS-originated track. They are functioally equivalent. - Just like iTunes, you can burn CDs from the tracks you download from the RealMS. -The download quality from Real is actually BETTER than iTMS - 192Kbps vs. 128Kbps. This means that when you burn the tracks to audio CD to 'clean'/(backup/share with your friends/whatever) you will end up with a better sounding audio CD because you have a more detailed (higher bitrate) source file. Nuff said. If you don't get it now, you never will.
At one point Real had a serious head-start on everyone else in terms of streaming audio and video technology. I remember the first time I used Real to listen to streaming audio and watch streaming video. I was blown away and everyone else played catch-up with them for a while. Remember that?
I've said it before: Real should have been the ones to create the iTunes music store and the software and maybe even the iPod, but they squandered their lead. Now they want to latch on to the company who beat them at their own game? They should stop hiding behind embarrassingly disingenuous claims of concern for the consumer. If Real were genuinely concerned for consumers, they would never have let their products become as crappy as they currently are and would never have tried coasting for as long as they did on what little innovation they managed in their heyday.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
If Real reprogrammed their code to spit out un-DRM'd AACs, or MP3s, Apple would still have to support this format.
Apple's problem is not with Real producing files that can be played on an iPod, it's that they've locked those files using the DRM system built into iPods. This is about DRM, not file support.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
When I go to real.com using Safari 1.2, I get a page about RealPlayer 10, which makes no mention of, and has no links to, RealPlayer music store or Harmony. When I visit the same URL, spoofing as "Windows MSIE 6.0" (aka "TEH INTARWEB BROWZOR") I get a big promo about Harmony and the .49/song sale.
Pretty sure there's no Mac OS X version of this whole Harmony thing.
Does anybody know how this Harmony thing works? Does it import the songs into iTunes so you can play them in iTunes/sync them to iPod as normal? Or does it make you do a separate sync to put the Real songs on the iPod, restricting you to playing them only on the iPod and RealPlayer?
If your logic was true why do we have 3 strikes laws, and keep conviction records AFTER a person is released...
Yes, why exactly? If we, as a society, see fit to release someone from jail, we should give them at least a reasonable chance to work flipping burgers. Of course sensitive jobs that involve handling prescription drugs or working with children can still do background checks. As it is, ex-cons have little choice but go back to life of crime.
Maybe we should give Real a chance so long as they are playing nice with Helix, OGG and hopefully pushing Apple to lower prices and/or open up their architecture.
I've been a RealRhapsody and Napster subscriber for a while, and have gotten annoyed with having DRM even after I purchase a song to keep "forever".
Recently I bought a few CD's from AllofMp3.com, which is a Russian company that lets you buy any song, which they encode on-the-fly to any format you want. You pay them one US cent per MB. So, your 4MB MP3 costs you *four cents*, with no DRM attached. A CD, encoded in 320kbps AAC, might cost 60 cents. Theoretically, this is legal, because they're licensed by the Russian equivalent of the RIAA. In case you're wondering, no, I haven't seen any fraudulent CC charges.
There might have been a small consortium that started these formats but the reality was that there were other formats competing for the same dollar from the consumer. ONE COMPANY'S standard eventually won out and THEN it was licensed to others. It's not like you could play a Betamax tape on a VHS machine, why should you be able to play a Real file on an Apple machine? Apple has already "licensed" iTunes so you can play their tracks on ANY personal computer. It's obvious that once they sew up their format and DRM as the market standard they will license it to other portables as well. The reality is that there is still enough risk in the marketplace (re: Microsoft) that they can't just freely license things now otherwise they'd lose their revenue streams.
I just found out about this place yesterday. I haven't bought anything from them yet, but music by the pound in nearly any damned format I want sounds good to me!
Check out the Sydney Morning Hearld article for more info. I really can't believe we here at /. missed this in April!?
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
You might not believe this, but there is a program called Real Alternative (as well as Quicktime Alternative) that allows you to play RealAudio and video with a third-party client. I installed it the other day...it works, and it doesn't force a reboot like Real's player.
RealAlternative
Even liberal news outlets such as DemocracyNow.org, Fair.org's Counterspin, and Air America Radio have, or still use Real exclusively, leaving me to shake my head at how little the proponents of "freedom" understand the world they are now living in.
This is a poor argument. If you were making this from a manufacturer/producer point of view you would have a reasonable, if vague point. However, from a retailer perspective the cost is *not* the manufacturing cost, but rather the licencing fee, which could possibly be $00.491 and thus higher than the set price.
But, even if this arguement was sound, it is still beside the point:
One way to make sure nobody makes money is to start a price war. The price pressure in digital music is absurd considering nobody is making any money yet. Starting a price war prior to even being profitable is crazy. The inevitable economic outcome is that prices fall to where the few remaining producers can sell their product at a price equal to marginal cost and, quite literally, nobody makes any money. Maybe one or two can stay alive and meet payroll, but no big bucks. This lunacy extends to people expecting it for free thanks to Pepsi and other promotions. I half expect music products to be relegated to consumer incentives passed out with dish detergent rather than purchased as an independent product.
Real's strategy is particularly suicidal (at first blush with little information) because Apple, the incumbent, *doesn't* have to make money. They add value to to their entire product line, hardware, software, and particularly the operating system by owning digital music market share.
Starting a price war with a competitor who doesn't need to make money on the product to survive and has other incentive to stay in the game is a bet against the competitor's unknown tolerance of loss against their inestimable value of other benefits the competitor percieves they gain from the market share. It is impossible to have decent information on this, especially given Apple's legendary secrecy.
I'm sure Real is convinced they are on equal footing and will reap the same rewards by adding value to their entire product line, but their product line is less versatile, less useful, less profitable, and more narrow. It is hard for me to believe 2 things: 1) that Real has as much to gain $$ by acquiring the market share they are willing to pay dearly for, and 2) that Real has the resources to outlast Apple.
On the other hand, only companies like Real and Apple will have long term interest in this market, since nobody who actually wants to make money in a stand alone music play will stay in the game. Perhaps Real just wants to flush out all competitors who aren't convinced the digital music market share will give them indirect benefits which outweigh their cash losses and leave only a few survivors of which Real expects to be one. However, i bet all competitors, probably even Apple, are overestimating the true value here, only time will tell.
Smells like an albatross to me, or perhaps a golden fleece.