Real Feels iTunes Backlash

BunkAsInBed writes "CNET reports RealNetwork's recent campaign against the iTunes music network that involved tactics like slashing the costs of their downloads in half, reverse engineering Apple's FairPlay format (Harmony), and recently an online petition and bulliten board have received the opposite reponse that was anticpated."

Comments

Nothing to do with iTunes.

[Anonymous Coward]

People just hate Real.

The reasons are easy

[christurkel]

Real has always treated the Mac has second class. We get RealPlayer after the Windows version. Their jukebox software has never worked on the Mac. And now they want us to sympathise?

Re:The reasons are easy

[TechnoPope]

Why do you assume that they are only targeting the Mac version? Last I checked, there were versions of both the iPod and the iTunes for Windows. Sure we (users of Apple's Windows products) are not the one's that Apple really cares about, but we do still exsist.

Real should put their money where their mouth is

[savagedome]

We want Freedom of Music Choice

How about opening up the .rm format first so that I can use any player I want. Then we can talk on the same terms. Until then, Real, you can kiss my a$$.

And before you come in with Real Alternative, don't bother. I know about it and it's not the same thing.

don't understand apple

[geneing]

The way I understand it, Apple makes most of the money on iPods. The iTunes business is to make ipods more attractive and brings almost no profit. Why don't they want to let others sells songs for ipod?

Re:don't understand apple

[rjstanford]

What happens with one of Real's tunes doesn't work on the iPod? Possibly after new iPod software is released, even if its not trying to break the Real hack. I'll tell you what - Apple will get a tech support call. Whether or not its their fault, they're now paying (support costs money) for a problem that they had nothing to do with. Worse, the reputation of their offerings could potentially suffer.

That's why they're complaining.

Re:don't understand apple

[Dark Paladin]

Because it's not just about the iPods.

Look at today. For the DRM crowd (so we can throw out MP3 and Ogg files), there are 3 systems in competition:

Microsoft WMA (in the most stores, about 25% of the market)
Sony (in one store, let's give them 5%)
Apple Fairplay (70% of the market)

Where's Real in this? I'm not even going to give them that much credit - this is about why Apple doesn't want others playing in its Fairplay system.

Right now, who's making money?

Napster - losing money on selling music
Sony - supplemented by hardware sales
Apple - maybe they make money off of iTMS, but they make money from selling iPods
Microsoft - licensing fees every time somebody buys a WMA song

Recently, some companies who sell "Pirate proof" CD's have announced they're dropping WMA and going with something "iPod compatible". Why? Because 70% of the DRM market is in the hands of the iPod.

Now, you're response is right: if more people used Fairplay, or some hacked version, then Apple would sell more iPods, and they'd make more money.

You're right - as of the year 2004.

Now, let's jump in the magic time machine and head to 2014. Now, here's a possible look at the market:

DRM music files: WMA (5%), Sony (5%), Apple 95%. Real - somewhere between 0-1%.

iPods cost $99 for a 100G hard drive - enough to store so much music its silly. Even adding in PDA and visual abilities, it's still so much storage Apple makes hardly anything selling iPods.

But! They make millions a year because everybody uses their DRM system, and everybody has to license with Apple to play it.

Imagine Steve Jobs sitting in the Jobs Cave thinking "What if by 2010, Microsoft has to pay Apple every time they sell a Windows computer, because they need the Fairplay codec? That could mean millions of dollars a year "just because".

That is why they don't want others selling songs: why bother? If they can get Real to kick the bucket so that all in the world is either WMA or Fairplay (and the former only supported via monopoly money - no, not the Parker Brothers kind), then Apple will rule the future of online music, and put them in a position to make a lot of money in the future.

Don't just look at "hardware sales now". I think Steve learned his lesson from a long time ago (which is "hardware sales aren't always king"), and he's looking at the long term. Odds are, he'll release Fairplay to others (*cough*HP and Motoroloa*cough*) when he's ready to, and get people to join his vision.

Is he right or wrong? I don't worry. Last time I checked, my iPod still works great with music CD's I buy in the store. But at least now you know.

And knowing is half the battle.

Well duh...

[TWX]

If there's one thing that Apple as a company has managed to succeed with for a very, very long time, it is building a fiercely loyal customer base. Apple customers don't jump ship when the company is at its worst, let alone when it appears to be sailing relatively smoothly. Apple customers also of late really, really seem to want stuff that "just works" without any extra work on the part of the user.

While I don't doubt that RealNetworks is going out of their way to make it relatively easy to ultimately play their stuff on Apple's hardware, the user still has to get third party software, still has to subscribe to another service that isn't affiliated with their computer (in fact being a direct antithesis), and has to do extra work. Combine that with the large amount of market burnout regarding Real, and I'm really not surprised by this. I'm more surprised that Real pursued this attempt to begin with.

enlighten us?

[i_should_be_working]

maybe some ipod users here could explain why they would be against one more digital music store's songs being compatible with their ipod?

just want to know

Many of the petition's responces...

[oberondarksoul]

...have it spot-on. Why should Real have any say in what the iPod plays? They may rant on about it being 'freedom of consumer choice', but that's not a little hypocritical from Real - whose own music store isn't even Mac-compatible yet. Perhaps it Real were to support the Mac crowd, create a player that people would prefer to use, and generally better themselves, they'd have more success in luring people away. As it stands, however, people have exercised their freedom of choice - and they've chosing the iPod and iTMS.

Re:Many of the petition's responces...

[malthusan]

You have it backwards. Real is NOT trying to control what plays on the iPod, Apple is trying to prevent people from using the device they sold to those people with content not sold by Apple. That is illegal. Anti-trust action.

Wow. You must be referring to one of those special-edition iPods that only play Fairplay DRM'ed AAC files from iTMS and nothing else. If you can get one (or have one already) I'd hold onto it if I were you. Might be worth some money to a collector one day.

I, however, purchased a plain-jane iPod that plays mp3, wav, and AAC files. It currently has ~8GB of music on it. Of that, perhaps 100MB of music is from iTMS. The rest I 1) ripped from cd's I owned, 2) downloaded from various legal sources, and 3) copied from friends. Moreover, the few albums/songs I purchased from iTMS were immediately burned to a CD. If I choose, I can rip those tracks back to mp3. Voila! No DRM! It's magic! Given I have these options, how is Apple's "monopoly" preventing me from having a choice?

Oh yeah. I forgot -- because Apple has a monopoly and opposed the altruistic efforts of Real to offer a choice to those benighted iPod owners who are "locked in" to a proprietary format. Perhaps you're only speaking for those who purchased the aforementioned special-edition iPod.

For the rest of us, lack of a single option among many does not negate the presence of a choice. Thus, not being able to play Real songs on my iPod does not remove my choice of other formats to play.

Furthermore, the exercise of choice comes at various stages. The first, and most important, choice is the music player. If one is uncomfortable with the restrictions Apple has placed on iTMS songs/albums or the limited selection of formats supported on the iPod, the one should not purchase an iPod to begin with. Exercise your freedom of choice and buy a Sony player, a Dell Jukebox, or an iRiver instead. What you fail to mention in your ill-conceived tirade is that when I, and everyone else, purchased an iPod, we all bought into the restrictions. We chose to purchase that player with those limitations. For those who didn't realize those limitations were extant when they made their purchase, they have the choice of 1) living with them, 2) returning the iPod for a refund, or 3) selling the iPod.

Apple does not have a monopoly on music players; Apple does not have a monopoly on legally downloadable music. Until such time as the iPod/iTMS combo is the only way to play music, Apple will not have a monopoly.

Lessons Learned

[AKAImBatman]

The lesson to be learned from this? Don't mess with Jobs' Reality Distortion Field(TM)!

Also

[2nd Post!]

Another problem is that Real's music store isn't Mac compatible.

Yes, we only have 3-4% of the market, but hello, aren't we also the same market that catapaulted the iPod, and then the Music Store, to success? It's not like we aren't a valid economically sound market.

It's silly to champion choice like Real is if they won't support the platform they are arguably trying to break into: Apple's market. That includes Mac users.

Re:Hm....

[Anonymous Coward]

We all knew the Pope was a Mac user already--

C'mon, the big hat, all the jewelery, the dress...

Let's compare...

[gphinch]

Apple - Software and hardware that is not only intuitivly easy to use, it is also beautifully designed. And of course they were the ones that jumpstarted the online music craze between iPod and iTunes. Not to mention the hoards of loyal Apple fans.

Real - Software that has always (imo) had a horrible interface, rife with ads slapped anywhere they would fit, and a constant nagging to buy their pro version (ok Apple does this too with Quicktime, but you don't need that for mp3s). Add to that their file formats are constantly changing requiring upgrades, and their encoding has always been sub par.Combined with the fact that they basically stole Apple software and you wonder why people are mad.

As it stands, Apple has 70% of a 5% market.

[burgburgburg]

That doesn't constitute a monopoly. It's a good head start with most of the race ahead of them. For Real (a company which has time and again shown it's contempt for end users) to act like Apple is an evil monopoly for not licensing to them is ridiculous. Real is a non-starter that is desperate to try and be part of the game. I'm avoiding them like a bottle of Perth Pink. This is not a company for buying from. This is a company for laying down and avoiding.

Re:Hm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, Apple always did get the support of A-list celebs at Steve Jobs' keynotes. I just didn't realize that The Pope would leave the comment, "Real can suck my b@lls."

You got the quote wrong

[2nd Post!]

The full quote is "Competition' doesn't give you any right to reverse-engineer when you feel like it, but come down on those that hack into your IP rights."

The quoter claimed Real had no right to reverse engineer when the company itself will not allow others to reverse engineer. It's not about law, in the quote, but about reciprocity. If they think it's okay for Real Co to RE the iPod and iTunesMS, then it should be okay for others to reverse RA stuff as well, which you didn't pick up.

Fuck 'em all

[stratjakt]

Let the zealots win.

Lets have 15 different proprietary "standards" out there for music. That way if you buy a player from Apple, you buy your music from Apple. If a song you like is only available on some other service, why you buy another player.

I don't care. I'm through with music. I wont buy any CDs or download any songs.

In my day, it was pretty decent. I could go buy a CD from any store I wanted, and it would work in any of my CD players. Before that was cassette tapes, before that 8-tracks and LPs.

But I don't care about todays kids. Go let yourself get screwed over by a bunch of corporate assholes. Tell yourselves that the company is some great benevolant force that truly cares about you, if that makes you feel better.

I could give a fuck if iTunes is completely incompatible with Real and every other music service. I could give two shits what kind of DRM Apple or Real or Napster or anyone else want to use. Who gives a shit if you're allowed to burn it to one CD, or only listen to the song on the third tuesday of every month.

Hey, do it to TV too. I don't care. When video-on-demand rolls out, make sure each service is compatible only with a suitably branded TV set or cable tuner. Sony Video-on-Demand only works with Sony sets, etc. Ruin TV. See if you can make a buck doing it.

Have your legions of Sony fans go around swearing and acting like idiots if Phillips starts trying to compete.

Not my problem, and I don't care.

The entire "entertainment" industry can jump up my ass. It bores me. I don't look to any corporate messiah for my entertainment anymore. Fuck em all, and fuck all their fans and zealots.

Re:apple fans

[dynayellow]

What's aggrivating is that the whole "campaign" is so insulting: Real is trying to pretend that they're "sponsoring" a grassroots campaign about "freedom of choice."

But you'll note that they've closed down the forums, and if you go to the petition site, you can't view any of the comments or the names, only the signature count, even though most of the "signatures" are against the petition.

Real campaigns for "choice," but what they really want to do is license their Harmony code so that they can get on the best-selling player and shore up their flagging store, which has fewer songs than the iTMS.

Another lesson -brand image is important.

[ron_ivi]

Techies like to ignore branding; but this is an excellent example of how hard it can be to overcome a negative brand image.

Real's done lots of decent (appearing, anyway?) things like open-source/helix, etc; but people have a hard time getting over the time that they were the obnoxious-spyware-company.

I think this is interesting because it's a case where Branding is meaningful to techies. A good brand image (Apple) vs. a bad brand image (Real) influences people at least as much as the technical details (yeah, it'd be cool if all content played anywhere).

Re:Another lesson -brand image is important.

[EtherAlchemist]

A specific example of this is1 how differently the brands owned by Real are viewed by the user population.

RealPlayer tends to cause immediate irritation in people's minds and postings on the net.

Mention Rhapsody, though, and not a lot of flak is sent up. Why?

Other than the obvious trespassings Real had in the past, they've continued to exhibit ambigous messages to the public. The Helix system is open, but doesn't support premium services the Realplayer does, You have the Realplayer for Windows, Mac and Linux but the majority of servies and features only work on Windows, Harmony loads content onto almost any device (not just the iPod, that's a misconception) but the Real music store only works on Windows PCs, no Macs or Linux boxes. There's the implied message they are universal but in truth they're really a Windows product with some reach into Mac.

With Rhapsody, there's no bad name attached. They've never gotten mixed up in bad consumer practices- due in large part to the fact they listened to their consumers (imagine that!), they have a compelling product but the key difference is that Rhapsody is never marketed in any light other than the one that shines for Windows PCs. There's no ambiguity.

Yeah, Real had made serious attempts to clean up the brand but heavy promotion focused around ads that show a friggin iPod implying universal support but not actual having it is the next biggest hurdle. Mac users who have an iPod can't take advantage of the 49cent service because there's no store for the Mac.

Plus, does Real seriously think that by considering the feedback they received only the work of a "vocal minority" instead of 1200+ (at this writing) comments that might actually have some value, even if it is buried in vulgarity.

Re:Another lesson -brand image is important.

[tambo]

RealPlayer tends to cause immediate irritation in people's minds and postings on the net.

Mention Rhapsody, though, and not a lot of flak is sent up. Why?

Because the reason people are irritated by Real isn't their proprietary nature. That's a business decision that need not directly impact consumers. That is, "prioprietary" does not necessarily require copy-protection schemes, closed formats, monopoly pricing, and tech stagnation. (These things often happen, but not always. Technically, Perl and Linux are proprietary, but they're open-source and free.)

No, the actual reason why people hate Real is because their technology is horrific dogshit.

• Every time you want to view a new Real stream, you have to download RealPlayer version x+1.
• Their player is bloated with ads and doo-dad components you'll never use and can't get eliminate, so the interface is cluttered. It's like poking a tiny hole in a full-page newspaper advertisement, and trying to watch TV through it.
• Their free player is also crippled beyond repair. You can't save streams unless you buy their software, and that is complete bullshit.
• Today's Real streams run like technology straight out of 1994. They're bloated, tinny, and pixelated. They're vastly outcompeted by every other format.
• Their software won't stop f***ing harassing you. It spews links to itself all over your desktop, your start menu, your quick-launch bar, and your notification area. It nags you constantly to upgrade to a more recent version or buy the full version. It keeps installing its beyond-useless agent in your MSCONFIG startup, and won't go away.

In short, people hate Real because Real sucks. They've made a whole lot of awful business and technical choices, and this animosity is the consequence.

- David Stein

Re:Vendor lock-in mentality?

[citiZen2010]

Let's get one thing straight here. For the actual audio compression, Apple uses 128kbps AAC for ITMS downloads. AAC stands for "Advanced Audio Compression", not "Apple Audio Compression" or anything else. AAC is an MPEG standard, just like MP3, only better. RealNetworks uses 192kbps AAC in their store. It's the same damn format. The quality will be slightly better, if you have some nice headphones to plug into your iPod, you'll probably hear the difference. The only new thing that Real has brought with Harmony is that they've enabled tracks bought from the Real store to play on the iPod by wrapping the AAC tracks with FairPlay DRM. The fact that the tracks cost $0.49 and are encoded at a higher bitrate makes this a good buy for anybody who isn't an Apple groupie or against DRM on principle. If you don't trust Real, then don't buy from them, but I fail to see how this is anything but a net positive for consumers. I'm amazed that there are people screaming "Please! Give me a monopoly in the digital music market!"

Real's Hypocrisy is what's so annoying

[MooseByte]

Well, their crappy products too, but hypocrisy as well.

"Proprietary is anticompetitive by definition. Apple is banking that proprietary is profitable. I'll guess we'll see if they are right.

Though cross-platform proprietary solutions are not completely anti-competitive. If every service was cross-platform, then you'd be free to choose whatever service simply worked best. That's true choice.

Frankly Real's efforts wouldn't annoy me as much if 1) They hadn't kept their own .rm format proprietary and, 2) Their crappy Rhapsody music service worked on OS other than Windows Not that I'd use it anyway, but it's funny to see them ranting for "choice" and against closed formats when they themselves pursue the opposite.

Real: "Proprietary formats are evil! (Unless they're ours)
Real: "Consumers deserve freedom of choice! (As long as you choose Windows)

Maybe they can strike a sweet cooperative deal with SCO. They could save so much by merging their PR departments, since the overlap is complete.

Re:Who would have thought

[jonadab]

It's because *nobody* can stand Real. Their software has more nag screens
than anything else you can download, and, additionally, it's feature-poor,
doesn't work well, and uses (surprise) its own proprietary format in an
attempt to lock people in. If a decent company with a useable product had
reverse-engineered Apple's DRM system, public opinion might have been rather
different, but Apple has a good reputation, and Real has such an extremely,
utterly bad reputation, they make Microsoft look like a the poster boy for
popular companies.

Why I say NO to this campaign

[NowboyKeel]

I'm all for opening up the ipod to other formats, DRM'd or otherwise. After all, who wouldn't want OGG on an ipod?

The problem is, that's not what real is doing. They're simply adding the ability to play music from their music store on the iPod. In other words, they basically just added a new proprietary format to the ipod for a store that no one likes. So real is now giving me the "choice" to buy from their store? No thanks real, when you hijacked my quicktime preferences, put spyware into your PC version, and made it near-impossible for me to find the link to your free player, you lost the moral high ground. Don't act like you're the good guy. Your store doesn't even run on my mac. Freedom of choice?

Now, if an open source group found a way to add any format of my choosing onto the ipod, I would support that. But when it's a company that's been historically evil, I'll take the chance to give them some bad publicity.

Re:apple fans

[stratjakt]

Real campaigns for "choice," but what they really want to do is license their Harmony code so that they can get on the best-selling player and shore up their flagging store, which has fewer songs than the iTMS.

So what? Why shouldnt they be allowed to?

Why shouldn't I be allowed to open my own iTunes compatible store if I wanted? Maybe I just want to sell my own bands songs, and dont want the RIAA/Apple in the middle.

Why have indy bands released CDs? Because they want to have their music heard on the best-selling players. Whats the difference, besides some irrelevant "I hate real because I downloaded something in 1998 and blah blah blah" crap?

Not just Real, anyone should be able to market tunes for the iPod if they want. Just like anyone should be able to make 3rd party ink cartridges, and publish their own PS2 games.

If the situation were reversed...

[vitaflo]

Somehow I think that if Apple had reverse engineered Real Audio and added it into Quicktime, Real would be singing a different tune (no pun intended).

Irony

[pigeon]

So I thought, ok, I am an apple user, I have an ipod, there is a valid point about companies opening up their platforms. So I thought, let's try to buy a 50 cents song on the real site. "Mac not supported". Wankers.

Re:apple fans

[stratjakt]

DRM, digital rights management. Whos rights does it manage? I was under the impression it was that of the content creators, the copyright holders. In essence, DRM is there to stop me from infringing on the artists copyrights.

But you're telling me that DRM exists for its own sake, to protect Apple from direct competition. Just like CSS on a DVD. It's to ensure complete control of the industry, not to protect actors salaries or hollywood.

Re:To Whom has Apple licensed AAC to ?

[KirkH]

You are confusing ACC and Fairplay. ACC is a compression format and is open and available for anyone to use. Fairplay is Apple's DRM and is basically proprietary, just like the grandparent poster stated.

Anyone can put make an ACC file and have it play on the iPod. What anyone cannot do is develop or sell a DRM format other than Fairplay and have the iPod understand and play it.

Apple has no control over ACC or who uses it.

Awwww. Do I have too?

[boygenius]

It's almost like when you were a kid and were about to run off with your friends and go play in the woods/creek/abandoned wherehouse and your mom made you take your little brother. But you didn't want to take your little brother because he'd get hurt and screw up your fun - but of course mom won and you had to take your little brother along so he wouldn't feel excluded.

And he got hurt, ruined all of your fun AND got you blamed for it.

I think that if I were Apple, I'd be damn scared that Real was going to bust all the damn iPods and I'd get blamed for it.

More than just the iPod?

[Anonymous Coward]

Once upon a time streaming audio was available on many sites in both Quicktime and Real. Then several major radio sites (notably NPR ) made the decision to drop Quicktime coverage, If I was Steve Jobs I'd really want to crush Real just to get a bigger market share for Quicktime. And Quicktime has got to have a huge profit margin compared to a piece of hardware. So maybe this battle is about more, and subtler, goals than just the iPod.

Re:Perspective is skewed..

[Spyritus]

Not trying to be negative, but is the base system & kernel open sourced from Apple or didn't Apple take somebody else's work and lock it down? In other words I have the understanding that Apple took FreeBSD which is somebodyelses hard work and added their own stuff on top without releasing the stuff on top or how it interacts with the stuff provided by FreeBSD, or any changes they might have made to FreeBSD to make it better.

Apple bought a company called NeXT that had a proprietary BSD386 based OS running on the Mach Micro-Kernal. In the company was an employee who had done a large amount of the original work creating the Mach Micro-kernal. Apple took the NeXTStep / OpenStep operating system as the basis for its Mac OS X operating system. Apple ported it to the PowerPC Chip sets, fused it with knowledge gained from Apple's earlier Unix OSes A/UX and MkLinux and then re-synced the userland with FreeBSD 4.x (now they sync the userland to FreeBSD 5.x).

This might need more explaining. Unlike Linux where all each distribution has the same Linix kernal (sometimes compiled in different ways, but still the same kernal code), BSD branches do NOT have the same kernal. NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, DragonflyBSD and Darwin(Mac OS X) are each different kernal code bases. Sometimes they share components / code, but mostly they do not. The different branches are designed to provide the same working userland to users and applications. By "re-synced the userland to FreeBSD" Apple did little more then confirm their OS is compatible with FreeBSD and either updated their own /bin and/usr/bin applications to feature / function compatibility with FreeBSD or ported the FreeBSD apps over, whichever made the most sense. Again all work was done by Apple Engineers.

So what Apple did was not "take somebody else's work and lock it down" but rather take the work Apple Engineers and the Engineers of a second company Apple bought (and retained the employees of) and release the code for no cost onto the internet.

OpenDarwin.org

While this is certainly valid given the license of FreeBSD, strictly speaking that's just being a thief as far as I'm concerned.(Yes I know MS has done this too with it's Unix Services layer).

If someone gives something to you for free, it is not stealing. The only people who are allowed a moral objection to how you use the freely given object are the ones who gave it to you. Far from being upset at it, BSD users "shouted for joy" that Apple choose to base their new OS on BSD. Daemon News: Apple -- What's in it for BSD?

I also understand however, that Apple has given some changes back to the KDE community for the web browser, locking up other changes however behind a proprietary license. In other words it looks to me like Apple is trying to garner some favor while stealing the "open source" community blind.

Every single piece of OpenSource software Apple has used (irrespective of the license it was released under and the requirement, or NOT, to release the code) they have release the code to. The code is available either through the Darwin OS , one of the other Apple Open Source Projects, or by giving the code back to the original developers. In addition to that Apple has also released code that was never before opensource, with projects such as OpenPlay , Darwin Streaming Server and

Charges of abuse

[inkswamp]

I keep hearing charges against Apple (some here, some on other forums around the Internet) for abusing its position. Well...

Hold on a second. Apple isn't abusing anything. They went forward into a market that just about everyone on the planet, including a lot of people posting here, said was foolish. They did so at great expense and at great potential embarrassment to themselves should it have failed. They developed iTunes, the music store, the iPod; they negotiated probably pricey agreements with music labels and more lenient DRM than most of us would have assumed possible; they sell songs, paying for the massive bandwidth, and just about break-even. They dumped cash into the R&D for this and they did it right and made a massive success out of something that everyone else had written off largely because nobody thought the P2P networks could be beaten or than nobody was interested in music that wasn't on CDs.

And now, because Apple doesn't want to let lazy, visionless competitors in on that for almost nothing, I hear claims that they are abusing their market position. Huh? If Apple had appropriated all these great ideas from a little company and used its influence and power to take over things and lock everyone into their standards, then there would be a legitimate gripe. Apple did ALL OF THIS on their own. It's their pie. And it's wrong because they won't let Real have a free slice of it? What did Real do to earn a seat at the table? Nothing.

And then I hear the argument that the iPod/iTunes is a closed system and that Real is just doing what's best for the market. That's terribly over-simplified. Until the day comes that I can't play mp3s or import CDs into an iPod or iTunes, then that complaint is meaningless. Look at Sony's music player and then tell me the iPod/iTunes system is a closed one.

My email to Real Tech Support

[fuerstma]

I have never been more enraged at a computer in my life.

Just as some background I am your target customer. I own an iPod and have purchased multiple CD's online from both the Apple iTunes Music Store and buymusic.com. I am the person you want out there yelling from the rooftops how great your product is. You're going to hear quite the opposite.

I bought into the hype from various press outlets about Real offering $.49 track downloads and $4.99 CD's. I visited your site and searched your media catalog without downloading your software. I was very impressed by the quantity of artists in your catalog. It seemed too good to be true. Mom told me what to expect when I had that feeling, but, like an idiot, I ignored mom yet again.

First, I downloaded your software. The installation can, at best, be considered painful. Two reboots! C'mon! I am doing this at work! I am supposed to put all my important projects on hold while I reboot twice just so I can start my computer again to give you money. Ridiculous. The worst part is I knew Real was likely sinking their greedy hooks deep into my system with evil DRM type underpinnings. But, once again, I ignored mom's advice to stop before I was "too deep" and continued down the path of Real evil.

So I decided to purchase a Godsmack album. $4.99. I created my Music Store account and paid for my purchase. I was pretty excited as I saw the file sizes were relatively large (as opposed to buymusic.com which obviously have fairly low bitrates). The files came down quickly from your servers.

I excitedly went to burn my CD to a CD-R. Bzzzz! No rights! No freaking rights! Yes, I am sure that is buried deep within some subclause of some clause of some crappy contract I "OK" clicked my way through, but holy cow. I cannot wait to tell the world that today, in 2004, you actually pay Real.com honest money to honestly purchase a music track and support an artist and you are rewarded with idiotic DRM that doesn't allow you to burn the tracks to a real CD. That's funny, I thought I bought a CD! Wrong!

This seriously chapped my behind and I heard my mother laughing in the back of my head. She knew how this was going to turn out, and my mother can't even turn on a computer. But she has more common sense than me and she would have steered far clear of your unReal offering.

So, continuing on, I was mightily frosted and began investigating ways to rip the tracks even with your DRM hooks clawed maniacally into my machine. (Hey, let's be realists, people are going to get the music onto CD whether you like it or not, if they are motivated. And since I was at work I figured I was doing it for the sake of science and whatnot.) I set out to play the tracks to listen to the quality, figuring I would work out a way to capture the audio stream to a WAV file and compressing it into an MP3 later. With just the Real Player running on my computer, I started playing Track #1.

My computer instantaneously shut down.

My mom is having hysterical fits of laughter at my expense by this point. Reminder to self: send mom flowers for all her great advice. She was so right.

So, there goes a few hours of work that I didn't save. Silly me I thought I was just playing a music track. I didn't realize I was connecting to the WHOPR and trying to play Global Thermonuclear War.

So I had enough hate boiled up inside of me to last the rest of the day and didn't attempt to use your crappy player again.

So, I arrive again this morn and figured I would take on "the challenge". I loaded the fugly Real Player and clicked on "Purchased Music". I selected all 11 tracks from the Godsmack album and clicked "Play Selections". I held my breath and closed my eyes and imagined a whole group of mothers laughing at me all chanting: "What do you think you are doing! You know it isn't going to work you fool!" What? It didn't crash! Yippie! Strike up the band. Oh wait... I have to login? What? What is this. Oh yes, I have to log in to your freakin site for permissio