It’s hard to have sympathy for RealNetworks , and believe me,
as a paying customer, I’m really trying.
The company is spending — and losing — a lot of money to spruce up
its image with consumers. But Real is running the risk of seeing its
“we’re the victim” tactics backfire in the face of consumer distrust.
For years, RealNetworks made a point to hide the download link to its
free RealPlayer, tricking lots of users into downloading the media
player that would only work properly with a paid subscription. The
software was bloated, slow to load and annoying to use.
Some of the clunkiness has been fixed in later iterations of the
product and the “free RealPlayer” link is in a more prominent
place on the company’s homepage. And yes, the newest
RealPlayer 10 offers some nifty features, none more sweet than the
ability to pause a live stream, a la TiVo. Yet, the distrust has
lingered, and even a 50 percent price
cut on song downloads isn’t likely to convince users to migrate
in droves from Apple’s iTunes.
Even the new and aggressive anti-Apple strategy, which paints
RealNetworks as victims of an iPod lockout, has sputtered badly and
reeks of desperation. Real’s public relations staff, which manages the Freedom of Music Choice
blog, could not
figure out whether they wanted to enable or disable comments from the
public. First, comments were enabled, then disabled, then enabled again
and, as of Friday morning, disabled again.
How’s that for a well-planned strategy? A “freedom of choice” blog
unsure whether readers should have the freedom to respond to the
anti-Apple articles. Surely, Real’s PR department had to know that
Apple’s fans are among the most rabidly loyal consumers and that the
reaction would be swift. (Even I know this. All I did was refer to a Mac
OS X security patch as a “monster,” because of its size, only to be
bombarded with e-mail complaints from Mac fans.)
We’ve been down this road before. Recall the early days of the
browser war. AOL cried victim in the Netscape vs.
Internet Explorer fight and asked us to choose between a
toothache and a migraine. Consumers made no bones about their dislike of
the big bad Microsoft, but Netscape still became irrelevant.
Last I checked, no one (well, outside of Real’s PR folks) really
hates Apple’s digital music business. The iPod is a great device and
the marketing campaigns that have made the iPod a fashion statement
are nothing short of brilliant. The iTunes Music Store is a clever piece
of work that simplifies the buying, listening and CD-burning experience.
RealNetworks should try to emulate Apple, not whine about the
pie-in-the-sky “freedom” that few care about. It should just compete the
old-fashioned way: fix its product; beef up its distribution; and get
creative with its marketing campaigns. Barking about Apple’s iPod, with
little to no justification for doing so, isn’t endearing Real to anyone.
The Rhapsody music service is an impressive place to start. I’m a
Rhapsody subscriber because the subscription-based unlimited listening
option appeals to me.
Instead of a “woe is me” campaign, Real should be spending its
marketing dollars on highlighting the improvements in RealPlayer (and
there are many impressive ones) and getting the word out on
Rhapsody’s fabulous all-you-can-listen model.
Next week, when Microsoft joins the game, Real’s market share is
bound to dwindle, especially when Microsoft uses its MSN portal,
Hotmail, MSN Messenger and Windows Media Player empire to attract
customers.
If, as Rolling Stone hints, Redmond launches its music store
with the Beatles catalog among the 700,000 tracks for sale at 99 cents
apiece, things can only go downhill for RealNetworks.
But then again, it already has.
