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Rob Glaser Responds, Talks Up Real Networks
The 10 questions we sent Real Networks CEO Rob Glaser were selected from 37 that were moderated +5 about 24 hours after we posted the "call for questions" last week. As promised, Glaser answered them himself rather than through PR people, but since part of a CEO's job is to be his company's number one booster it's not surprising that his answers have a high PR component to them; yours would too if you were in his position.
1) Apple Support - by ack154
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?
Glaser:
No plans as of now.
We're one of the most active Mac ISVs around, with our RealPlayer running on millions of Macs. We also offer our Superpass and RadioPass premium content products, and we offer more than 45 premium downloadable Mac games such as Shape Shifter, Bounce Out Blitz, and Text Twist.
Having said that, since the Mac is such a small part of the overall market, we make practical decisions about what functionality and services we offer on the Mac. So far, offering a music store or the Rhapsody subscription service on the Mac hasn't made the cut.
2) It still comes down to price, for a lot of us - by erick99
How much wiggle room is there in the pricing of the songs? Forty-nine cents a song has made me a customer of Real's for now ( I haven't tried any .99 cent services - don't want to pay that much). I know it's unlikely that music can be sold that inexpensively but we know it doesn't have to be .99 since WalMart is doing .88. So, I am wondering what RealNetworks' pricing strategy will be. While I understand you cannot differentiate on price alone, the rest isn't going to matter if the price is .99. I just won't buy at that price (yes, obviously others will, but I maintain that multiples more will at a sustained, lower price).
Glaser:
Here's a long answer to a short question.
The music industry supports 2 models of legitimately selling music services that allow consumers to listen to a jukebox in the sky (but not keep the music), and services that sell a permanent copy of the song to the consumer. We have 2 different services depending on which model consumers want.
The best deal out there today for price-sensitive customers who love music is our Rhapsody music service (www.Rhapsody.com). It is a jukebox in the sky type of service that allows consumers to listen to as much music as they want for a fixed price of $10/month. Then, when consumers find a song they want to own permanently, the song costs 79 cents, basically a membership discount for Rhapsody subscribers.
After just a year of us running the Rhapsody service (We acquired listen.com last August), we have hundreds of thousands of Rhapsody subscribers who get great value out of the service. In fact, our average Rhapsody subscriber listens to over 200 songs/month, including over 100 different songs. If the consumer had to purchase all those different songs they'd be paying over 10 times as much as what Rhapsody costs.
Our RealPlayer Music Store is a pure example of the second model. As part of our introduction of our Harmony technology (which allows digital songs to play on a virtually any popular MP3 player), we put every song in the store on sale at 49 cents. The promotion was a smashing success, resulting in us selling over 3 million songs in about 3 weeks.
The 49 cent for everything promotion is now over, but it was such a big success that we decided to continue to feature a Top 10 list of songs for 49 cents each, with the rest of the songs back at the usual price. This is also going well and our store sales are well ahead of where they were before we launched Harmony, which says to us that a lot of people like what Harmony offers and are going to continue to buy from us for reasons of more than just price.
Now let me answer your question about why songs cost 99 cents (or 88 cents or 79 cents, but not usually 49 cents). Selling songs legitimately consists of 3 components: the cost of the recording, which we usually pay to the record company (who then pays the artist); "publishing" cost which goes to the company that owns the rights to the musical composition (who pays the song writer); and other costs such as credit card fees, bandwidth, and technical support.
While wholesale prices vary depending on the label, today most labels charge approximately 65-70 cents per song. Publishing costs a fixed rate of about 9 cents per song. And the other costs average a few pennies per song. Thus, as we have made clear, selling every song in our store for 49 cents a song is not sustainable unless/until the labels change their pricing philosophy.
Based on the data we've seen, we think, long-term, the pricing that will result in the biggest overall market for music will involve some kind of tiered pricing new mainstream songs for 99 cents retail, and up-and-coming artists and back catalog artists at a lower price.
We are working with the labels to prove this to them. We think over time we will succeed, but it will take time. The more that customers support our efforts both directly (by voting with your wallets) and by communicating directly to the music industry, the better.
3) Media formats and proprietary control - by Performer Guy
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 lock-in than genuine technological differentiation. What is Real doing to improve this situation and are other vendors likely to cooperate?
Glaser:
We have done a number of things in the past few years to address interoperability and to move digital media toward much better and stronger interoperability while also supporting open source development on our platform through the Helix open source licensing program.
The single biggest thing we've done in the past year -- and maybe ever -- was to create Harmony, which (as you probably know) is a technology that translates between the main secure audio content formats Helix DRM, Windows Media DRM, and Apple's DRM.
Going back a few years, we took the core of our media delivery system, Helix, and made it open source. We then built a universal media delivery system -- Helix Universal Server -- on top of that platform. What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology for Helix to a community-based approach. Indeed, we strongly encourage slashdot readers to join the Helix community at helixcommunity.org, as thousands of developers have already done.
We also have been active supporters and drivers of a number of open industry standards including RTSP for streaming and UPnP for media delivery across devices.
We think these initiatives are consistent with where the net is going much more focus on open systems and open formats, and much more focus on interoperability.
Unfortunately, competitors of ours such as Apple and Microsoft haven't followed suit. They have their own reasons for this. Apple apparently is focused on controlling an end-to-end secure music system, and Microsoft is focused on extending their proprietary Windows platform everywhere.
In light of this, we remain committed to enhancing interoperability and openness wherever it makes sense. However, what we haven't done is "unilaterally disarm" in the way that, for instance, Netscape did. All that would do is allow competitors with proprietary agendas to "embrace and extend" on top of our formats, while keeping their own proprietary, which ultimately wouldn't achieve anything.
4) Turnabout? - by Elwood P Dowd
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?
Glaser:
We would be happy to cross-license our DRM and formats to Apple to enable exactly the kind of interoperability you propose.
As has been widely reported, we approached Apple about licensing their DRM several months ago. It was only after they rebuffed those initiatives that we came out with Harmony, which implemented software compatibility with their DRM as well as with Microsoft's.
5) Why is Real's software so intrusive? - by jerkychew
I've been in the computer industry since 1995 or so. In that time, I've seen lots of software come and go, and lots of less-than-ethical tricks to keep users hooked on one piece of software instead of another. In my 9 years or so, I've never seen any product as consistently sneaky as Real's media player. I remember back when RealAudio would make itself the default player for every media type it could without asking, which would annoy the tech-savvy user and scare those of us that are less technical.
While it seems that Real has backed its intrusiveness down a notch during the install, I still feel like Real is telling me what to do on my computer instead of the other way around. For example - Telling Real not to start when windows starts is no easy task. I have to go through 3 or four submenus in the preferences until I find the vaguely-named SmartCenter (or StartCenter? I don't have a machine handy to doublecheck the name). Even then, when I tell it not to start with Windows, I am greeted by a scary warning message. Even with SmartCenter disabled, Real's update service still lives in my registry, starting every time I boot windows.
So my question is, why try so hard to force your software on the user? Is it worth the market share to anger and confuse your core audience? Mention Real to the average user, and their first response is "I hate that software. I wish I knew how to delete it."
I've always been taught that it's best to make your customers happy, instead of holding them hostage. Does your business model say otherwise?
Glaser:
We have put a lot of effort into making our users happy and in giving users lots of choice in how they install and use our software. We have learned a lot over the years and I think if you look at RealPlayer 10 for Windows, Mac, or Linux carefully, you would find that it gives users much more choice and control over how our player works than any other major media player, including Microsoft's Windows Media Player or Apple's iTunes.
While I'm not 100% sure, from your description it sounds like you have a previous version of RealPlayer. In RealPlayer 10, the user can select Tools/Preferences/Automatic Services and configure all of the background activity, including features that remain active when RP is not running. With just a couple of mouseclicks, the user can disable all background services.
Compare how our software works to Microsoft's. Have you ever tried to "uninstall" Windows Media Player? All Windows does, in its own words, is "removes access to Windows Media Player from the Start Menu and Desktop," yet it doesn't actually get rid of the software. If you uninstall RealPlayer, we uninstall the whole enchilada. Same with mime types: we ask you what mime types you want our player to play, and then we only play those. On the other hand, when you upgrade your version of Windows, it takes the mime types it wants to without even asking. What's more, we've been told by reliable sources that Microsoft writes into its contracts with computer OEMs that the OEM MUST make Windows Media Player the default player for major mime types, otherwise the OEM doesn't get access to critical marketing funds that every PC manufacturer needs to stay in business.
Regarding your question of why we have put the features you want on specific menus, I will ask the guy who runs our player product group to take a close look at how we can make control of the specific features you have described even more obvious. My guess would be that the tradeoff is making the features available to technical users without confusing average users. Even so, we'll try to do even better next time. I promise that we will do our best to keep improving our software for both regular consumers and technical users.
6) Helix - by MikeMacK
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?
Glaser:
Our reasons for creating the Helix community and to making the core of our system open source are the reasons best described in Eric Raymond's classic manifesto The Cathedral & the Bazaar (I imagine you all have memorized your favorite link to it, but in case not: http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/community/cathedral/whitepaper_cathedral.html).
Basically we realized about 3 years ago that digital media was becoming huge and ultimately it made much more sense for us to open up our system so it could be the foundation of great work by everyone rather than the work done just by our company and close allies.
What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology to a community-based approach for Helix. Three years and tens of thousands of Helix community members later, we've made lots of progress. We know that this is a long-term process and that proprietary-based media delivery systems won't go away anytime soon. But this is no different than the Linux versus Windows battle.
7) Legality of Harmony - by halo1982
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?
Glaser:
The legality of Harmony under the DMCA is well established in law. It's important to understand that Harmony simply added a new way to secure the content we've licensed from music companies. We didn't mess with the locks on any of Apple's music. The DMCA contains a specific provision enabling companies to create just this kind of interoperability. Take a look at a recent case, Chamberlain v. Skylink, which describes how courts look at this in the real world.
We think it would be extremely anti-consumer for Apple to stop the music by intentionally breaking compatibility with Harmony. In the event that they do, we have a comprehensive plan in place, but it's not appropriate for me to go into details now. I will point out that Harmony will continue to work for any current iPod user who chooses to have RealPlayer manage that iPod (and who doesn't use iTunes, a future version of which might be the vehicle that Apple would use to break compatibility).
8) Nice, but.... - by dacarr
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?
Glaser:
I don't think it's about one division at Real versus another. It's about software versus services. We have made a significant commitment to delivering Linux versions of our software products on both the client and server side, and we're grateful for the support we've received from the linux community.
Delivering consumer services on Linux would be a new step for us; indeed, there are very few content services available today for Linux, reflecting the fact that the Linux desktop market is still quite nascent.
So, what we're doing now is looking at ways in which our Linux efforts can gather enough momentum that makes this a simpler decision. We're working closely with the Linux distributors to grow the market for Linux desktops by having a solid media player solution. And we're investigating which of our service offerings we can offer to Linux users in a cost-effective manner. Our goal is to start building a direct revenue base that we can then use to fund more ambitious efforts.
9) Lessons learned from astroturfing - by michaeldouma
There's a lot of spin going on at Real's new Freedom of Music Choice [freedomofmusicchoice.org] site. Clearly, Real was not expecting such a profound and immediate [slashdot.org] backlash. It must be frustrating [slashdot.org] that Apple gets to be both an underdog and a monopoly at the same time. But despite the feel good claims [freedomofmusicchoice.org] 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?
Glaser:
We're very happy with how our freedom of choice campaign for Harmony has worked. As you know, we sold over 3 million songs in 3 weeks, well beyond our expectations. Moreover, the tens of thousands of users who have bought songs from us and are continuing to enjoy the benefits of Harmony speak for themselves.
It's certainly true that a small group of Mac lovers gave us a hard time for criticizing Apple. This isn't that surprising because Mac users are very sensitive anytime anyone criticizes Apple, I guess because they emotionally identify with Apple as the "underdog" versus Microsoft. But for every Mac user who didn't like our criticizing Apple, there were literally hundreds of Windows users who enjoyed Harmony, including iPod users who sent us their comments (see http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases/2004/real_3million.html).
The campaign was successful because consumers really do want choice. We hired an independent research firm to ask internet consumers about this. 96% of portable device owner said they thought they should be able to move music they bought to any device, which gives us great confidence that we're on the right side of history.
10) Strategy Question - by Anonymous Coward
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?
Glaser:
Well, your question has more than a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" feel to it, but I'll address the core question, which is what are we trying to do and how are we doing.
Since many SlashDot readers don't necessarily read all the details of our financial statements, let me talk a bit about our business. 2004 is on track to be the biggest revenue year in our history. In the first half of the year we had sales of $125.9 million. Our second quarter sales were 65.5 million, which is 32% over our revenue for the same quarter last year. We ended the quarter with over 1.4 million subscribers to our premium services, including over 550,000 subscribers to our music services, both of which were records and make us #1 in the business.
In terms of our products, Rhapsody is not only #1 in subscribers, it also wins pretty much every review as the music service that is best and easiest to use. RealPlayer 10 was also PC Magazine's editors' choice and also many other awards.
Of course we have competitors if we were a monopoly you would have other reasons to criticize us. :)
Having said that, we're as different from our competitors as Yahoo is from its competitors. We're focused on creating services that deliver great experiences to consumers regardless of what platform they use. This is very different from either Apple or Microsoft, both of whom center their services on their proprietary platforms (Mac/iPod in Apple's case, Windows in Microsoft's case).
I started RealNetworks more than ten years ago because I believe strongly that the Internet can and will transform how people experience media, giving them unprecedented control over what audio and video they experience, and when, where, and how they experience it. While there have been many twists and turns along the way, we're very pleased with the progress we're making both as a company and as an industry. And we feel great about the opportunities in front of us.
With that, I'd like to that you all for your questions and for taking the time to read and think.
Best,
Rob
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?
Glaser:
No plans as of now.
We're one of the most active Mac ISVs around, with our RealPlayer running on millions of Macs. We also offer our Superpass and RadioPass premium content products, and we offer more than 45 premium downloadable Mac games such as Shape Shifter, Bounce Out Blitz, and Text Twist.
Having said that, since the Mac is such a small part of the overall market, we make practical decisions about what functionality and services we offer on the Mac. So far, offering a music store or the Rhapsody subscription service on the Mac hasn't made the cut.
2) It still comes down to price, for a lot of us - by erick99
How much wiggle room is there in the pricing of the songs? Forty-nine cents a song has made me a customer of Real's for now ( I haven't tried any .99 cent services - don't want to pay that much). I know it's unlikely that music can be sold that inexpensively but we know it doesn't have to be .99 since WalMart is doing .88. So, I am wondering what RealNetworks' pricing strategy will be. While I understand you cannot differentiate on price alone, the rest isn't going to matter if the price is .99. I just won't buy at that price (yes, obviously others will, but I maintain that multiples more will at a sustained, lower price).
Glaser:
Here's a long answer to a short question.
The music industry supports 2 models of legitimately selling music services that allow consumers to listen to a jukebox in the sky (but not keep the music), and services that sell a permanent copy of the song to the consumer. We have 2 different services depending on which model consumers want.
The best deal out there today for price-sensitive customers who love music is our Rhapsody music service (www.Rhapsody.com). It is a jukebox in the sky type of service that allows consumers to listen to as much music as they want for a fixed price of $10/month. Then, when consumers find a song they want to own permanently, the song costs 79 cents, basically a membership discount for Rhapsody subscribers.
After just a year of us running the Rhapsody service (We acquired listen.com last August), we have hundreds of thousands of Rhapsody subscribers who get great value out of the service. In fact, our average Rhapsody subscriber listens to over 200 songs/month, including over 100 different songs. If the consumer had to purchase all those different songs they'd be paying over 10 times as much as what Rhapsody costs.
Our RealPlayer Music Store is a pure example of the second model. As part of our introduction of our Harmony technology (which allows digital songs to play on a virtually any popular MP3 player), we put every song in the store on sale at 49 cents. The promotion was a smashing success, resulting in us selling over 3 million songs in about 3 weeks.
The 49 cent for everything promotion is now over, but it was such a big success that we decided to continue to feature a Top 10 list of songs for 49 cents each, with the rest of the songs back at the usual price. This is also going well and our store sales are well ahead of where they were before we launched Harmony, which says to us that a lot of people like what Harmony offers and are going to continue to buy from us for reasons of more than just price.
Now let me answer your question about why songs cost 99 cents (or 88 cents or 79 cents, but not usually 49 cents). Selling songs legitimately consists of 3 components: the cost of the recording, which we usually pay to the record company (who then pays the artist); "publishing" cost which goes to the company that owns the rights to the musical composition (who pays the song writer); and other costs such as credit card fees, bandwidth, and technical support.
While wholesale prices vary depending on the label, today most labels charge approximately 65-70 cents per song. Publishing costs a fixed rate of about 9 cents per song. And the other costs average a few pennies per song. Thus, as we have made clear, selling every song in our store for 49 cents a song is not sustainable unless/until the labels change their pricing philosophy.
Based on the data we've seen, we think, long-term, the pricing that will result in the biggest overall market for music will involve some kind of tiered pricing new mainstream songs for 99 cents retail, and up-and-coming artists and back catalog artists at a lower price.
We are working with the labels to prove this to them. We think over time we will succeed, but it will take time. The more that customers support our efforts both directly (by voting with your wallets) and by communicating directly to the music industry, the better.
3) Media formats and proprietary control - by Performer Guy
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 lock-in than genuine technological differentiation. What is Real doing to improve this situation and are other vendors likely to cooperate?
Glaser:
We have done a number of things in the past few years to address interoperability and to move digital media toward much better and stronger interoperability while also supporting open source development on our platform through the Helix open source licensing program.
The single biggest thing we've done in the past year -- and maybe ever -- was to create Harmony, which (as you probably know) is a technology that translates between the main secure audio content formats Helix DRM, Windows Media DRM, and Apple's DRM.
Going back a few years, we took the core of our media delivery system, Helix, and made it open source. We then built a universal media delivery system -- Helix Universal Server -- on top of that platform. What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology for Helix to a community-based approach. Indeed, we strongly encourage slashdot readers to join the Helix community at helixcommunity.org, as thousands of developers have already done.
We also have been active supporters and drivers of a number of open industry standards including RTSP for streaming and UPnP for media delivery across devices.
We think these initiatives are consistent with where the net is going much more focus on open systems and open formats, and much more focus on interoperability.
Unfortunately, competitors of ours such as Apple and Microsoft haven't followed suit. They have their own reasons for this. Apple apparently is focused on controlling an end-to-end secure music system, and Microsoft is focused on extending their proprietary Windows platform everywhere.
In light of this, we remain committed to enhancing interoperability and openness wherever it makes sense. However, what we haven't done is "unilaterally disarm" in the way that, for instance, Netscape did. All that would do is allow competitors with proprietary agendas to "embrace and extend" on top of our formats, while keeping their own proprietary, which ultimately wouldn't achieve anything.
4) Turnabout? - by Elwood P Dowd
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?
Glaser:
We would be happy to cross-license our DRM and formats to Apple to enable exactly the kind of interoperability you propose.
As has been widely reported, we approached Apple about licensing their DRM several months ago. It was only after they rebuffed those initiatives that we came out with Harmony, which implemented software compatibility with their DRM as well as with Microsoft's.
5) Why is Real's software so intrusive? - by jerkychew
I've been in the computer industry since 1995 or so. In that time, I've seen lots of software come and go, and lots of less-than-ethical tricks to keep users hooked on one piece of software instead of another. In my 9 years or so, I've never seen any product as consistently sneaky as Real's media player. I remember back when RealAudio would make itself the default player for every media type it could without asking, which would annoy the tech-savvy user and scare those of us that are less technical.
While it seems that Real has backed its intrusiveness down a notch during the install, I still feel like Real is telling me what to do on my computer instead of the other way around. For example - Telling Real not to start when windows starts is no easy task. I have to go through 3 or four submenus in the preferences until I find the vaguely-named SmartCenter (or StartCenter? I don't have a machine handy to doublecheck the name). Even then, when I tell it not to start with Windows, I am greeted by a scary warning message. Even with SmartCenter disabled, Real's update service still lives in my registry, starting every time I boot windows.
So my question is, why try so hard to force your software on the user? Is it worth the market share to anger and confuse your core audience? Mention Real to the average user, and their first response is "I hate that software. I wish I knew how to delete it."
I've always been taught that it's best to make your customers happy, instead of holding them hostage. Does your business model say otherwise?
Glaser:
We have put a lot of effort into making our users happy and in giving users lots of choice in how they install and use our software. We have learned a lot over the years and I think if you look at RealPlayer 10 for Windows, Mac, or Linux carefully, you would find that it gives users much more choice and control over how our player works than any other major media player, including Microsoft's Windows Media Player or Apple's iTunes.
While I'm not 100% sure, from your description it sounds like you have a previous version of RealPlayer. In RealPlayer 10, the user can select Tools/Preferences/Automatic Services and configure all of the background activity, including features that remain active when RP is not running. With just a couple of mouseclicks, the user can disable all background services.
Compare how our software works to Microsoft's. Have you ever tried to "uninstall" Windows Media Player? All Windows does, in its own words, is "removes access to Windows Media Player from the Start Menu and Desktop," yet it doesn't actually get rid of the software. If you uninstall RealPlayer, we uninstall the whole enchilada. Same with mime types: we ask you what mime types you want our player to play, and then we only play those. On the other hand, when you upgrade your version of Windows, it takes the mime types it wants to without even asking. What's more, we've been told by reliable sources that Microsoft writes into its contracts with computer OEMs that the OEM MUST make Windows Media Player the default player for major mime types, otherwise the OEM doesn't get access to critical marketing funds that every PC manufacturer needs to stay in business.
Regarding your question of why we have put the features you want on specific menus, I will ask the guy who runs our player product group to take a close look at how we can make control of the specific features you have described even more obvious. My guess would be that the tradeoff is making the features available to technical users without confusing average users. Even so, we'll try to do even better next time. I promise that we will do our best to keep improving our software for both regular consumers and technical users.
6) Helix - by MikeMacK
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?
Glaser:
Our reasons for creating the Helix community and to making the core of our system open source are the reasons best described in Eric Raymond's classic manifesto The Cathedral & the Bazaar (I imagine you all have memorized your favorite link to it, but in case not: http://www.redhat.com/support/wpapers/community/cathedral/whitepaper_cathedral.html).
Basically we realized about 3 years ago that digital media was becoming huge and ultimately it made much more sense for us to open up our system so it could be the foundation of great work by everyone rather than the work done just by our company and close allies.
What's more, we fundamentally changed our software development methodology to a community-based approach for Helix. Three years and tens of thousands of Helix community members later, we've made lots of progress. We know that this is a long-term process and that proprietary-based media delivery systems won't go away anytime soon. But this is no different than the Linux versus Windows battle.
7) Legality of Harmony - by halo1982
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?
Glaser:
The legality of Harmony under the DMCA is well established in law. It's important to understand that Harmony simply added a new way to secure the content we've licensed from music companies. We didn't mess with the locks on any of Apple's music. The DMCA contains a specific provision enabling companies to create just this kind of interoperability. Take a look at a recent case, Chamberlain v. Skylink, which describes how courts look at this in the real world.
We think it would be extremely anti-consumer for Apple to stop the music by intentionally breaking compatibility with Harmony. In the event that they do, we have a comprehensive plan in place, but it's not appropriate for me to go into details now. I will point out that Harmony will continue to work for any current iPod user who chooses to have RealPlayer manage that iPod (and who doesn't use iTunes, a future version of which might be the vehicle that Apple would use to break compatibility).
8) Nice, but.... - by dacarr
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?
Glaser:
I don't think it's about one division at Real versus another. It's about software versus services. We have made a significant commitment to delivering Linux versions of our software products on both the client and server side, and we're grateful for the support we've received from the linux community.
Delivering consumer services on Linux would be a new step for us; indeed, there are very few content services available today for Linux, reflecting the fact that the Linux desktop market is still quite nascent.
So, what we're doing now is looking at ways in which our Linux efforts can gather enough momentum that makes this a simpler decision. We're working closely with the Linux distributors to grow the market for Linux desktops by having a solid media player solution. And we're investigating which of our service offerings we can offer to Linux users in a cost-effective manner. Our goal is to start building a direct revenue base that we can then use to fund more ambitious efforts.
9) Lessons learned from astroturfing - by michaeldouma
There's a lot of spin going on at Real's new Freedom of Music Choice [freedomofmusicchoice.org] site. Clearly, Real was not expecting such a profound and immediate [slashdot.org] backlash. It must be frustrating [slashdot.org] that Apple gets to be both an underdog and a monopoly at the same time. But despite the feel good claims [freedomofmusicchoice.org] 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?
Glaser:
We're very happy with how our freedom of choice campaign for Harmony has worked. As you know, we sold over 3 million songs in 3 weeks, well beyond our expectations. Moreover, the tens of thousands of users who have bought songs from us and are continuing to enjoy the benefits of Harmony speak for themselves.
It's certainly true that a small group of Mac lovers gave us a hard time for criticizing Apple. This isn't that surprising because Mac users are very sensitive anytime anyone criticizes Apple, I guess because they emotionally identify with Apple as the "underdog" versus Microsoft. But for every Mac user who didn't like our criticizing Apple, there were literally hundreds of Windows users who enjoyed Harmony, including iPod users who sent us their comments (see http://www.realnetworks.com/company/press/releases/2004/real_3million.html).
The campaign was successful because consumers really do want choice. We hired an independent research firm to ask internet consumers about this. 96% of portable device owner said they thought they should be able to move music they bought to any device, which gives us great confidence that we're on the right side of history.
10) Strategy Question - by Anonymous Coward
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?
Glaser:
Well, your question has more than a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" feel to it, but I'll address the core question, which is what are we trying to do and how are we doing.
Since many SlashDot readers don't necessarily read all the details of our financial statements, let me talk a bit about our business. 2004 is on track to be the biggest revenue year in our history. In the first half of the year we had sales of $125.9 million. Our second quarter sales were 65.5 million, which is 32% over our revenue for the same quarter last year. We ended the quarter with over 1.4 million subscribers to our premium services, including over 550,000 subscribers to our music services, both of which were records and make us #1 in the business.
In terms of our products, Rhapsody is not only #1 in subscribers, it also wins pretty much every review as the music service that is best and easiest to use. RealPlayer 10 was also PC Magazine's editors' choice and also many other awards.
Of course we have competitors if we were a monopoly you would have other reasons to criticize us. :)
Having said that, we're as different from our competitors as Yahoo is from its competitors. We're focused on creating services that deliver great experiences to consumers regardless of what platform they use. This is very different from either Apple or Microsoft, both of whom center their services on their proprietary platforms (Mac/iPod in Apple's case, Windows in Microsoft's case).
I started RealNetworks more than ten years ago because I believe strongly that the Internet can and will transform how people experience media, giving them unprecedented control over what audio and video they experience, and when, where, and how they experience it. While there have been many twists and turns along the way, we're very pleased with the progress we're making both as a company and as an industry. And we feel great about the opportunities in front of us.
With that, I'd like to that you all for your questions and for taking the time to read and think.
Best,
Rob
He wants Apple to let him install his music on the iPod, but won't let us install it on our Mac OS computers.
...with the software. His recall of the procedures on how to disable certain features is certainly impressiv------------*buffering*
-Randy
I know that if you have time to add such 'comments' as "it's not surprising that his answers have a high PR component to them; " that you should have time to dupe check...
/., I really really do.
Seriously, why add that? Nothing like that was added to the CA interview and the CA VP didn't anything important about anything, it was just 100% PR BS.
I miss the old
I don't know about anyone else, but I really respect Rob's answers. I think that we threw a lot of hard questions at him and he answered each one without avoiding the issues. Even the questions which would have just offended many CEO's were answered in a very professional manor. I might have to take a second look at Real, even though I swore several years ago to never install another copy of the Real player.
Obviously you missed reading the interview too because someone asked that question.
The icons are also annoying, but the quick launch/desktop/start menu icon insertion is pretty standard for software installs.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
Unless you use a Mac, that is. Then you can't get our music, because you're obviously a drooling fanboy who used our stupid petition to bash us.
I don't believe he wrote this. Maybe he got the questions, and wrote a memo, but it had to have passed through PR before getting to /.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
...you must give Real your email address and allow them to install some executables into your startup folder.
Real player (The RealONE) looks good and its easy to use, but they still need to work with that video format because it's really fuzzy, then, they should work on the audio/video streaming system and they also need to improve the audio quality.
If they work on all those features, i would even download the software for my daily use (i use WMPlayer and iTunes a lot).
Sorry for my bad english.
me 2!!1!
I was rather impressed. He answered every question, though occasionally obliquely to avoid portions of the question that are harder to put into a good light...
However, I will never install Real again, no matter what media I could see with it. The company has destroyed my trust in them in the past; and while they may no longer be deserving of unmitigated loathing, I cannot bring myself to trust them far enough to install them. Once bitten, twice shy.
Raven
"I will trust Google to 'do no evil' until the founders no longer run it." Hello Alphabet.
"Compare how our software works to Microsoft's. Have you ever tried to "uninstall" Windows Media Player?"
Comparing something to a turd does not make it smell like roses.
Anything is possible given time and money.
Haha, take another look at his response to the question about the obscene invasiveness of Real Player.
He avoids answering why Real has taken over your computer by default for the past 5 or so years, insisting that NOW everything is a-okay (arguable). And then to throw keen-eyed slashdotters off the trail he bashes microsoft a little so that you forget about it. Tell me this guy doesn't know how to cater to the slashdot audience!
The thing is, the comparison to WMP isn't really appropriate since the question's complaint wasn't at all about the uninstallation procedure, it was about the invasiveness of running the program. The fact that you can't easily uninstall WMP is an entirely different evil. When was the last time you've heard somebody complain about the Window's Media Player Messaging Center popping up with ads and shit? Or the last time WMP decided that it should be the program that you view JPEGs in?
Are you also annoyed that you have to chew your food?
I've got things that really bug me bout Windows but it tends to be the ones that Microsoft (or company X) won't let me adjust/fix. For example, on my home system something keeps taking away Mozilla as my default mail handler.
Install the software and remove the icons you don't want. Simple.
Overall, I thought he did an OK job answering questions.
But in the very last question he just seemed wrong:
Having said that, we're as different from our competitors as Yahoo is from its competitors. We're focused on creating services that deliver great experiences to consumers regardless of what platform they use. This is very different from either Apple or Microsoft, both of whom center their services on their proprietary platforms (Mac/iPod in Apple's case, Windows in Microsoft's case).
It seems to me that Apple is actually very focused on the Windows platform, at least in terms of iTunes and ITMS and the iPod. Now if he'd mentioned PLAYER platforms, I think his point would have hit home a lot more.
If terms of store support, ITMS is more cross platform than any other service (well, apart from the dark horse AllOfMP3.com or Emusic - perhaps I should say "major onlne music service").
Come to think of it, I wish someone had asked him how they plan to compete against AllOfMP3.com.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Real Player 10 is really nice on Linux. I am pretty impressed by it. I mean, it has completely changed my view on Real. It just does what its supposed to and nothing else (and it supports ogg and theora, a big plus in my book). Has anyone had any issues with it? I seriously cannot find any major flaw with it.
Regards,
Steve
Is it just me, or does he seem to magically side step a lot of issues brought up by comparing how much *cough* "better" Real is to the other players? Specifically, I'm thinking of #5.
The basic point is customer credability is earned, not claimed.
Not to beat a dead horse, but Real as a company seem to have some of the worst standards out there in terms of how they treat their customers.
They purposly took the most agressive approach to making money, and the least user friendly approach (ie, message center important alerts which always turned out to be about superpass combos, they used to spam me non-stop without letup, taking over associations left and right on express installs).
Behind these decisions to screw over users were people who said, make it impossible to disable / uninstall this feature.
My question was (and was rated +5 but not picked),
"Until the people change, why should we think you've changed? Have you fired people? Admitted past mistakes? Will future features be honest features, or 'features' designed to make us all miserable?"
Interesting stuff to think of the people making these types of decisions...
As a note, if you ever want to know which companies take over computers in non userfriendly ways go to a senior center and look at the computers. Claria / Realplayer / Spyware paradise.
I agree that this is hypocritical, but look at it this way:
1. Real getting into the iPod market provides an immediate benefit for Real (and its customers), as it lets Real reach a very significant percentage of current and future MP3 owners.
Clearly this is good for Real's bottom line.
2. Real entering the Apple market by supporting OSX (or other MacOS) customers is not as immediate a benefit for Real, as making a significant ROI would be like trying to push water uphill.
There are several reasons for this, including the relative size of the OSX market to the Windows market, the competition, the resources it would divert from other projects, etc. In other words, the number of sales that Real could hope to get from the small minority of potential customers that own Macs, want to buy music online, and are willing to shift allegiances from iTMS to Rhapsody is probably minimal compared to the cost of going after those customers.
Clearly this isn't as good for Real's bottom line. In fact, it would probably lose them money and, as Real isn't a deep-pocket monster like Microsoft, it can't afford to invest in projects that have little or no chance of showing a return.
Ironically, the best thing that Mac owners who would like to be able to use Rhapsody can do is hope that/encourage Apple to let Real into the iPod market that it wants, because once Real is able to service iPod owners it is more likely to go the whole hog and support Mac customers too, if for no reason other than a large percentage of iPod owners also own Macs and it's their Macs that they would use to buy music for their iPods.
Unfortunately for Real, they need Apple's cooperation and support far more than Apple needs them, so don't expect anything to come out of this: it's just not in Apple's interest to open the doors to the iPod/Mac music download market to Real or anyone else.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
>Well, your question has more than a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife"
/. knows, when your not so computer savy brother/sister/friend etc... asks you how to install real as they wanna hear some scratchy sound on the net and your response is NEVER EVER EVER install Real Player or anything with "Real" in its name... not EVER EVER. Never. You will just cause your self headaches... If you must install something, find an alternative. The Real suite WAS the closest thing legit commercial software got to being a virus or whathaveyou...
He beats his wife? For shame!
Seriously though if he wants to be sucessful Real has got to change their neferious ways of intrusive installs... As probably everone on
Noticed I said "WAS", and also notice that Glaser mentions some new verion of REAL... well I wouldn't know as I would NEVER (ever) download the stuff, such a bad impression was made upon me it will take a LONG time to regain credibility as a legit company.
anyway thats my rant.
good try, but we all know it's you Mr Glaser.
Why do you say that Real wants to steal Apples IP?
I suggest you google for Compaq vs IBM BIOS before you say the reverse engenering for interop reasons is stealing of IP.
Who wants to bet that the comprehensive plan involves selling songs for 25 cents a pop until they go out of business...
Apple made a practical descission Real was a small player and did not want to license, and you thought it was ok to reverse engineer their product and still use it. So you think it's ok that I reverse engineer your DRM so I can use it on my Mac right!
The one fault they also seem to share is that they get geek speak, but I'm not sure they truly understand. IOW, they understand the promise of the really open market, but don't live and breathe it in their business. So they're better than many of the alternatives (like our dear MS Borg), but still aren't taking advantage of the full market they could get if they made that extra step and truly opened up...
FWIW, I've spent money with both companies in the past, and will do so again if Rhapsody ever does offer a Linux version.
Obligatory plug - please check out my online novel
You: wanting to steal Apple's IP but not wanting Apple to steal theirs
Rob: We would be happy to cross-license our DRM and formats to Apple to enable exactly the kind of interoperability you propose.
As has been widely reported, we approached Apple about licensing their DRM several months ago. It was only after they rebuffed those initiatives that we came out with Harmony, which implemented software compatibility with their DRM as well as with Microsoft's.
Didja READ the damned article? Seriously, this guy is one of the bravest men on the planet. Can you imagine accepting the challenge to take 10 of the toughest questions from an online community that despises you and your company? While we may still dislike him and/or his company and/or his software, he clearly explained his stance on "stealing" apple's "IP" and did so in a very professional manner.
"The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." - Patton
Did you not read the part where they tried to license Apple's DRM and Apple refused? How about the part where Real would be *happy* to license to Apple? He'd be quite happy with the 2-way street.
"Stealing Apple's IP" is pure, unmitigated bullshit. They simply created software that would allow non-Apple music to play on an iPod. The horror!
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Am I the only person who, when reading "yours would too if you were in his position", thought, 'Gee, thanks roblimo, I guess I am a sellout!'?
I don't see why being a CEO automatically means you must be dishonest with your customers. Is this some rule of economics that I haven't learned in school yet?
using namespace slashdot;
troll::post();
they edited it and removed all the messages.
You can turn all the icons off. There's four checkboxes during the install, all in the same window, and if you uncheck them then the icons are never created. This is a non-issue, although someone who hasn't installed realplayer since it was the only way to watch video on linux wouldn't know that... in other words, the grandparent poster is speaking through the wrong orifice. The college I work for uses realvideo for "distributive education" so it's part of the default install we put on every workstation. Since the debut of the RealONE player (at least) this has been true. You uncheck some boxes during install, cancel when they want you to register, turn off all the media file types, and you're done.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Rob, when did you stop beating your wife?
And people are free to remember that DRM-free wav and mp3 already play on the iPod. It's not as if they are trying to do anything inherantly evil.
If you don't like a type of food, do you go on a personal crusade to ensure no one ever eats it ever again? Probably not.
If you don't like Real's business strategy, DON'T USE IT. I personally don't like the real player, never have, probably never will. I do, however, use Rhapsody and I think it's a fantastic service for the price. But that's off topic.
The real question is why Real (or any other company for that matter) perceived as a malicious company? They are being cast as villians for having stupid business practices? Last I checked they weren't out forcing you to install the product. If it sucks, it sucks, and that's Real's problem in terms of business strategy. It's not an insult to your person for god's sake.
Yea yea, it's invasive. Yea yea, it's annoying. I get it, and I happen to agree. So I don't use or buy the products that are annoying. I installed, didn't like it and uninstalled. Live and learn.
But but but, how come I can't use it on x platform? Well, if you really want to use it that badly, I suggest you go to real and pitch a business case to them for why they should spend the extra time and money developing for your platform. Just because you use it[the platform], doesn't mean the majority of the target demographic uses it. Son of a bitch, Real is out to make money? LYNCH THEM!
If the product isn't what you want, it means the marketing and development failed. It doesn't mean they are evil. Grow up.
...buffering...
While I don't think he was as dodgy as he could have been, I think your praise goes a little far. For instance, he says Harmony is perfectly legal, but when asked whether it would be alright for Apple to create software that deals with Real's DRM without a license, he says that they'd be happy to discuss licensing with Apple. .ogg and .mp3 then? No problem playing mp3s in an ipod (or any other DAP for that matter).
Also he makes Real out to be the advocate of interoperability and open platforms. Why not sell music in
I haven't stopped beating my wife. And that is the truth.
The truth is, I never started either, but somehow that is besides the point. I don't know why.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
We'd be happy to license to Apple. I'm sure he would have boo to say if they refused and worked around Real, as he seems to think the law allows the workaround.
That was one of the answers that weren't really answers. When asked if it was OK if Apple worked around their restrictions like Real did to Apple's, he doesn't say "yes", he says they'd be happy to license the IP. That leads me to believe he really would "have boo to say" if Apple made rm files run in Quicktime.
chico chingy
If someone responds to an interview request from Slashdot, they should be required to give us geeks the stright skinny. They may not, of course, but they should be held to that standard.
He answered my question, and that's kinda cool. But, his answer makes me want to RE Rhapsody to find out what the stream is. I've heard it's WMA, and I believe that there is a player for that now; as such, if I can RE it, I'd be happy to pay for a Rhapsody sub again.
This sig no verb.
maybe this is why you think Macs are slower than PCs. I won't try to start a pissing contest over which IS faster/slower in the present, but relative performance depends a lot on perception. I find most PCs slower than my Dual G5...if I had an iBook I might think different(ly). But careful with the flame of Apple when operating on a different plane than many others.
1 Apple and Linux don't have the user base to make them worth our while.
.rm, we'd sue their asses off. They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
2 Online music won't drop below $.79/song until we can beat the RIAA into lower fees.
3 We use a proprietary format because if we didn't, we'd get crushed by MS and Apple. If Apple, however, figured out how to play
4 We write annoying and intrusive software because Microsoft does it too (and our annoyances aren't as bad as their's are).
6 Helix gives us street cred in the OS community, that's why we do it.
7 We had our lawyers look very closely to make sure Apple couldn't sue us over the iPod. We don't expect any trouble. And don't worry, you'll always be able to play Harmony on your iPod, as long as you never use iTunes again.
8 See the first summary item for Linux support.
9. Based on "independent" consultants on our payroll, people want alternatives to iTunes. That must mean they want us. We lost a million dollars in 3 weeks selling music at below-cost, so it must be true.
10. I have not stopped beating my wife, but more to the popint, our company is raking in lots of dough. We're not making any profit, or I would have given you profit numbers instead of revenue numbers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
I've been a very happy rhapsody subscriber for a couple of years. They've done everything right. Good pricing, elegant interface, lots of additional artist information available, tight and fast performance, no ads, no spyware, lightweight, low overhead, etc. When I'm on a PC, it's playing music and never disrupts what else is going on, even with processor-intensive applications running. It just works perfectly and unobtrusively. Plus, their library is extensive and always expanding.
Naturally, when Real bought Rhapsody I got scared. Rhapsody uses WMP and Real is reportedly looking to switch over to RM. This could be good or bad. They can use a lightweight realplayer with rhapsody to send me tunes and easily add Linux and MaxOS support in the process, or they can use the current memory-consuming version of RP10 that doesn't run under Linux, and I'll cancel my subscription. The version of RP10 for Linux is much lighter than the Windows version, but ironically, they don't offer it for Windows.
I'm not real optimistic.
To the guy who asked why there was such a problem diabling all the crap Real installs. "Install the latest version!" uh. No. Why would I trust Real to play nice?
Even the questions which would have just offended many CEO's were answered in a very professional manor.
Hmm, I don't really care what type of building he was in when he answered the questions, it's the way he answered them that really matters...
Get it? Manor... ?
OK it's lame, you can mod me down now.
Tie these two together:
Our RealPlayer Music Store is a pure example of the second model. As part of our introduction of our Harmony technology (which allows digital songs to play on a virtually any popular MP3 player), we put every song in the store on sale at 49 cents. The promotion was a smashing success, resulting in us selling over 3 million songs in about 3 weeks.
and
While wholesale prices vary depending on the label, today most labels charge approximately 65-70 cents per song. Publishing costs a fixed rate of about 9 cents per song. And the other costs average a few pennies per song. Thus, as we have made clear, selling every song in our store for 49 cents a song is not sustainable unless/until the labels change their pricing philosophy.
That 3 million song block sold cost them between $810,000 and $960,000.
I have to wonder if they really get enough other new sales to offset losses like that. It does seem that they are making money, but some of that money is from premium services.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Linux needs a Music service to be a viable desktop, its something that is getting very popular and could be the deciding facor for alot of users holding on to dual booting.
However, if raphsody goes to linux, it won't be open source, it cant be. Source hackers will try to get music for free and then all hell would break loose if a bug/exploit is found that will do that.
And -ot- on Linspire, I don't agree that they are better than MS. MS charges for a propriatery product that can't be gotten legally elsewhere. Linspire charges for Apt-get, which is not only immoral, but on against the whole idea of the debian project(i e a FREE desktop)
Let me get this straight, you find that most 2800 Dual g5?
I could just as easly say the samething about my dual athlon MP system (which, btw is faster than most macs for what I use it for)
We're one of the most active Mac ISVs around, with our RealPlayer running on millions of Macs.
Get real, Glaser. That just means that Real's users are active. The company, on the other hand, has provided years of consistent support for the Mac: consistently late, consistently buggy, and consistently slow. That's pretty much par for Windows ISVs who happen to port to the Mac. It puts them ahead of the large number of Windows ISVs who don't port to the Mac, but utterly unexceptional otherwise. I will give them credit for not littering the Mac RealPlayer with adware like the Windows version.
Now, real Mac ISVs like Adobe, Wolfram, Stone Design, they're actually active and timely with updates. And there's a host of independent shareware and freeware developers who are far, far more receptive and responsive still!
I read his "yes" were he defends Real's position and the iPod. Of course he would rather they license to Apple, but I don't think it would lead to a legal challenge, since any judgement would apply to Real as well.
Personally, I'd rather BOTH of them go away along with DRM, but hey.
Anything is possible given time and money.
/. ate my GT signs (slaps head)
Let me try that again.
Let me get this straight, you find your 2800 USD Dual g5 to be faster than most pc's you use. Ignoring the fact that the ASP for a desktop pc is about 800 USD.
That isn't really a fair comparision, is it?
It couldn't possibly be that part time developers guided by a core contingent from Real is far cheaper for them than having it all inhouse....
Click here or a puppy gets stomped!
Unless you give them an address at quicktime, and then give the quicktime people an address at real.
that I can remember the moderating ("Informative") one-upping the post. And it's my post, no less.
Hate to give a spelling lesson to you boys and girls, but if you're going to try and make a point, consider that the possibility that obvious misspellings (like poor grammar and lame-assed punctuation and sentence structure) may actually detract from your ability to make any impression that's not negative. Take notes if needed:
The word "hypocrite" is derived from the Latin (Greek actually, but that's another story) roots "hypo" + "crisis". Now that you know that, you'll recognise that the respective correct spellings are:
Hypocrite. Not "hippocrite" or "hyppocrite." "Rob Glaser" is, however, an acceptable substitute.
Hypocrisy. Not "hipocrisy" or "hippocrisy." Use "interoperability" if you can't remember the spelling tip I gave you.
I honestly cannot think of any commercial "legitimate" software (eg not spyware or viruses) that I loathe more than real....
that's honest, if you don't like it, shove it, but don't lie and label it flamebait when it isn't.
it is NOT said to start a flame war.
it IS said because it is my honest opinion.
http://slashdot.org/~GuyFawkes/journal
5) jerkychew asks: "Why is Real's software so intrusive?" and goes on to describe quite well how most of us feel about Real's tactics.
RG Responds: "Mooo (splat), snort (plop), grunt ( splat), snort."
I'm glad that Slashdot hasn't implemented HSTP*.
* Hyper-smell transfer protocol
Using that same logic, you could say "Since the driver in front of me ran the red light, I'm going to run the red light as well." Would you jump off a bridge because another person did?
Real may have gotten better at uninstalling in version 10. But why oh why are we at version 10 before the thing uninstalls cleanly? Why are we at version 10 before the adware in the "free" version (what a misnomer) is less offensive? Why are we at version 10 before the mime-type land-rush has stopped? That should have never gone into the product in version 1.0.
Pisses me off when software won't completely uninstall itself. There's nothing a good rm -rf shouldn't undo.
The one thing that makes me happy about Real is watching it succumb to the same forces that destroyed Netscape. Look at the parallels - a small company formed around a pretty innovative product. It awakens the sleeping Giant (in Netscape's case that was MS; in this case it's Apple and MS). Freaks out and spawns an "open source initiative" (Mozilla vs HelixCommunity's hxplay). Get ready to go the way of the DoDo bird, Real.
And take your damn spyware with you.
-c
Do it for da shorties
Not to beat a dead horse, but Real as a company seem to have some of the worst standards out there in terms of how they treat their customers.
Especially if, by customers, you mean "People who have been duped into installing Real's software package and can't seem to get rid of it."
I'm not so naive as to expect Realplayer to ask if it wants to uninstall every time it runs, but essentially, Real Networks lives off of cheap-shots, parlor tricks, and ignorance. I installed Real on a friend's computer *LAST NIGHT* and I still had to scroll down in the preferences box, past lots of UNCHECKED items, to get to the list of CHECKED items (previously hidden by the unchecked list) which say "Do you want Real to send you lots of annoying crap?"
Come now. That's not being open to your customers, that's being duplicitous and cheap. This guy should realize that.
I hadn't really notices this service, and I must say it seems fairly interesting. If the technical realisation is/were good enough, it'd be worth the money to me and basically the first viable legal music story I'd be interested in.
The obvious downside of using such subscription service is that once you stop the subscription, you don't have any music left even though you might have paid them for a long time. The same goes if they decide to stop offering the service.
But it's still only 10 bucks per month, at that price I could listen to a lot of diverse music using the service and still buy the best 2% of the music I hear for offline usage. That last point is crucial since it's the only way to listen to the music using an MP3 player, which I do a lot.
It'd need to work flawlessly, however. 128 kps would be a minimum, optimally they'd offer everything at bandwidth ranging from 64 kps (when you need the remaining bandwidth for something else) up to 320 kps. The bitrate is irrelevant, of course, if they don't use a quality codec to begin with. But then, there isn't such a large difference between the various modern codecs as there was 4 years ago; at 192+ kps they pretty much all are CD quality.
Apart from the bitrate, the server downtime ought to be about zero, too. I listen to music all the time and their service isn't worth anything to me if they'd interrupt that habit (well maybe my ears would be grateful).
And last but not least, the catalogue would have to be right, obviously. My taste isn't too exotic, but I'd wager I wouldn't be too happy with what they have to offer. At least they seem to have Orbital.
I'm curious what measures they have taken to prevent anyone from just capturing the audio stream. Obviously, the analogue gap would allow any of their customers to record music they stream and listen to it over and over again without buying the track. And I doubt they're checking wether the sound cards output is set to digital, which would enable people to record without the losses that incur when you record the analogue music. It'd also enable people to put the stremed music on a discman. Furthermore, with some sort of sound card emulation software you could just write the stream to the HD without it even leaving the box, something they really cannot prevent with the current non-TCPA computers. And that's not even mentioning that most cards have a simple option to record whatever's currently on the sound out.
Switch back to Slashdot's D1 system.
I thought that was interesting in answer to number ten. The first thing I thought of was WorldCom booking revenues for bandwidth transfers. Hey man, the product is software revenue could come from anywhere. It's all just bits anyway. You can shuffle bits between "customers" all day long and call it revenue. How's profits? Who is doing the accounting?
So Real wants Apple to open up licensing of iTunes DRM so they can undercut Apple on a non-Apple platform?
In other words, "We want you to let us use your DRM for our music store which won't run on your OS so we can compete fairly with your music store." Does that not make sense to anyone else?
My Other Computer Is A Data General Nova III.
First reference to being bi-geekxual?
Rampant Ninja related crimes these days...Whitehouse is not the exception
"Dave, I stand still--the conclusions jump to me!" - Bill McNeal, NewsRadio
I'm glad I'm not the only one who noticed that. Bravo to you for trying to nail him.
"Why Subscribe?" Good question...
"The more that customers support our efforts both directly (by voting with your wallets) and by communicating directly to the music industry, the better."
Problem is, most consumers will vote simply by not using their wallet. Hence there is no direct way for the industry to know when consumers find a pricing strategy unnacceptable.
It took a lot of complaints, time and revisions before Real got to an "acceptable" level of invasiveness.
AFAIK, there is no written policy stating that they won't put those things back into a future version.
Condidering those points, its going to be a long time before Real earns any trust from me.
I can't believe you guys didnt ask him about streambox? Here Rob goes bitching that apple isnt allowing him to use their propietary format and how unfair it is. Three years ago he puts a company out of business for DOING THE EXACT SAME THING and evoking the DMCA in the process.
I would really have liked to see him justify the insurmountable hypocrisy.
Well, your question has more than a bit of a "when did you stop beating your wife" feel to it,
I agree, theres nothing more fun than doing alot of heavy drugs and beating your wife, especially after trying to uninstall your Real player.
---
My sig was stolen - the insurance company replaced it with this one.
You might not be a fanboy, but you're completely ignorant of the facts. Educate yourself before spouting off about Real stealing Apple's IP... nothing of the sort happened.
My sig is blank, I typed this by hand.
Real entering the Apple market by supporting OSX (or other MacOS) customers is not as immediate a benefit for Real, as making a significant ROI would be like trying to push water uphill.
This kind of thinking which prioritizes short-term profit is exactly what got Real into trouble before. Without thinking of the benefits of consumer loyalty, Real produced software that disregarded users' settings, which placed parts of itself in disparate places, and that made it difficult for most users to uninstall it. The result of such thinking was a backlash against Real, one strong enough to erode whatever loyalty/preference it once had in the media player market.
Fast-forward to 2004. Apple users are legendary for their brand loyalty. Any company that works in this space understands that pleasing users is the raison d'etre (French for "reason for being") of Mac-based companies.
Real claims to see no benefit in offering the service to Mac users, but for more than a year, iTMS was Mac only, and in that first year the sales of iTMS tracks eclipsed the sales of all the other contenders combined. Even in the face of this historical reality, Real says that its research doesn't lead it to conclude that the Mac market is worth going after. Maybe Real are right. But I strongly suspect that Real's music service is going to be broken sooner than later and when that happens, they will have no one to cry to except for Windows users who can't listen to their Harmony songs on their iPods.
If, on the other hand, Real had a cohort of Mac users that could (read would) complain to Jobs and company about their Harmony-purchased songs being broken . . .
Are you listening, Mr. Glaser? This is the sound that "getting it" makes. Service your potential markets, don't dis them outright.
blog
I really didn't have to read very far before figuring out why I make a hell of a lot more money than you do. Keep trying!
> If Apple, however, figured out how to play .rm, we'd sue their asses
> off. They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
This one is wrong. It should be:
We would be happy to accept Apple's check to license our useless (to Apple) tech. But we all know that won't happen because Apple is all about keeping people as locked into Quicktime's own codecs as possible.
> Based on "independent" consultants on our payroll, people want
> alternatives to iTunes.
This one is also wrong. The quote was:
"96% of portable device owner said they thought they should be able to move music they bought to any device,"
Suprised it was only 96%. That question is about as controversial as "Do you think puppies are cute." Of course you should be able to play purchased music on ANY player. Which is why you should not part with good money for crappy low-bitrate DRM encumbered music.
Democrat delenda est
How about the part where Real would be *happy* to license to Apple?
Why should Apple ask to license from Real? It's not like Real got permission or paid anything to license. It's OK because real asked firat? Why should Apple have to pay Real?
Question #10 would be excellent to ask Bush (and Kerry would get his own version). Something like:
Strategically speaking, you don't look to be in a very promising position. Your platform, once unique, is now ubiquitous. Your campaign has been, by any account of which I am aware, a disaster. Now it seems like there is no area in which you have any real strength over your competitors - you are eclipsed by the disaster of the war in Iraq and by the failing economy, your lack of service in Vietnam rules the day in the media, while the Democratic candidate is entering the field with a strong military background.
What advantages do you bring to the table? What can you do that no other politician can do? Why are you a politician in the first place? What the hell are you doing?
In terms of our products, Rhapsody is not only #1 in subscribers, it also wins pretty much every review as the music service that is best and easiest to use. yeah right!
*giggle*
C-x C-s C-x k
Very Insightful, thank you.
Sticks and Stones may break my bones, but copyright will always protect me.
Have you all forgotten what a crappy media format real video and real audio really are? Let's take decent video and compress it until it looks like sh*t. That's all Real is. Who cares what or where else it plays, the core product still sucks.
Here in Norway pretty much every single media outlet uses Windows Media. I'm not saying that's all nice and dandy, but IMO it's the lesser of two evils (WM vs RM). It would take a LOT for me to even consider installing Real Alternative, and it would probably be pretty much impossible to ever get me to install the original Real Media Player ever again. The only mainstream page I use that uses Real is BBC. I can live without those news clips. I'll watch them on the TV instead.
It would be easier and cheaper. They don't HAVE to, if they want to take the same route as Real and lose all thier richteous indignation.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
This is obviously a troll, just giving a heads up to anyone who may be confused. Just ignore it, I feel its my duty as the grandparent poster to inform you guys of this.
Regards,
Steve
Steve and his customers may be on a one-way trip :-)
Yes, MacFans, that was a joke.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
4) Turnabout? - by Elwood P Dowd
What would you do if the next version of Quicktime could play
Why shouldn't Apple do this?
Glaser:
We would be happy to cross-license our DRM and formats to Apple to enable exactly the kind of interoperability you propose.
Isn't this exactly what the Quicktime plugin mechanism is for? I'm using it right now to play Ogg files in iTunes, so why can't Real (and Microsoft (ha ha ha)) use the same hooks? They already have the media player software ported to OS X, it's just stuck inside their nasty themed (cue jwz rant) interfaces, instead of the nasty metal Quicktime (cue iArchitect rant) one...
Actually the quote you're looking for is:
"Wake up... Time to die!"
which was spoken by Leon (Brion James) when he was beating the crap out of Deckard in the street after he (Deckard) had shot Zhora.
"This calls for a very special blend of psychology and extreme violence" - Vyvyan "The Young Ones"
Mac ownership use isn't that around 5%?
and thats compared to windows yes ?
so how many mac's does that equate to ?
A million nah too low must be more than 20 million Pc's
maybe 10 Million about 200 Million Pc's ?
probably still way too low
but 10 million users is too small a market to address?
of course a small vocal minority of mac users hate real.
More of them than Pc owners that hate real?
I don't use a Mac but I still think there is a significant number of mac owners
out there, wonder how many Ipods are owned by mac users 50% 20% 70% ?
so the iPod markets worth cracking for real but not to cater for the Mac using
Ipod owners.
so has real changed? now knowledgeable about their user base, potential markets?
who pays real users or content providers?
so perhaps thats why they ignore users.
To be honest to give real credibility with most of us cynics they will have to
be accessable to mac users and linux users and why is that so difficult can't they port their own code?
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
Thanks for the post. We completely agree with you that credibility is earned, not claimed.
To the heart of your question, What has changed? Why would the company change? What motiviation does the company have to change?
First and foremost, our business model has changed. Today over 80% of our revenue comes from Consumer SERVICES. Services that our customers rave about to their family/friends. For example, RealRhapsody, our all you can eat music subscription service, is the number 1 rated music serice. Why buy songs when you can access over 700,000 for $9.95/mo. Another example is our STARZ! Ticket on Real Movies, which allows you to downloads as many feature films as you for $12.95/mo.
Second, our product development process has changed. Today, we build the heart of the RealPlayer nightly within the Helix Community. this process has allows us to have a tigher communication process with our users and developers. When we develop our products publicly, there is little room for non-essential features.
Third, actions must speak louder than words. As other posters have attested to. Check out he latest free RealPlayer 10 for Windows, Mac or Linux. If you don't think we have lived up to your rightfully high expectations, uninstall it. You can unstall everything. Its just that simple.
Finally change is hard. But I think you will find that we have changed on numerous fronts, for the better.
Kevin
Kevin Foreman
Why do they keep the price of music so artificially high? Why? It costs them nothing for some other company to make digital copies of their work. Maybe if this was 1980 and the only way to release music is to make tapes or broadcast radio. Is this the era record companies are stuck in? Was this their golden era?
When Napster came out the hot topic was "What would you actually pay for music?" The answer again and again on message boards was 25 cents! We would have settled for 50 cents.
But what do they give us? 99 cents
I think I speak for much of your music market when I tell you record companies- you don't get to arbitrarily set your price anymore. It might work for Appleheads (we all know they got money because they use an Apple in the first place), but the rest of us will continue to pay 0 cents till you learn that you don't call the shots anymore!
Open Source Sushi
Hi folks,
I'm Rob Lanphier, and I'm the Development Support Manager for RealNetworks. Among other things, I'm responsible for guiding our Helix Community initiative.
I'm glad to see some of the good comments here. People are starting to see that things have have changed.
There's been some comments on ethics, and how a company "can never be trusted again" after making missteps. It's very frustrating for me personally because it belies a certain naivete about how companies and the world works, as well as the fact that the meme really limits the potential of doing some really great things. It also bugs me because, well, I like to think of myself as a very ethical person.
As Jamie Zawinski pointed out, you get a lot of people together, and stupidity inevitably ensues. It's practically unavoidable. However, there's also an upside to getting a lot of people together. Some things just take a lot of people to do.
We're building out an infrastructure for delivering music and other media to a lot of folks over the Internet, and building the partnerships with media companies and technology companies to pull it off. In the process of doing that, we're managing to build a lot of great technology that we're making available as open source, much of it even GPL
If we're successful in really getting the industry to rally around this infrastructure, not only will the world have a kickass open source media infrastructure, but we'll have shown other previously skeptical that it's not an utterly insane thing to do. However, if it doesn't work out, it'll be yet another counterexample of why building open source isn't compatible with the business world.
It's been really cool to see how the Helix Player/RealPlayer for Linux effort has gone. Our Freshmeat ranking continues to climb at a great pace, and we're seeing a lot of downloads. If anyone is worried about what's in that player, look at the source code. Hopefully, we'll be able to further roll that model of building software out to other parts of our business.
At the end of the day, companies are just people. You get a big enough group together, and you'll find there's good people, and there's bad people. I suppose you can lump us all together, and say that the group as a whole is bad. Or you can take the more pragmatic approach. Rally behind the good people in the group, and help them guide the rest down the right path.
Rob
The most useless interview ever. This guy is clueless. I hope his company goes bankrupt soon.....
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Wife and /.er in the same sentence? Must be new around here. Or maybe he calls his hand his wife too!
Open Source Sushi
Actually, the whole answers have a PR department smell on them. He never did answer question straightforwardly. He make vague references to gloss over some things and he used 'look over there! it's Heidi Klum' tricks to swich the subject. Maybe I am prejudiced because I dislike him, but the answers doesn't sound sincere.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I think that was a completely pathetic, infantile "I know you are but what am I" response. The question was entirely valid except for the brief, heckling "What the hell are you doing?" comment. If you're going to do PR as the head of a corporation, you don't respond like that. Perhaps he thought it would be a comical retort to an negatively impassioned inquiry, but the spousal abuse comment was much more distasteful than saying "what the hell are you doing", and was uncalled for. In fact I don't see how he could even consider responding that way and where that could have come from. You just don't do that when you represent a corporatioin and stockholders. Something's got to be wrong with the guy to bring up such a sick analogy at such an inappropriate time. Besides the last comment in it, the question was not inflammatory at all. And if you are going to anwer questions publicly as the head of a corporation, you have to expect sharp questioning and heckling, and respond to them with indifference and decorum. If he had any sense, he would have simply turned the other cheek to the last comment and stoically responded to the legitimate issues brought up by the rest of the question.
The question did hit the spot in that RealMedia is no longer original and doesn't offer anything technologically that the other major competitors in the market can't do. It did bring up the unpalatable tactics Real has practiced in relation to their customers. These were all poignant facts about Real's past and present situation. He was asked three clear questions; what advantages does Real bring to the table? What can Real do that no other company can do? Why does Real exist? He didn't answer any of them other than saying "some people like our products" in an elaborate way to avoid actually answering the questions.
What can Real do that no other company can do? For the moment, bring low prices, and provide an alternative to other media players out there. What can Real do that no other company can do? How about saying something like it can do interactive video streaming that can incorporate flash or something (can it? I vaguely recall it had interactive options and flash integration). Why does Real exists? It was the first successful media streaming player on the internet and already has an established infrastructure. And if they play their cards right, it they will still be able to maintain that. Now was that so hard?
Instead he said some bullshit about how they provide services to consumers regardless of what platform they use. Then why can't Mac users use their music store, and why doesn't the Mac version of RealPlayer lack functions like converting realaudio to MP3? He compares Real's cross-platform attempts to Apples, with bullshit about how iPods are only for Macs which is completely false. If this is how he responds publicly to astute inquiries, then one could only imagine how he behaves behind closed doors, which apparently haven't been able to conceal the underhanded company practices he was in charge of for years. I think, even with all the assisted question-evasive PR re-writing he m
If you ate at McDonalds and they gave you food poisoning that lasted for a week, you might crusade against them.
RealPlayer on a windows pc takes a whole lot of shit to get out of your system.
Actually, I guess it's my fault for not framing the question more restrictively.
Are you kidding? This was hardly unusual. Almost every one of his "answers" were to questions not asked, but rather his reconstituted interpretation. He's obviously politicking... and taking everyone's ignorance/compliance/naivete for granted. I resent it.
But *why* would Apple even want to license Real? What benefit would they get from that? Seems that Apple likes having people use iTunes to buy music for thier iPod, rather than have that portion of revenue siphoned off by Real. So I am sure Robbie would just be giddy cross-licensing, it does Apple little good. Everyone I know with an iPod already has non-Apple songs on thier iPod, so they didn't "simply create software that would allow non-Apple music on an iPod", they created software that would allow *thier* music service files to play on an iPod. Subsequently cutting into Apple's iTunes with no compensation other than a nicely put "up yours"
So many injustices..so little time..
Actually, I guess it's my fault for not framing the question more restrictively. But I didn't ask whether he'd like to cross-license with Apple. We all know the answer to that question. I'm not talking about whether he'd like to see that kind of interoperability. I'm asking what he'd do if Apple reverse-engineered Real's product like Real did to Apple. Because I want him to say, "Nothing. That's ok." If he can say that, he'd win a point or two with me. But he can't say it.
The problem here is that the two cases are not comparable in the least.
-Real produces a file that is similar in structure to Apple's DRM format in order to put songs onto an iPod without totally decrypting them.
-Apple would produce a file that is similar in structure to Real's format or Real's Helix DRM in order to... do what, exactly? That's right, nothing. There's absolutely no reason for Apple to do what Real did.
Real made a method whereby Real's own music could be put onto an iPod without decrypting it. They did this by emulating Apple's DRM. They didn't break Apple's DRM. Their software does nothing to Apple's Music files.
Apple doesn't have the same problem. Nothing plays Real's Helix format music at the moment, which is why Real can convert their music to Apple DRM, Microsoft DRM (in the form of a protected WMA), etc. Apple doesn't even *support* portable players that are not a form of iPod, and thus have less than no reason to reciprocate in this manner.
The reason he answered the way he did is simply that you and he have two different perspectives.
-His perspective is that Real wrote Real's own software in a way that would take Real's own music and put it on the portable player of a Real customer.
-Your perspective seems to be the Real somehow wronged Apple, even though Real didn't mess with Apple's store, music, customers...
All Real did was enable its own customers to use iPods with their software. Simple as that.
- 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.
Thanks for the reply Rob. In all honesty what many of us geeks want to see is that there are people who make decisions at tech companies who don't have to sugar coat everything or dumb down everything. I think that the real player for Linux is a fine product, hell the fact that it exists means a lot. Sometimes it seems like media companies consider Linux to be a four letter word, so the fact that Real addresses this adds street cred.
Oh, and don't worry about those that say real "can never be trusted again." Most of these people live in an Tin-Foil cage. Many geeks are willing to give Real a second chance, and I for one am impressed by Glaser's comments.
Open Source Sushi
He signed his name in italics!!! IT MUST BE HIM!
Yea, if i wasn't so busy downloading free mp3's from ICQ, NG, and FTP, I'd look into Real also.
Rob Glaser still misses the point of "Freedom of Choice"... if Real was delivering on such a concept, then we'd see Real Player 10 w/ Real Music Store support available on (not only) Windows, (but) Mac, Linux, Amiga and etc...
In short,
Freedom of Choice shouldn't have any limitations, and since Real is supporting the Windows-only crowd thus presents a major flaw and limitation (within their own ideology)!
that was an honest attempt at humor. I dont have a wife, and if I did I would never beat her so I lied, but it was just a joke, and besides it was strange that Rob would use a 'wife beating' reference...... bah!
---
My sig was stolen - the insurance company replaced it with this one.
If Rob, Real, MS or even Apple want to create a truly excellent user experience then they should all let the user decide what file format, platform or whatever they want to use.
:-o
Wonder Bread doesn't force me to use their toasters and music, ditigal or otherwise should be the same.
Lets face it. The battle is ALL about locking in the user to your platform. It has NOTHING to do with building a better user experience.
Ultimately, music, especially digital music will be nothing but a commodity like pork and coffee and will continue to lose value as the existing monopolies struggle to lock users in.
But then again, I'm Canadian and I can copy my friends and neighbours music anytime I want! Even share it if I like!
What he fails to mention is that they still lost 4.6 million that quarter.
Apple cannot invoke the DMCA because Real is not completely stripping the DRM. They all replacing Apple's DRM with their own. This is explicitly allowed in the DMCA.
Your point about Streambox is completely valid, but it's actually the other way around with what Real are doing - in order to allow Real files to play on the iPod, they are replacing their own DRM with something compatible with Apple's DRM system. Obviously this is justifiable, as they are not breaking anyone's DRM in the first place.
It would not be so clear cut if they were stripping Apple's DRM and replacing it with their own at all; it might be accepted under the interoperability clause but the situation would not be half so clear-cut.
As has been pointed out NUMEROUS times, RIAA et al. will NOT ALLOW music to be sold without DRM. MP3/etc. is NOT AN OPTION.
I'm beginning to think that 1/2 of Slashdot readers have somehow managed to learn to write without learning to read. Or maybe it's the comprehension part that is lacking?
Why?
:-) Competition is good for the CONSUMER, but not necessarily the PROVIDER.
They probably wouldn't.
What I don't understand is all the Apple fanboys getting bent out of shape about this. They're more loyal to APPLE than THEMSELVES! Sad.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
While everyone was busy screaming that Apple/Real rocks/sucks and making buffering jokes, most folks missed the truly inspired quote:
Based on the data we've seen, we think, long-term, the pricing that will result in the biggest overall market for music will involve some kind of tiered pricing new mainstream songs for 99 cents retail, and up-and-coming artists and back catalog artists at a lower price.
We are working with the labels to prove this to them. We think over time we will succeed, but it will take time. The more that customers support our efforts both directly (by voting with your wallets) and by communicating directly to the music industry, the better.
This is the most reasonable position that I have ever heard. Rock on Rob!!!
"Look at all the people who came to us when we were selling music at half the price of our competitors! Sure, it was below our cost, but look at the REVENUE! No, I don't know if we can sustain those numbers, but the revenue was SWEET...!"
A computer without Windows is like a cake without mustard.
So how do you feel about the iPod logo right near the top of your answers, eh?
The only place peopole agree in percentages like this turn up is in North Korean one-party elections. It's a fact, faced with any question you can think of, 96% of people is an impossible number. If you asked 1000 people "do you agree to walk outside right now and shoot yourself in the head," at least 15% would say yes. I don't know what it is, people are weird, unpredictable, crazy, or just plain stupid, but you cannot actually get a number like 96% out of a poll. So, either they screwed with the question, the numbers, or Glaser's being lied to or lying. That's a fact, Jack.
Thanks for the encouragement. When I have face-to-face conversations with folks (trade shows, Linux user group meetings, etc) this is usually the tenor of the conversation. It's usually only when people get online that people sport their tinfoil hats come out.
That's why I'm often told "ignore the Slashdotters". While I don't let it get under my skin, I have a hard time ignoring it outright, because that's the only exposure a lot of folks have to the hard-core technologist (read "geek") community. I, of course, say that as a geek who has been reading Slashdot/Chips-n-Dips since 1997.
What's interesting to me is that I wonder how many of these people are just as frightening in person as they are online, or if they are paper tigers. I suspect it's a little of both.
That leads to the followup question: how does the geek community take back this bullhorn from the most shrill among us?
Rob
You fooled me once. (Shame on you.)
You fooled me again. (Shame on me, and I learned my lesson- never again.)
How do I know that this time is any different?
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Two items were stuck in my head after reading Glaser's responses.
First - RealPlayer 10, the last time I installed it, actually required users to register an account at the Real website before the installation could occur. Is this no longer the case? If not, great. If so, that seems pretty invasive to me, and neither WMP nor QuickTime require that of their users.
Second - All hail Helix and everything. It's great that there is media support for *NIXes, but why isn't there a slimmed down, ad free version of Helix for Windows? Is it just that none of the thousands of Helix Community developers is interested in developing that or is there some other reason?
He thinks it's illegal to reverse-engineer onto the iPod. If he thought it was legal, he would not have offered to license it in the first place.
.RM files in Quicktime player (which would be kinda neat, though .RM is usually low quality crap) then decides to just implement it anyway, What would Glaser Do? would be a better question, I guess.
If Apple balked at the licensing terms to play
Methinks you protest too much. I see a kind of corporate parallel to that old loser Sanford Wallace, remember him? Back in the early days, he was an unabashed spammer, unapologetic, and completely full of himself. But it didn't all that much time before the collective 'net at large figured him out, blocked him, and ran him out of town.
A short time later, he arrives back on the scene trying to trumpet himself as an anti-spammer expert. But we remember. We know that this rebirth is just a little too convenient.
I see the same thing here. Years of spyware, hijacking users machines, difficult to uninstall, free version hidden, always having to "upgrade"... And all of a sudden you are the good guys now?
I have a long memory. I wish you luck, but RealPlayer 10 will never see the inside of any machine of mine. Maybe I'll have a look at RealPlayer 13 in a few years time. That is, if the company has not died (from self-inflicted wounds, of course).
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
--"Stealing Apple's IP" is pure, unmitigated bullshit. They simply created software that would allow non-Apple music to play on an iPod. The horror! --
.
That's not what they did at all...
iPods natively support several formats without DRM including uncompressed AIF, MP3 and AAC.
What Real did was create software that allowed them to sell DRM 'protected' media using Apple's DRM wrapper. The competitive advantage Real is trying to deprive Apple of is Apple's hitherto unique ability to sell protected music to iPod users or act as intermediary between content provider and customer in that sale process (skimming a cut of course).
Real could have sold *un* protected music in any of several formats to iPod users without any reverse engineering of Apple's DRM.
Real could have chosen to sell DRM protected music that wouldn't play on the iPod and told their customers to complain to Apple that music they bought from Real wouldn't play on an iPod.
What Real chose to do was decide unilaterally that they wanted to be able to sell *protected* music to iPod users and engineer a method of using Apple's DRM without Apple.
Now that you actually understand what they did you may freely debate the various ethical positions
As I pointed out in an earlier comment (which you responded to...pointing me to this), a company is a big collection of individuals, which changes over time. Ergo, it's hard to know how much you should trust ANY company.
Moreover, we're not asking for unconditional trust. Read reviews, inspect the source code, do what you need to do, ask for expert opinions.
Real 10 has been out in the wild since the beginning of the year. Given the eagle eye people have had on our company, and given that there hasn't been many informed critiques of that technology, I would think as an outsider it's as safe as anything else.
Rob
Anyone installed MS WMP10? I'd say the install is much more forceful than the Real Player 10 install. Real is improving and MS is only going in the wrong direction.
I'm an avid user of the Rhapsody service and believe it is completely nag and annoy free. And I have recently started to use the Real Player as my main media player, even after I swore off Real years ago. Rhapsody warmed me back up to Real, Harmony pushed me into attempting reconciliation, and the $4.99 promotion sealed the deal.
I appreciate Rob's answers and think that Real has a chance of overcoming all the negativity caused by the errors of their ways. Monumental task, for sure, but looking more and more possible.
Chris
Well of course competition is good for the consumer, and I am all for it; however there has got to be some structure/rules in place that allow a company to maintain some type of return on thier investment. Otherwise, whats the point of starting a business? There is only so much altruism in the world.. And while I am a fan of apple products, I would move on quickly for a better product. I could steal every song I wanted however I choose to support those artists/companies/"insert entity here", that I like, and would prefer to remain in existence..
So many injustices..so little time..
Every time a story about Real comes up, it is apparent from the comments that their past history is still getting in the way of them achieving their goals. While they are the only major media company supporting Linux, and they are doing a lot of good OSS and interoperability work, there are some that will always cringe when they hear the name "Real".
I think there are only two ways for them to address this:
1. A buyout and/or namechange. This would be something substantial to indicate the Old Real is gone for good. Something substantial like this might allow them a fresh start, although if bought out by the wrong company, they might lose a lot of the good aspects of the current company. A buyout by an OSS friendly company would be preferrable if this happened.
2. Real addresses the issue head-on, and very publicly. Draft policies that ban the tactics that people object to, and somehow assure everyone that they will be followed no matter what. Make sure RealPlayer 10.1/11 does not ask for registration, does not auto-start by default, and doesn't run any services. Maybe asking on first run or during the install whether services such as "StartCentre" and "Updater" should be run would be appropriate. That way, a default install of RealPlayer does nothing more than play Real files when the user comes across them. Nobody could complain about such simplicity, especially if there were guaranteed assurances from Real that the player would not have intrusive software installed with it in the future. I know the current player is very good and unintrusive, but unfortunately for Real, RealPlayer will be judged by a different standard than other products due to its past. Go further than what should normally be "far enough" in making the player simple.
Since the player is losing ground to Quicktime and MS Media Player, promoting such a free player should be a high priority. The player should be very prominant (if not the most prominent item) on the front page. Real can worry about advertising their for-pay products on pages to do with their music services, and other such popular areas of Real.com.
But getting the free player back on many machines, as well as getting Real to be a trusted brand again, should be priority #1 at Real. Real is doing some great things, and have huge opportunities to make gains in many areas of online media, if they can only get rid of that dirty feeling that techies get when they hear "Real".
"We think it would be extremely anti-consumer for Apple to stop the music by intentionally breaking compatibility with Harmony."
This is the EXACT reason I can see Apple having a problem with them doing it. If they (Apple) change something in the next firmware of the iPod that just happens to stop the Real files working on it, Real could easily turn round and say it's Apple being anti-consumer. Sure, Apple could say that's not the reason, but it will inevitably make them look bad.
I think Glaser should have been given a "try again" on questions 1) and 4).
They weren't answers at all. In fact, question 4) was actually the most repeated question in the forums moderated or not. It was also the most important question on many other websites [read as many other mac web sites] - as I am not sure this interview was making much headline everywhere else.
As for the answer to question 9) - shame on slashdot for even allowing him to lie like a politician and say that there was ANYthing positive out of the freedomofchoice music site REAL put up and shame on him for saying it was just Mac users, a lot of linux was mixed in there as well. If it was so positive why did they remove the comments?
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
*parp*
You're asking a reasonable question, but the flip side to your question is, how do you figure out when a company is changing for the better? And the answer is, you ask around. There's enough people out there that either a) have throwaway systems that they're happy to install test software on, or b) run secure enough systems that they're confident they can handle any attempt Real might make to "take over" the system. (As a Debian user and Debian developer, I'm in the latter camp.)
I've been Real-free for years, but when I saw a report on the Theora website that Realplayer was now supporting Ogg Theora, I decided I had to check it out, just to see. Sure enough, they've changed. I didn't (don't) trust Real, but I trust the Ogg folks enough that I was willing to take another look. So now the question becomes, who will you trust to tell you that they (Real) have made major positive changes?
If he thought it was legal, he would not have offered to license it in the first place.
Licensing is cheaper than reverse engineering. Any sane company with a bottom line will always choose licensing over reverse engineering.
Real approached Apple about licensing the DRM, and Apple refused. Real cracked the DRM without proper permission or license from its owner. Then he has the balls to say he'd be happy to license his DRM to Apple? You can bet your ass that if Apple used Real's DRM without licensing it, there'd be a lawsuit. But it's fine if Real does it to Apple, because it's better for his bottom line. To quote Red vs. Blue, "I don't want it to be illegal, therefore it isn't. That's the way it works."
-Brad V.
Greetings. Like Kevin, I'm a RealNetworks employee, specifically the Group Program Manager for the RealPlayer products.
The problem you found with Starz downloads being interrupted due to inaccurate disconnection messages was recently fixed in RealPlayer 10.5 (Windows). The latest version (which includes the mentioned fix) will be available for download later this week from http://www.real.com/ (and by selecting Check For Update from the Tools menu in RealPlayer). We're also looking at ways to make downloading of large content more robust in future versions.
The cancellation issue you encountered wasn't planned - more likely, there was a failure of the account server or some other technical glitch at that time which prevented your action from completing successfully. Regardless, I'll pass your concerns on to our Services team to ensure that they're rectified in the future.
Chris Rimple, Group Program Manager - RealPlayer, RealNetworks
Chris Rimple, Group Program Manager - RealPlayer, RealNetworks
I have found an alternative to the constant plague of problems with RealPlayer.
It's called Real Alternative. The idea is that it only installs the Real codec and nothing else (although they do have a lightweight player and Mozilla plugins if you want)
Although their site is a little cluttered, their software isn't.
Real Alternative
His point is:
a) Companies should license their technology.
b) Real would do so if it were in Apple's shoes.
c) Hence Apple would never need to R/E Real formats.
They won't license to us, so we won't license to them. Nyah.
Except if you read the article (hell, its on this page, you didn't have to click) where he explicitly says he'd be happy to license Real's technology.
Sheesh...
*think*
Disclaimer: I don't know what I'm talking about.
In number 7, Rob Glaser says that they didn't "mess with the locks of any of Apple's music." How else could they find out how to use the DRM? Apple is the only place you can find Apple DRM songs, and there is NO WAY that Real could have found out how to use the DRM without hacking an Apple song
Why doesn't Real support Sony's OpenMG DRM in Harmony? Real already licenses the OpenMG ATRAC3 file format for un-encypted music files to be (M4A,RA,MP3,WAV) converted/transferred to current Sony devices including Network Walkmans, ClIE's, and Net-MD devices. Sony is not slowing down on ATRAC3 device support since it is what Sony Connect utilizes. Sony has just release 5 new Hi-MD Players and their new hardrive 20GB NW-HD1 Network Walkman. Come on Mr. Glasier, support a company who's DRM you've already supported for like 2 years now. How hard can it be to convert 192kbps RealAAC file to 132kbps ATRAC3 audio file? Please??? I'm Like Begging!!!
Everytime I hear that garbage about Real taking over someone machine it convinces me that one of three things is going on:
1) The writer is an aging Geezer Geek running a pentium II with some old moldy version of Real Player on Windows 95. C'mon guys, change your pocket protector and get the latest version of RealOne! Stop living in the past.
2) These people just don't know how to operate a computer, can't read options during installation, and still haven't figured out how to change settings on a piece of software.
3) These are merely fans of another media player spreading FUD about Real.
These people use the same thinking processes that cause people to say that Windows crashes daily (Win 95, that is) or that Linux is too hard to install (tried it lately?).
Please people, let go of the past and explore the future!!!
But Officer, I DID read the f**king article!
"average cd collection" = 50 cd's
...
50 x $30 = $1500
iPod = (what?) 5000 songs? 10000? say 5k
so, to fill up your iPod $1500/5000 = $0.30
I think this stuff will really take off when songs are 10cents or less, because capacity is only going to get huger and huger.
There is a limited amount of dosh that ppl will spend on music.
Speaking personally:
Allow me to convert Real audio files to other formats, and I'll stop complaining. I might even start choosing content in Real format.
Until then, you're just another vendor attempting proprietary lock-in, and you can't expect to be treated otherwise.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Please find another acronym. This one is already in use, and it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Under capitalism man exploits man. Under communism it's the other way around.
You know, I don't mean to be a censor, but everything that comes out of Mr. Glaser's mouth (or fingers) is complete garbage. While I am happy that he was chosen as an interviewee, I think that the slashdot mods should have axed this one when it became apparent that his replies were 100% exploitation of the free advertising and nothing else. I'm just glad to hear that so many people hate Real Networks as much as I do. By the way, why the hell would anyone under any circumstances contribute to Helix? I've just always wondered that.
I'm surprised nobody asked about Rob's purchase of the PBA (Professional Bowlers Association) along with a few of his tech-sector friends. Over the past few years they have gained a lot of ground in increasing the popularity of bowling and legitimizing it as a professional sport. Wired had a great article on it this month at http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.09/kingpin.h tml.
After watching the re-emergence of poker, I think that the PBA has a real shot of revitalizing bowling with the right marketing. Regardless of how I feel about Real, I'd like to see the PBA venture succeed.
--Josh
Why would Apple want to pay money for Real's sub-par codec?
So exactly what I said. My Costly Dual G5 gives me a relative performance benefit over most PCs, which changes the perception...cost independent. Because when one is making a decision of 1 platform or the other being faster, that's not really based on price. Price is something else entirely!
And this is good.
I don't need Apple or anyone to decide what I listen on my ipod.
Why should Apple decide what You can play on your iPod? Do Philips decide what cds You can play on cd-player?
Quote:
"Course, I don't know if WMP or the MSN Music store is available for the mac. If not, this is probably moot, but it does tie into the 'user experience' and 'total solution' part you ranted on about reguarding iTunes. Apple is not the ONLY company that pays attention to it's customers. MS, by far, isn't the best, but they have done a VERY good job with music.msn.com."
No. WMP and the MSN Music store do not work on a Mac. Specifically, WMP on the Mac cannot play newer WM files including DRM'd WMA. WMP on the Mac is a very poor 'user experience'. Also, when you download songs from the MSN Music store you must go through IE to do so and MS has yet to offer a music player. So technically it is not a 'total solution'.
iTunes at least supports both Windows and Macs with feature parity. (I do wish that they also had a Linux version though) Neither WMP nor RealPlayer have feature parity on the Mac, nor do they give any indication that they will ever add them. Is it any wonder that Mac users are tired of dealing with these companies treatment of them? If they truly championed consumer choice, wouldn't they insure that their media formats and programs worked on more platforms? Like you said, it's a vicious cycle that only justifies itself. Tautological arguments.
I really do like Macs. But I'm certainly not a snob. I can't understand these arguments that assume you must have one platform or the other. If someone bought a Mac, why would they be forced to throw away a perfectly good PC. Use the best tool for the job. And that way you can keep using the programs/games you wish to. The Macs do communicate with the PCs pretty well. We have both in our household. A good thing since if I need to play a WMV file, I have to go to the PC.
Every time some apple issue pops up the win vs. mac brew-haha kicks in to full swing. So it's time for a little thing I call honesty.The real guy danced around the apple questions like one of those freeks in an i-pod ad. !All! read this word again ALL pevelopers would like thier software to reach the max numbers of users. Real is no diffrent.
One: The real player has always had a strong apple useage rate one that shows no sign of going away HOWEVR when it comes to downloads they have no wish to fight the Tiger in the jungle (pun here folks, hope you got it). Itunes comes preloaded AND is fairly easy to use within the apple OS. Being smart biz folks, the good people at real understand this and at this point aren't ready to go toe to toe with itunes in it's native envioment. Thats all as far as raph on the mac.
Two: Come on these cats are dead wrong as far as the codex. The apple scurity codex thing goes bad for one simple reason they didn't pay for it they just cracked it. They could have used other sucure audio formats but in order to "buy pass" apple they chose to hack it. It doesn't mater if apple wants to sell it or not, it's apple product the end. You buy a ford ...you want a honda motor ..you put one in there, no issue. However if honda revese enginers an enigine to work with a ford and then sells the same car as a honda just becouse they altered the engine, can you not see the lawsuit coming? same here folks ..just keep real(?) ....ah just keep it right.
BTW i have many pc Mac,WIN,OS/2,& Linux running each one has it own Cool points.
Hi Rob,
I suspect you won't get round to reading this since it was posted days after your original post but well, you never know...
I installed RealPlayer 10 Gold about a month ago on my home Linux box. Real Player on Linux has never seemed as scary as the Windows version and I was still using v8 to listen to BBC streams. Let me digress and just thank you for bringing out a Linux version of your codecs and software so many years ago. It is appreciated and not quickly forgotten.
Anyhow, after poking at the insides of the RPM and noticing a few worrying scripts that made changes that could potentially not be undone by removing the RPM, I installed it.
Over the next few days I found the initial good impression becoming more and more favourable. To put it bluntly, it wasn't long before it was added as a button along side a small selection of other frequently used software. It was already doing well with me and was up for scoring more points by having open source roots.
Now I'm not going to claim that people like me are in any way pivotal to open source projects. I'm predominately a user but I do like to give back in small ways like filing bug reports and ocassionally participating in bugzilla database grooming. I like being able to trawl a bug database and find an issue I've been having is already known. That way I don't waste time reporting it again and it's nice seeing issues being worked out and not disappearing into a black hole.
I had a few niggles (plugin crashes taking down mozilla) and suggestions so I decided to look at Helix Community to see whether they were known issues. Like all good projects I found that there was a bugzilla (called tracker) which makes following problems so much easier. However when I went to try and look at bugs I got back a "You are not authorized" message. I thought perhaps it was because I didn't have an account. So I went and made an account and tried again after logging in. All attempts to view ANY bugs result in the "you are not authorized" error. All searches seemed to result in nothing found.
Confused, I decided to try the IRC channel and made a brief mention on whether anyone knew about plugin problems and the way tracker wouldn't return any bugs. A good forty-five minutes later no one had answered and I logged off. I know that products have security issues which result in locked bugs but are ALL the bugs in Helix Player of such vital importance that the random public can't peruse them?
It seems such a shame that a lot of effort has been put into creating a community with the useful bits are walled or stone cold to the casual user. Well at any rate community issues are not going to stop me using RealPlayer but it does disuade me from trying to give back.
I'm guessing that your guess was right because I just followed your 3 steps, visted a bug and actually saw some results!
Cheers for following this up.
This is a true story. I worked for a small business, and because of my IT background, my boss asked me to get all the computers on the Internet. At the time, only one computer, an old Pentium 133 was connecting.
I said, sure no problem, and had that computer autodial and had all the other computers attach to its IP address as a gateway. We talked about DSL and we eventually ordered it and a real server, but until then, we had dial up.
Then, one day, a huge freaking phone bill came in.
You know why? because Rob's shitty software was running on one of the computers, and it kept causing the gateway computer to dial up the internet constantly for all the stupid shit - you know useless headlines and crap.
That incident caused my boss to lose all faith in me, and eventually lead to a horrible falling out that ended up with legal accusation, warnings of police intervention and me losing a $1500 bonus.
Fuck you Rob. Your media player cost me my job.
And fuck you for allowing it be installed without administrator priveleges. Thanks for making the jobs tougher on IT professionals everywhere. I hope your business crawls up SCO's ass and dies.
Your technology was amazing - in 1996. We don't need you or your out of date codec any more. We have streaming MP3's and VP6 video, which is a shitload cheaper to serve, and if that is too propreitary we have Ogg Vorbis, which kicks the crap out of your 6 year old audio codec (keep in mind, they haven't upgraded their audio codecs since the late 90's).
Yeah. "Free."
Let me know how free they are after you've been sent to a nice cozy minimum security pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
Ah, yes, because Apple, as hardware manufacturer, has no idea what actually works on the iPod. You, after all, know exactly what works, because you're a hardware engineer who worked on iPod's design. I mean, you did work on the iPod's design, right? Otherwise how would you know how close Real's reverse engineering comes to the actual spec?
I guess when Real fscks up with a future iPod and Harmony wipes out your drive it'll be Apple's fault for not testing with Harmony, right?
Real had every opportunity to convert their files into any number non-DRM formats, which are well understood and well documented. Instead they chose to ignore them, even though those files would be protected from casual copying by the iPod's built-in hiding mechanism, and concentrate on reverse engineering an undocumented spec that Apple can, and has, changed.
Well Mr. shortsighted, enjoy Harmony, because it'll be broken faster than Microsoft broke compatibility with Lotus 1-2-3 right before each release of Windows.
It's in convenient
What Real did is reverse engineer a closed-source DRM system that can, and in fact has, change at any time. This is just not a intelligent move on their part. When Apple changes the spec you know damn well they'll cry foul, and, in all likelihood, sue Apple for (gasp) changing their closed spec.
If Apple doesn't put up a fight now, they'll just get sued by Real later. Better to nip this in the bud and get it on the record that M4P is a proprietary Apple specification, and if Real wants to reverse engineer it, the onus falls on them to keep their crap working.
I can't wait for the first Harmony user to blow away their HD in a future iPod, then call Apple to complain that Harmony blew up their HD, and why didn't Apple test Harmony. Oh yes, it's coming.
will point out that Harmony will continue to work for any current iPod user who chooses to have RealPlayer manage that iPod (and who doesn't use iTunes, a future version of which might be the vehicle that Apple would use to break compatibility)
...seriously, there isn't an iPod owner alive that uses RealPlayer to manage it. Not use iTunes? Get serious.
I'm going to assume that his term "cross-licensing" applies to Apple and Real agreeing, after both break each other's DRM, that they'd "license" each other the rights for just about free.
I then claim that "discussing terms" means "let's see which side can eke money or more rights out of the other".
He can't say "That's OK", because it would set a bad precedent for others (e.g., OSS projects) to disable the DRM, etc. Even if he personally doesn't mind, as a member of the music industry he can't approve that. But that's the only thing he can say to Apple if they do so, short of letting each side sue the other.