“It sounds like Rob Glaser is itching for an invite to Apple Computer’s digital music party. Glaser, chief executive of multimedia software giant RealNetworks, derided the way Apple’s top-selling iPod music player works only with Apple’s own top-selling iTunes Music Store — and doesn’t work with rival download stores like the RealPlayer Music Store. Glaser, whose Seattle company develops RealPlayer and owns the online music site Rhapsody, shared a panel at PC Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., Tuesday with Shane Robison, Hewlett-Packard’s chief technology officer,” Jon Fortt reports for The Mercury News.
“HP plans to begin selling its own version of the iPod in a few weeks through a partnership with Apple, so Glaser asked Robison to work on getting Apple CEO Steve Jobs to open up the iPod to others in the industry, predicting that Cupertino-based Apple’s music player will lose market share otherwise,” Fortt reports.
“‘Consumers will say, ‘I bought an iPod and I can only shop in one store. What is this, the Soviet Union?” Glaser said. ‘Steve does understand this,’ Robison said. ‘It will evolve,'” Fortt reports.
Full article here.
sounds like the death gasp. He’s looking for a life line from apple to save his online music store and share the wealth.
Why doesn’t he use the same format uses?
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Perhaps Glaser wants to avoid having Rhapsody swirl down the tubes like BuyMusic.com thus asking for a lifevest from Capt. Jobs.
The Soviet Union?!? Give me a break. Like Rhapsody has a whole lot of music that iTMS doesn’t have. Yeah, right.
So why not set up their music stores to sell AAC or MP3 & it will work on the iPod?
AAC/FairPlay is Apple only, and the record companies won’t allow sales of unprotected AAC/MP3
iTMS is the de facto standard for legal downloads! Here’s to iTunes 5 soon!
—
http://homepage.mac.com/johnhood
Poor Rob, reduced to comparing Apple’s totally integrated music purchasing and management experience to Soviet Russia.
And when will Microsoft or Real make their media software feature-equivalent cross-platform? And when will MS or Real make their servers available under OS X?
What a total fscking hypocrite – between MS and their more blinkered developers and acolytes (Real included), they tried to run Apple into the ground, and now they want to be invited to the iPod party because they can’t design anything that the public wants.
As for Robison saying that ‘things will evolve’ – it’s true, they will: Real will hopefully disappear into oblivion as MS continues to stab them in the back, and then they’ll cease to be a problem.
Should have picked more trustworthy bedfellows, Rob.
Dear Steve Jobs,
Please save our failing company by opening up support for our service on your iPod device.
Sincerely,
Rob Glaser
Before the AAC discussion reboots, I’d like to suggest that even if other people licensed FairPlay, that DRM is likely tied to the VENDOR. So if Apple allows songs from Apple on the iPod, that doesn’t mean songs from another vendor would work unless the two companies cooperate. A FairPlay AAC from another company would NOT have the Apple “code” or whatever. Apple CAN control their player and their music store, and they have done so. Real and others are kept out. For now, that makes good sense.
Other companies are bound to try to do what iTunes has done, and some may survive in some form. But Apple’s in charge at the moment.
Not Again! Ok from now on MDN is not allowed to report anything WMA related news! I can’t believe this. Every second day Real this and Napster that. WHO THE FSCK CARES!
As long as Apple doesn’t tell the labels not to distribute through Napster, etal, then choice in the marketplace exists. For the say 92% of home users using Windows computers they have the freedom to choose the multitude of WMA-based services and players OR the integrated iTunes/iTMS/iPod experience. Glaser and the others are despirate.
“As for Robison saying that ‘things will evolve’ – it’s true, they will: Real will hopefully disappear into oblivion as MS continues to stab them in the back, and then they’ll cease to be a problem.” This was too funny!
One guy from Finland, how is this a WMA story. Rhapsody songs are encoded with AAC. It is just that they use a different DRM than Apple, so their stuff won’t work with iPod. It seems to me as if Apple needs to license their FairPlay DRM including access to it’s database to other vendors. (All licensing is kept on a central Apple server. Deleting a song from your hard drive does not allow you to listen to it on another computer. You must deauthorize it first.)
Wal-Mart please tell your suppliers to sell me products at your cost so I can resell them cheaper then you and beat you out of the market. Please… 🙁
Signed,
Owners of the rest of the Dept stores not worth mentioning
So why doesn’t ‘Real’ partner with Apple’s music store? You know, get together… add some more portals via Real into the iTMS stucture? I wonder if Steve would be open for that…
I guess guys in Finland can curse as well as the illiterate masses of America.
The dumbing down of the world marches on.
I keep hearing Rob Glaser and others with connections to Microsoft or other music download stores saying that iPod owners will want to use all the different online music stores and will be angry that they are locked in to the iTunes music store. Problem is, I know lots of people with iPods, both Windows and Mac users and, uhh, I have never heard any of them complain or even mention that they can’t use Rhapsody or WalMart or buymusic or Napster. Why do Glaser and these other donkeys keep trying to put words in the mouths of iPod users? Me, I like the iTunes Music Store. It’s fine. For the most part I find everything that I am looking for, but all in all, I am not really passionate about the music store. Now, on the other hand I LOVE my iPod. These guys just don’t get it. People are loyal to the player and, in my experience, mostly ambivialent to the store they get their music from. Has anyone out there heard a single iPod user griping that they cannot use Napster? Anyone?
Apple is just starting to ride the crest of its own wave…when they get to the end of their waveride, then they will consider adopting other options and opening other doors.
Currently, their is no other big wave out there, only mini-waves, so WHY should they open their store to Glaser who is spinning slowing down the toilet?? Are they doing Micro$in type tactics? Perhaps, but if you had a company who has changed the whole industry for years and years while at the same time being stepped on over and over and over. I believe when there is a real competitor(not REAL competitor, no pun intended) that Apple will eventually open their doors to other options. HP was a first step, but just like the DVD industry/formats, there needs to be some support of what is the best standard, and HP swallowed their pride and made a great move. At the same time, HP made leapfrogs over everybody else by supporting Apple, which, like it or not, is the standard music player and they are gonna make some huge profits by only putting their name on it. No one else can currently touch this unless they also support Apple.
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
How is this a WMA article? Well, if this WAS the Soviet Union, we WOULD be using WMA and only WMA. So much for state-sponsored monopolies….
This from a guy whose company hides its free downloadable player so carefully that you can search to no avail to find it if youre eyesight isn’t very keen.
They guy ought to take his own advice.
Once REAL stops all the cheesy garbage it does, then he can talk smack about Apple.
Is the guy clueless? HP got it right, he did not. Now he’s whining about it.
I Love my iPod.
And like anybody else outside the USA I use it only with my ripped CD.
So I don’t care about all those itms wannabe…
Keeping the iTunes/iTMS/iPod experience closed to other download stores and/or players is not like Microsoft at all. Shieldzee is right – who are these iPod owners who are complaining?
iPod owners can order a physical CD from an artist’s web site (http://www.theclevers.com – cheap plug for friends in Seattle); through Amazon.com, drive to Target or go to their local record shop. Choice is rampant.
If Rob Glaser and Chris Gorog were smart they would spend their time working with a manufacturer to make an ipod killer and integrate it tightly with their service rather than knock Apple. They should be hiring a designer on the level of Apple’s Jonathon Ive (NYC’s Karim Rashid, France’s Phillipe Stark) and come up with the newest fashion trend in MP3 players along with a user interface that actually rises to the level of the iPod experience.
If they want a level playing field they will need to get much more creative and stop their bitching!
Actually, in Glaser’s defense, Real supports QuickTime Streaming Server within their Real server (so you can stream either/both QuickTime or Real data in either format from the same machine). Also, while I can’t guarantee this because I’ve never tried it, the PC version of RealPlayer will also play WMA and QuickTime files using the appropriate software from Microsoft and Apple. I’m not sure about the Mac version because I don’t have it installed… :^)
Frankly, I tend to agree with him. To quote Steve Jobs, “At Apple, it’s about the music.” It shouldn’t be about the format. If AAC/FairPlay is so much better than WMA/MSDRM, if iTMS is such an incredible on-line experience, they should be able to stand on their own.
pfffft.. give me a break.. yeah the soviet union.. that’s like complaining that your school is only sponsored by nike and you have to wear nikes and nike jerseys…
What?!? you mean this store is the most popular.. and even ppl on windows can use it too… i guess i should try using the virgin store.. cuz i’m curious.. oh got the software and it’s pretty slick.. oh well almost as slick as itunes…
rob glaser has to be pretty worried about apple’s customers … that’s very sweet of him lol
The point isn’t whether iTMS can “stand on its own” without having the iPod fail to support Microsoft WMA.
The point is that Apple has no desire to help Microsoft’s effort to dominate yet another industry.
Nagromme,
I think you just nailed it! Very well put. I think all these critics fail to see that very simple point!!
it’s still humorous to me that people like Glaser bitch about not being able to be on the iPod, yet none of these secondary shit services is available for the mac.
“Piss off hypocrites.” – Steve Jobs
“The point isn’t whether iTMS can ‘stand on its own’ without having the iPod fail to support Microsoft WMA. The point is that Apple has no desire to help Microsoft’s effort to dominate yet another industry.”
Oh, come on. Now you’re just being silly.
Apple’s job, first and foremost, is to make money. At the moment, they can sell iPods which don’t play WMA and make money. If–and I am not saying this will happen–the point comes where they can make more money by selling iPods which support WMA, they will do so in a heartbeat.
So, in other words, what you’re saying is that if Apple supported WMA and Real in iTunes (by, say, paying Microsoft and Real to write QuickTime Codecs for their formats) and on the iPod, this would be bad for Apple? How so? Would people stop shopping at iTMS? iTMS can still continue to distribute music as AAC/FairPlay. I can still play it on my iPod. Would people not buy an iPod because it plays WMA and Real? Heck, I think more people would (again, not that it’s current inability to do so is hindering sales any).
I’ll admit, it’s sort of an “ideal world” argument. In an ideal world, I wouldn’t have any DRM, I could play music in any format on whatever devices I want to, etc. Companies wouldn’t use secret file formats as a way of locking users into their products (no matter how much market share they have). My complaint is Steve Jobs idealistic quote, “At Apple, it’s all about the music.” Well, if that’s the case, why should it matter what format the music is encoded in?
“Would people not buy an iPod because it plays WMA and Real?”
Peter, it isn’t clear if you own an iPod or not but I’m assuming you don’t. Part of the beauty of the iPod is how easily it works with iTunes. So lets say Apple opens up the iPod to play Real’s DRM-version of AAC as well as WMA.
Napster now tells everyone ‘come buy from us because you can play our songs on your iPod.’ But how does the song physically get from Napster to the iPod? Does Apple now have to work on importing songs from every other format into your iTunes playlist? Will this upset Real because people aren’t using their RealPlayer? To do this Apple has to include DRM WMA within the iTunes software and pay Microsoft for every version of iTunes software it gives away. Yes – all those copies of iTunes given away now means money in Microsoft’s pocket if it includes WMA.
Seems to me the work necessary to incorporate these other formats into iTunes/iPod is too much work. Any glitch in the WMA file and then Apple gets service calls for the iPod not working right. Frankly, I’m trying to be as M$-free as possible so I’d prefer that my iTunes and iPod not include anything from M$.
At some point (early next year?) consider opening up AAC/FairPlay to whatever services still exist and perhaps share the code to let their songs import into iTunes. This encourages competition while preserving the nice integration withe the software and hardware.
Peter:
While Apple is of course a for-profit company whose job is to make money, that doesn’t mean they have to ignore longer-term or less tangible considerations–such as brand identity or quality–which are also relevant to making money. If Apple believes the quality of the overall experience would suffer as a result of supporting other formats (and some have criticized the quality of WMP), it might be in their interest to keep their system “closed.” Similarly, if they think it’s in their long-term best interest to develop an appreciation of the Apple experience in the larger non-Mac population that the iPods are now reaching, or even just to signal to the market the Apple can WIN completely and decisively against M$, those are more good reasons to keep it closed. I’m not saying Apple should definitely keep out other formats forever, just that there are other (business) considerations beyond a minor blip upward in short term sales.
iSteve: a few short term sales is not worth giving a long-term boost to your biggest rival.
If Apple enabled WMA on iPod today, iTunes store sales would decrease only slightly. They hardly make Apple money anyway, and Apple would for the moment still have the leading store. And iPod sales would increase slightly–and those sales DO make Apple significant money. So Apple would make some amount of additional money in the short term by adding WMA to iPods.
And in the long term, they’d be helping Microsoft do something that would be VERY bad for Apple.
The day may come when MS is no longer pursuing WMA as part of its monopoly tactics. A day when it won’t be pumping money into these WMA stores to help them advertise, etc. A day when nobody things “Windows Media” is automatically the standard and the best because it has “Windows” in it. But until then, Microsoft is a very real threat to Apple’s music future, and if Apple has the control this time around, they should keep it. And who will care? The people who have shopped at WMA stores and don’t want to bother re-ripping their purchases. These are NOT a lot of people.
Someday, helping out other online stores may be good for Apple. That day is not today.
That was re Peter, not re iSteve
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The reasons to leave WMA off the iPod are not regarding selling more or fewer iPods OR songs for the present. The reasons are about MS as a monopoly, and the genuine long-term damaging effects that has had on many companies before and will again in future.
My comments and view on the licensing out AAC/Fairplay have been published so many times now. That I feel like a broken record (or like Dull DJ??). Apple is playing it right for now, I hope they don’t drop the ball.
“The reasons are about MS as a monopoly, and the genuine long-term damaging effects that has had on many companies before and will again in future.”
Y’know, the whole MS-evil thing is childish. It’s two corporations. Period. Stop trying to pretend you’re Luke Skywalker in a fight against the Evil Empire. Microsoft is trying to promote it’s standard. So is Apple. Apple includes it’s standard as part of it’s operating system. So does Microsoft. When Microsoft opens it’s music store, it will be WMA-only. Apple’s music store is already AAC/FairPlay-only. Apple’s music store is linked directly from the music player included with the operating system. Microsoft will have a hard time justifying doing this–though they may try.
This is a battle between corporations which does not benefit consumers. The better solution–for consumers–would be to support any and all formats and let the market decide what is best.
The iPod is the best player on the market. So, the argument goes that WMA & Real support would produce a “short-term” increase in sales. What would cause the sales to later go down, if the iPod is such an awesome device? People buy the iPod because it’s a great music player.
How would adding WMA & Real support to the iPod and to iTunes hurt the iTunes Music Store? If they are so bad and AAC so good, wouldn’t people use AAC anyway? If the iTunes Music Store is such a wonderful shopping experience, wouldn’t it naturally win out?
The theory is that if Apple added WMA support to the iPod, it would inspire music stores to use WMA/MSDRM and not AAC/FairPlay which would benefit Microsoft. But at the moment, that is their only choice! Music stores can’t license AAC/FairPlay (and the first person to bring up that stupid web-site gets smacked) because Apple won’t let them.
If AAC/FairPlay is to become a standard to compete with WMA, it should be available for licensing. It is not. Why not? Wouldn’t more stores using it make it more valuable? “But if Apple did, they would lose sales in the iTMS!” How so? Because other people’s stores would be better than iTMS? And if Apple makes more money selling iPods than iTMS music, wouldn’t the choice of music stores help iPod sales–not that it needs it–which is where Apple makes money?
Frankly, I’m not convinced that Apple is planning to license AAC/FairPlay. If they were trying to create a standard, they’d license it to other people.
I think this ad on Craigslist says it all:
“iRiver 20G MP3 player (not an ipod) – $350”
hey guess what.. apples got about 80% of online legal music in aac format with fairplay..
last i checked acquisition.. admittedly a mac program accessing platform neutral networks…is full of mp3 files and the odd mp4 or wma file…
therefore… it’s aac vs. mp3.. not wma..
yes.. itunes plays mp3 files lmao.. nothing to worry about..
Peter, yes, sales would go down later: when MS dominates the market and uses that against Apple. Changing their DRM and not letting Apple in, throws their marketing muscle against AAC over the long haul, or whatever. It’s not a certainty that MS would abuse the success of WMA if Apple lets them, but it’s the next closest thing to a certainty.
You can’t compare Apple and Microsoft as if they were equivalent. They are not. MS is a monopoly in one area (desktop operating systems) and repeatedly uses that to control other markets. Apple is far from that kind of monopoly in music, and shows no signs of using that to become a monopoly in other areas either. Apple has nothing like the bottomless pockets of MS to take huge losses in areas they want to dominate long-term. Apple has a foothold now by being first and best in a new market. They need to be smart to hold onto that.
I agree that there’s no reason to think Apple’s planning to share their DRM. Apple’s DRM is a “standard” ONLY in the same sense as most of what Microsoft calls “standard:” it’s the most widely used. Apple’s DRM is standards-based but it would not surprise me if Apple NEVER lets others in. Again, now is not a smart time for them to do so.
The point is not that MS is “evil,” the point is that MS can harm Apple and the Mac platform and Apple music offerings. They have done so in the past, and often illegally, so Apple should be aware of that. They are. So are most Mac users. MS has done the same to many other companies too. That’s simply the facts, not “childishness.”
“Feel the wrath of iTunes and iPod.”