RealNetworks’ CEO Rob Glaser has been interviewed by Kate Bulkley for The Guardian.
The Guardian: One could look at Real and say you are becoming the Sun Microsystems of players, i.e. you don’t have the critical mass to make sure you get the right content and the right number of users.
Rob Glaser: I think that is mathematically not true. I don’t think it is going to be a winner-takes-all game. I think we’ll have good share and Microsoft will have good share, and there may be one or two others.
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, one “other” springs immediately to mind.
The Guardian: There are lots of other places for people to go to get downloadable music, so how will Real Music stand out given it is coming out relatively late in the game?
Rob Glaser: We know that in any of these consumer service businesses we don’t have a birthright to be the leader, but in the US we are number one in terms of music subscriptions with competitors Napster and Yahoo! And then there is Apple, which is slightly different.
MacDailyNews Take: “Slightly different,” as measured in billions of dollars.
The Guardian: Apple’s model is to make money on the sale of devices, using music to drive that – and it is working.
Rob Glaser: Apple has gotten away with this approach to a greater degree than we thought they would. The music industry has made a mistake, not by agreeing to Apple’s fixed-price level (79p per track), which is what gets all the attention, but by allowing Apple to create devices that are not interoperable. If you want interoperable music today, there is a very easy solution: it’s called stealing. The average number of songs sold for the iPod is 25, and there are many more songs on iPods than 25. About half the music on iPods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends’ CDs, which is illegal. But it’s the only way to get non-copy protected, portable, interoperable music.
Full interview here.
MacDailyNews Take: We congratulate The Guardian’s Kate Bulkley for conducting a nice interview with a subject who most likely only replied in between bites of Krispy Kremes. Best Interview Line of 2006 (so far): “The Sun Microsystems of players…” By the way, the reason Glaser concentrates on subscriptions is because he couldn’t compete with Apple’s iTunes in à la carte song sales. If Steve Jobs had a forklift, he could have literally handed Glaser’s ass to him, instead of just doing it figuratively. So, Glaser calls iPod owners thieves and proves that he can’t even be original with his foolish, unproven, and just-plain-wrong statements: Microsoft CEO Ballmer: ‘Apple iPod users are music thieves’ – October 04, 2004. Oh, here’s an interesting one, too, for those who prefer facts over the fantasies of a loser: Study shows iPod owners significantly less likely to steal music than the average person – January 13, 2006.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “jim” for the heads up.]
Advertisements:
• Get the new iMac with Intel Core Duo for as low as $31 A MONTH with Free shipping!
• Get the MacBook Pro with Intel Core Duo for as low as $47 A MONTH with Free Shipping!
• Apple’s new Mac mini. Intel Core, up to 4 times faster. Starting at just $599. Free shipping.
• Apple’s brand new iPod Hi-Fi speaker system. Home stereo. Reinvented. Available now for $349 with free shipping.
• iPod. 15,000 songs. 25,000 photos. 150 hours of video. The new iPod. 30GB and 60GB models start at just $299. Free shipping.
• Connect iPod to your television set with the iPod AV Cable. Just $19.
• iPod Radio Remote. Listen to FM radio on your iPod and control everything with a convenient wired remote. Just $49.
Related articles:
Real’s Rob Glaser calls Apple’s Steve Jobs ‘pigheaded’ – December 06, 2005
Real makes Rhapsody web-based, opens limited service to Mac users – December 05, 2005
Real’s Glaser: Apple iPod+iTunes ‘will lose out because of the share of market forces against them’ – October 29, 2005
Apple’s ‘pure genius’ will soon make iTunes’ portal the ‘number one destination on the Internet’ – July 26, 2005
Study shows Apple iTunes Music Store pay-per-download model preferred over subscription service – April 11, 2005
Real CEO Glaser calls Apple ‘deceptive’ with iTunes Music Store – March 07, 2005
Real CEO pitches to half empty room at tech symposium; Apple draws standing-room-only crowd – February 25, 2005
RealNetworks’ CEO Rob Glaser grabs 3 of top 10 spots on ‘Dumbest Moments in Business 2005’ list – January 31, 2005
The de facto standard for legal digital online music files: Apple’s protected MPEG-4 Audio (.m4p) – December 15, 2004
RealNetworks ‘Harmony’ stops working on iPods but nobody notices for a month and a half – December 15, 2004
Real’s CEO Glaser: ‘Harmony’ hack legal, Mac lovers are very sensitive to Apple criticism, and more – September 14, 2004
Analyst: Rob Glaser’s ill-advised war against Apple ‘is going to bite RealNetworks on the ass’ – August 30, 2004
RealNetwork’s CEO Glaser crashes Apple’s music party – July 30, 2004
Real CEO Glaser: Steve Jobs’ comments on Real ‘not succeeding’ are ‘ridiculously humorous’ – April 29, 2004
NY Times: Real CEO Glaser was close to having ‘iPod’ before Apple, but let it ‘slip through his fingers – April 24, 2004
Real’s CEO Glaser: Apple’s iPod/iTunes combo ‘threatens to turn off consumers’ – April 20, 2004
Jobs to Glaser: go pound sand – April 16, 2004
Real CEO Glaser begs Apple to make iPod play nice with other music services – March 24, 2004
Real CEO Glaser: ‘iTunes is only going to be used for playing songs you bought using the iTunes store – January 16, 2004
Yes ma’am !
Looks like that guys reaching for a donut… grab grab, bite… talks with mouth full…
Rob has gained weight, he will proabably die soon.
Fatty and Skinny went to bed, Fatty rolled over and Skinny was dead.
MSN Word: room. As in not enough room for Fatty.
i wonder who pays the fat man ?? the recording labels, M$, his mother ??
its too bad, Kate Bulkley didn’t ask the question “can’t you steal music using other devices?”
Glaser seems to me to be so envious of Jobs. I get the impression in his head he hears; “how can this guy & company do what they do?”.
Real software sucks. Bottom line. And you know what, I stopped writing this to delete all traces of it on my PowerBook.
Ballmer and Glaser just don’t get it. I can only paraphrase a Jobs quote of, “Apple designs & builds products that people never knew they needed, until they use it and buy it”.
Innovators and leaders such as Apple scare the hell out of Gates, Baller for sure and Glaser for sure.
Real is gone IMO within a year. Ballmer is gone within 6 months.
hey nw3227,
Mr. Porky Pig called me a thief. All songs on my iPod (about 6000 of them) come from my CD’s that I purchased. This also includes a few iTunes songs. If Mr. Squirrel Cheeks proceeds to insult me, sure I could take the high road and not call him Mr. Fat Bas*ard, but his arguement is such an insult to anyone’s intelligence, I have no problem call Mr. Lard Ass a name. So here goes,
Mr. Pididiot….his first name is Stu.
I bet its his mother. He probably lives with her anyway so she can also cook him his favourite home made pies and pancakes.
The REAL interview:
Glaser: “The average number of songs sold for the iPod is, uh…er…”
(looks at open doughnut box, counts to 11, subtracts from original total)
Glaser: “…25, and there are many more doughnuts, i mean, songs on iPods than 25.”
he does seem to have a bit pf packrat in him….keeps most of those pies and pancakes for later
umm.. err… (burp) did someone say donut ? (burp)(fart)
Yes, and if I stop paying Real for their subscription, I lose all the music I downloaded, no matter if it’s on an iPod, Sony Kidney Bean, Creative Brick, or whatever. No thanks.
“About half the music on iPods is music obtained illegitimately either from an illegal peer-to-peer networks or from ripping friends’ CDs, which is illegal.”
And he did an iPod by iPod search to confirm this ??
What an asshole (a used one at that)
Rob Glaser has such a talent for embarrassing Real that they really should have him speak only through a press secretary. I hear that Puffy McMoon Face is looking for a job (Scott McClelland). I bet he’d get it, too, if he brought some donuts to the interview.
/definately going to hell for that last joke!
Rob, trying to create a reality distortion field is something best left to experts. Give it up.
Mr Glaser I say to you what Dean Vernon Wormer told Flounder:
“Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
I am giving you pearls here Mr. Glaser.
More personal attacks, this time on Glasser. You are incompetent and you are cowards.
I’m pretty sure that sensitive enough equipment would be able to detect the curvature of space/time around Rob Glaser. In fact, Einstien proved that time moves slower near massive bodies and that would explain Rob’s relatively slow thinking.
/Thursday is fat joke day!
//btw, i’m 5’11” and 175#
///still like pie!
I work in Seattle about 4 blocks from the Real offices on Elliott. Never seen Rob though. Perhaps he uses the freight entrance.
This one really pissed me off so I fired off the following email:
Dear Real Networks,
Rob Glaser isn’t doing Real any favors by calling iPod users thieves. I’m an iPod owner and there isn’t one track on my player that I haven’t purchased. I’m sure having his ass handed to him every quarter by Apple makes Rob a little bitchy but you might encourage him to watch his fat mouth and quit casting dispersions about people that might be potential customers. Or in my case, a new ex-customer. I’ll never user another Real product again and Rob only has himself to blame for that.
Seriously, it’s not nice to make fun of someone who is overweight. But then, calling people theives just because they use a competitor’s product is not the classiest thing to do either. Rob opened himself up for ridicule when he called iPod users theives. It’s that whole glass house thing and he’s getting what he deserves.
OTOH, Steve Jobs is a vegan and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t eat donuts.
Ballmer doesn’t just think iPod using PC owners are thieves, he thinks all PC owners are thieves.
The latest XP security update tries to automatically add a program that searches all storage devices for illegal (unregistered) Microsoft software (OS and Office programs mostly).
They do give you the option of paying to register this illegal software before, one presumes, jack booted thugs break down your door and haul you away.
Those fat bastards are all alike.
Thanks everyone for posting the correct figures. They are all over the place…just a matter of finding the right ones.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”smile” style=”border:0;” />
Steve Jobs is neither a vegan or vegetarian. He is a pescetarian.
Rob —
Your own Rhapsody service uses Windows Media format. Are you trying to destroy your own Real player and tie yourselves to a proprietary format that doesn’t work on anything but Windows? And the store says its only available in the US? Is that what you call interoperable?
Why don’t *you* make us a nice, interoperable, international, platform-agnostic format for digital music? After all, you do run a media-technology company…
Half of my 10,000 plus digital music collection is legally downloaded via LimeWire. I live in Canada and it IS LEGAL.
Having said that, over 95% of my LimeWire downloads are tunes that were recorded over 30 years ago. There is absolutely no way these tunes should still be covered by copyright. I have not stolen from anyone.