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Ask RealNetworks CEO Rob Glaser
RealNetworks has always been more Linux-friendly than other streaming media purveyors, and is now moving closer to the open source camp with its Helix Community effort. More recently, Real has made a big media splash by selling downloadable tunes in an iPod-compatible format. Does any of this matter, considering that world + dog seems to be jumping on the downloadable multimedia bandwagon? Can Real once again become "the" streaming media leader? Will Real's 49 cent "limited time only" song download price force other music download vendors to cut their prices? We have no idea, but hopefully Rob Glaser does. He's promised to answer your questions personally (rather than have PR people speak for him). So ask whatever you like. We'll forward 10 of the highest-moderated questions to him by email and post his answers soon after he gets them back to us.
Since RealNetworks is all for "compatibility" and getting their stuff to play on the iPod, when do they plan to offer support for Macintosh users in the Rhapsody music store?
Cheers,
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
If Apple continues to make a
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fuss about this, does Real have any plans
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to develop a competing portable music player?
Rob, why doesn't Real drop all the pretense of desiring to have an interoperable solution with the Ipod and actually use one for their downloads site? The Ipod supports a few standard file formats and one DRM encumbered one. If Real were really about customer choice, they'd sell non DRM encumbered files and then be able to shout from a mountain that their music works with the Ipod as well as almost every other digital media player.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
Given the ongoing struggle for control of content distribution via proprietary formats, do you see any hope for more vendor neutral formats that don't tie customers to one particular 'technology'? It seems that constantly changing formats often have more to do with vendor lockin than genuine technological differentiation. What is Real doing to improve this situation and are other vendors likely to cooperate?
Boy, this question is really flirting with the line. Real has become one of those companies that geeks put in the catagory of "wouldn't piss on if they were on fire". How are they trying to fix those mistakes? Cutting the price isn't enough when people feel tainted for even using your product.
Never confuse volume with power.
Why does Real player force you to install 100 things you don't need and place icons everywhere, add bloated background tasks / services, insert an item into the task tray, popup daily "real news", take over major formats, etc, when many people only use it to view videos that aren't in any other format? Why don't any of the major software companies offer a lean clean, cruft free version of their software? If REAL offered that, I'd pay for the minimal version before the expanded one!
Will your company ever stop the spyware attacks on users of your products?
Why should we believe anything you say?
Real has gone from a company that I once recommended to being viewed as antagonistic with its customers. From webpages that misdirect people to the non-free Real player, to the ever bloated software, spyware etc. Now it seems as Real is going down the "me too" road, and instead of creating a product people search for, is just another pea in the iPod (sorry about the pun).
Why exactly would I look to Real for anything? What is better (other than price) about anything Real has to offer, compared to Apple, Microsoft, etc? What compelling reason do you offer for me to again look at Real?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
What prompted the creation of the Helix community? Does Real see open source as a way to differentiate themselves from Apple and Microsoft, or where there other considerations?
What would you do if the next version of Quicktime could play .rm files, even ones with DRM? Suppose that they respect the DRM, and only play on authorized computers. Suppose Quicktime Pro were capable of creating .rm files with DRM.
Why shouldn't Apple do this?
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
A long time ago, when Windows 3.1 was new, I appreciated RealPlayer for it's cutting edge technology and highly-optimized video/audio codecs.
But as time went on, Real became a company I distrusted due to their spyware-like behaviour and the fact they tried to hide options to disable said behaviour in their software.
It has gotten to the point where MANY computer users I know simply refuse to install ANY Real products on their computers anymore and even boycott web sites that offer content in Real-only format.
So, why should I trust your company now? How has any of that changed?
Thanks.
Disclaimer - The preceding may have resembled a flame or troll to those who cannot tell the difference between an honset question and a troll.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Are you concerned at all that Apple might sue Real under the DMCA for basically hacking the iPod to allow compatibility between Real and the iPod? If Apple does do this, what measures are you taking to make sure that the files people buy from Rhapsody will continue to play on their iPod after Apple locks Harmony out using a firmware update or something similar, and would you offer refunds to people with iPods who purchased music on Rhapsody?
Remember when you fired us all with no warning and stole all our stock options through a technicality?
That sucked.
Why was Real unable to license the FairPlay technology from Apple? Did Apple simply refuse, or were their terms unworkable?
I am the maverick of Slashdot
While I find it wonderful that Real has embraced Linux, your subsidiary, listen.com, seems antagonistic toward Linux, making it quite clear that they have no plans at this time to move their Rhapsody player to Linux. This tells me of a bit of a dichotomy in your company. Are there plans to resolve this?
This sig no verb.
Why is the free version the hardest version to find on your website?
Why must I choose a custom install and play a game of "catch-em-all" to avoid some of these issues?
Why does Real assume I'm interested in news, updates, libraries, or any of the nonsense that it is configured for by your company?
In short, why does Real feel the need to be so Obnoxious? These are "real" questions posed by "real" users, like here and supported by your own employees!
Strategically speaking, Real doesn't look to be in a very promising position. Its technology, once unique (RealAudio), is now ubiquitous. Its marketing has been, by any account of which I am aware, a disaster. Now it seems like there is no area in which Real has any real strength or over its competitors - RealMedia is eclipsed by Windows Media, iTunes rules the day in downloading and Microsoft is entering that market as well.
Rob, what advantages does Real bring to the table? What can Real do that no other company can do? Why does Real exist? What the hell are you doing?
There's a lot of spin going on at Real's new Freedom of Music Choice site. Clearly, Real was not expecting such a profound and immediate backlash. It must be frustrating that Apple gets to be both an underdog and a monopoly at the same time. But despite the feel good claims on your Freedom site (did you really write those?), your price drop, reverse engineering, and activism are hardly riling up the public. What have you learned from this?
Regarding your little PR war with Apple: Did you ever consider the stunning hypocrisy of your publicly complaining that Apple doesn't offer its users choice of online music stores, and then turning around and making a music store that only supports computers that run Windows?
How successful os the Real Movies partnership with Starz? I am a paid subscriber, and so far the service has been pretty impressive - I can download a 100 movies at any point, and 25 new ones are added each week. Are there any future plans for the Starz/Real partnership?
Will you offer the movies that currently play in movie theaters for additional fees? Will you offer the movies that just came out on DVDs?
Will you promote independent movies and if I work for an independent studio, how can we strike a partnership with Real Networks to distribute the content to your subscribers in some affordable way?
There is a really wierd thing with real website. They have a different website depending og whenewer you are located in europa or usa.
The one you got if you visit from Europa(Atleast from denmark) you got the "old" real site which show 3 "Free download" 14 days trial" which ask you all kind of questions before it allow you to download the thing that only work 14 days anyway.
But the eu version of the site have a option to "change your location" and if you choose u.s.a as location it will bring you to the frontpage that got the "one link download"
Ofcause a interesting question to real would be: Why the difference. Why do we in EU still have to put up with all that crap just to download real?Rob, What will you do when Apple breaks your downloaded files with an iPod update? Will you refund the customers money if the files do not play. Since you have burned your bridge in licensing fairplay what will happen when your reversing engineering rises to the level of code theft?
And as a side question, How come your company sued another company reverse engineering your codecs? Seems what should be good for the goose should be good for the gander.
When I was hired at Real the stock price was around $52-$54 dollars per share. I was given 10,000 shares in exchange for lower pay. Later the stock tanked, diving down to $9 per share.
Real then did what was viewed at the time as the coolest thing ever: The stock re-entrant program thingy (I forget exactly what it was called.) What it meant was that whatever the stock price was on August 31st of that year would be retroactively applied to our shares, including those that had already vested.
Rock on. Quite a few of us signed up for it on the promise of making our now-worthless shares valuable again. There was some fine print, of course. We had to remain employed at Real or we would lose all our stock, including vested shares.
The bastards fired us one month before the deadline. No warning. Our floor managers didn't even know until that morning that 15% of the entire company would be layed off that day.
I went out for lunch (yummy fish tacos!) and when I returned there was a group of employees and some security guards outside the front door. They weren't letting anyone in. After half an hour word spread that there were layoffs happening but we didn't have any details.
Finally a guy in a really expensive suit came down and told us to go home. We be getting a phone call later that evening to let us know if we still had a job.
The next day I was unemployeed and competing with 30,000 other out-of-work programmers in the Seattle area for jobs.
Now I'm back in Montana making $9/hr and eating a fair amount of ramen.
Real is one of the few companies left that controls a common file format and doesn't also publish an OS. And they're everywhere, from Amazon to NPR. Spyware? DRM? Distractions. This is the ball game. Nothing else matters.
In this time of ethics (and their lack) at the corporate level, how do you feel Real measures up in having EARNED (not just claimed) customer trust.
Do you compare yourselves to folks like Google who even my mother trusts totally?
I ask this in light of your consistent corporate behavior, which has included:
- You used to spam me to no end. And this spamming was EPIC, I still can not believe how much junk you, and how impossible it was to stop getting it.
- Your player started taking over my system, including "important" pop up messages in my "message center" that were nothing but commercial pitches. Do you have any idea what is important in people's lives? Not buying more goldpass/superpass combo's!
- This behavior was clearly calculated, and the options to disable this bloated junk was extremely hard to access or enable (it poped up a warning dialog).
- The fact that corporate help desk folks shudder when end users express install the end user version of the real player virus on their PC's.
- The fact that when I visit older folks I inevitably find that their system has been taken over by Real, and that in addition to the desktop, system tray, message center junk, the associations they have selected (IMAGES in Realplayer? please) make no sense.
Have you focused on serving your customers, or screwing the folks who installed your software for as much cash as you could get from them while hiding behind claims of "features" and "benefits".
Before you claim trust, you have to change the people behind the claim.