Real to Apple: From Hell’s Heart, I Stab at Thee!
In a 2004 email to Steve Jobs, RealNetworks (RNWK) CEO Rob Glaser asked the Apple (AAPL) CEO to consider a “tactical alliance” with his company. License us your Fairplay digital-rights management system, allow our customers to play their digital music collections on the iPod, wrote Glaser, and we’ll make the iPod our primary device for the RealNetworks store and for RealPlayer software.
It was an astonishing offer at the time, especially coming from Glaser, who had been a vocal critic of Apple and its decision to make digital music sold through its iTunes store playable only on iPod (”I bought an iPod and can only shop at one store,” Glaser once said. “What is this? The Soviet Union?”)
But it was an offer that Jobs found unappealing. The Apple CEO rebuffed Glaser, declining even to meet with him over lunch to discuss it.
Glaser, of course, took it poorly and spent the next few years slagging Apple and Jobs for declining the partnership. “We think Apple Computer, and Steve personally, are making a mistake by making the software proprietary,” Glaser said at the Digital Living Conference in 2005. “There’s no reason we should penalize Apple customers for Steve’s pigheadeness.”
Course, in the end Real didn’t penalize Apple’s customers. Apple’s customers penalized Real. And today Apple’s iTunes is the largest music retailer in the states. And Real? Well, Real’s “embracing” the iPod.
Funny how that worked out.
This morning the company announced a new MP3 store whose unprotected music files can be played anywhere–even on an iPod. Like Apple’s iTunes, the Rhapsody MP3 Store offers music from all four major music labels at 99 cents per track, or $9.99 for an album. Over five million songs will be made available, at 256k-bit rates. Visitors can preview them in their entirety instead of the 30-second samples offered by iTunes and the like. And, if they’re Verizon (VZ) subscribers, they can download music directly to their phones with the company’s V CAST Music with Rhapsody service.
“We’re no longer competing with the iPod,” said Rhapsody Vice President Neil Smith. “We’re embracing it.”
Pigheadeness, be damned.
Comments
I am not sure how excited I am about Rhapsody. ITunes works fine for me. But, at least I am going to get a free album.
Maybe that will make we want to sing about it: http://webpoet.wordpress.com/2.....-rhapsody/
Posted by Web Laureate at June 30th, 2008 at 11:10 am98% of internet users hate REAL. Politely they are the macrovision of the internet with their idiotic uncovertable RAM & RM formats. Until they apologize for littering their internet with ther low res shabby format, they will gain no market share ever. The name is poison to all those that matter and it shows what happens when you align yourself against consumers to produce one of the most consumer unfriendly formats and then you add in the whole ‘buffering, buffering’ thing and you have effective positioned your own name. (Adobe of course is blithly adding DRM to Flash to become the REal of the 21st century formats) and of course, ask Michael Eisner or Mike Dell when you go out of your way to attack Steve Jobs, what happens?
Posted by joe belkin at June 30th, 2008 at 5:38 pm20 minutes wasted attempting to listen to one song preview. Stared at an HP ad for a while. Was repeatedly pounded to buy a subscription for $12.99.
What were they embracing again?
Posted by John Date at July 2nd, 2008 at 12:32 amI won’t do business with real networks. When they hacked into the iPod back in 2004, they demonstrated their true criminal nature. I don’t trust them. If they would cheat a big company like Apple that has the resources to fight back, what would they do to a little guy like me? It’s clear rob glaser is a microsoft product. He’s bloated, overpriced and obsolete. And I want nothing to do with him…
Posted by James T. Laing at July 5th, 2008 at 9:15 pm