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Real: We Will Revolutionize Digital Music

By Nate Mook, BetaNews

April 14, 2005, 1:51 PM

RealNetworks announced on Thursday that it will be unveiling what it calls "a groundbreaking initiative in digital music" at a New York City event on April 26. The company is sponsoring a free concert with Good Charlotte at Radio City Music Hall. Tickets will be distributed through radio stations and other promotions.

"Ten years ago, RealNetworks brought sound to the Internet with RealAudio. On April 26, RealNetworks will change the Internet again and revolutionize digital music," the company said in a statement. No further details were offered, but Real has been rumored to be working on a portable subscription service similar to Napster To Go.

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By WKMahler

posted Apr 15, 2005 - 6:48 PM

Long before band(s) were releasing that nights concert to the audience on
the way out, available on compact disc, this happened.

I had been using DSL with nothing from the internet going on at the time
while I was burning 16 copies of my own original music. Somehow, a disc of
a three cd Bruce Springsteen, "BITUSA" bootleg set of which was missing for
a week or two, ended up on 1 of the 16 discs I was burning at the time. The
Springsteen music was not in any folder on my computer. In fact the only
Springsteen music was a cover version of "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" that I
was the performer of. This occured over 2 years ago, long before direct
streaming of tv signal, vcr signal to dvd was popular en mass. Long before
the average home or professional PC user could record live audio from the PC
to disc en mass, let alone from "out there in the great beyond" over the
internet to disc. For the record the one person I do believe would do
something as such is also the same person who had a copy of Winzip 8,
complete with box on his office floor, long before #8 was made pubic in beta
form as well. Who? The Vice President of M2 Technologies Inc. Christopher
C. Morris, also a musician, husband of owner Janet E. Morris of whom is
reported to be a member of the Secret Service. The Secret Service info my
wife and I learned as we were driving north in New Hampshire on the highway
as a unknown woman yelled it from her car, alongside mine. Leonda is
Janet's niece (mother's sister). http://www.m2tech.us and
www.janetmorris.net

So as for Real Network to revolutionize anything, this is something remaing
to be released, a blast from the past to me yet entirely new as well. The
vast majority of people are still getting used to MP3/WMA players in autos.
Flac & shn, albiet lossless audio has much catching up to do in regards to
PC players and audio decks of all kinds.

I'm still amazed that two doctor teams reported the same results inside a
year about a new chip in a neck down paralyzed pair of people. Both are
teams from different states of the USA and no doubt, moving a mouse cursor
and or playing pong is a step in a great direction with a price tag of
development costing millions. Yet this Winamp/shoutcast broadcaster can
recall more than once without voice commands, without pre-programming, the
player coming up with songs out of hundreds of assorted files in random that
were directly in relation to the world around me. "You're Missing" & "The
Promised Lands" by Springsteen came up back to back, immediatly upon
starting shuffle mode upon returning from a family funeral in March 2005.
The cost since 2001, less than $5,000.

Intuition. When my Uncle James William Mahler was killed by mortar in
Vietnam, 1963, his brother, my Uncle Harold (Teddy) Mahler and his wife,
here in Massachusetts awoke from a sound sleep. No phone calls, no knock at
the door, it was immediatly upon his death.

Monkeys are well known to get down from trees long before a storm is on the
rise to the naked eyes of a human being.

December 24, 2004, approx. two hours before midnight, this song came out of
my mouth, an original, recorded at the same computer I'm using now.

"Merry Christmas To You"
Well this time, I know
I'm not coming home
But I'm thinking of you more than ever
These waves are crashing down
All I can remember is
Lying on the ground
I know your prayers are there for me
Would you please add someone else's as well
Might be a long, long time before we see each other again
But at least this time, Christmas time
I know I am at home with you again
Please I so much as dared care for more than just you
From what I know
That you don't know of
Many people like me
Who live the same way as you
Please remember this moment my friend
My true love
I am coming home again
Merry Christmas
To you

I am coming home
Merry Christmas
To
You

http://www.mahlers.com/merrychristmastoyou.mp3 128 Kbps MP3 Audio
http://www.mahlers.com/merrychristmastoyou.wma Windows Media Audio
3:47
Copyright 2004, December 24. W. K. Mahler Music Publishing Co. ASCAP
American Society of Composers Authors And Publishers.

I was at ASCAP's site the same night. Over 300 downloads occured within
that same week. I was absulatly going nutters in misery when the tsunami
struck South East Asia and hadn't done anything musically myself except
listen to other artists for months and only recently got back into my own
music.

Thoughts indeed....

Peace,

William K. Mahler, Owner

http://www.worldmediahost.com
Webhosting According To You.

Score: 0

By jshrk

posted Apr 16, 2005 - 1:24 PM

Haha what a post, whats up with the life story man, sounds like you just drifting off into craziness, prob just me but most didnt make much sense.

Real sucks big time though, I used to use their program until i realised it was going no where, almost no updates and if their were was only avaible if you brought the thing, their 'revolution' I cant see happening, just a need to hype up some rubbish and get fanatics exicted. Winamp rules! Pity it might be going downhill now people left :(

Score: 0

By fewt

posted Apr 15, 2005 - 7:59 AM

Real really needs to mirror their Linux client on Windows. I've never understood how they could have such a wonderful client on Linux and a poor one on Windows. They have done some good though, with helix. They change with the wind, but it seems like they keep changing in the right direction IMHO. I'm eager to see where this leads.

Score: 0

By kprovance

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 11:12 PM

Please...REAL needs to come up with useable software that does not crash, hang up a system, demand tons of user information or forces me to upgrade to some subversion every five minutes before trying to do anything else.

Score: 0

By zridling

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 7:30 PM

To complete their reign of one of the worst corporations ever, Real just needs to partner with AOL on something.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Apr 15, 2005 - 5:39 AM

Ha, Ha, LOL

let's see--
RAOL ONE: we will railroad your system over! or--

REAL PAYAOL: come on, cough up the cash!

Score: 0

By wincement

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 4:40 PM

I never have liked Real, but even besides that, I just can't get excited about these online music services. The concept is great, but there's one small problem: sound quality. I'm just not satisfied with the 128Kbps or even 64Kbps compression that these services use as a standard to cut down on bandwidth costs.

I want to hear all of the sound. Until there's an online service that doesn't compress the audio so much, I'm going to stick with CDs. Who knows? Maybe this service from Real will satisfy that need for me, but I doubt it.

Score: 0

By csamaha

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 4:57 PM

That's why I will only use the real music store for music downloads. Itunes, Napster, music downloads from Walmart etc. and almost every other music store I've seen encodes at 128 kBPS. Realnetworks, however, is the only music store I've seen that encodes all songs at 192 kBPS, and with the type of format they're using that's better than the quality of say, a 192 kBPS mp3 file. Personally, I feel this is a wise decision on their part. Granted, I would rather them use some type of lossless compression, but oh well. I would love it if they started offering songs at even higher bitrates like 256 and 320 kBPS. For me, I'm not concerned with how much space they take up on my hard drive, considering the size of today's hard drives (200 GB and up).

Score: 0

By RobertM

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 7:17 PM

There is at least one other store, and I *think* it might be MSN Music, but I haven't checked it out. I think they're 164 Kpbs, maybe 192 ... but, again, I forget which one it is. I just remember reading about it on Microsoft's site sometime (so it is a WMA-compatible store).

Also, while iTunes does use 128 Kbps, it's AAC, which they claim sounds as good as MP3 encoded at higher bitrates. I don't know about any studies done on that, but I guess I'm not picky enough where it doesn't make that much difference to me.

Score: 0

By sethadam1

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 5:38 PM

For the record, I've read that a 320Kbps MP3 is a waste - levels above 256 have to compensate too much to make it worth the compression. Anyone else heard similar studies?

Score: 0

By J_DeVitis

posted Apr 15, 2005 - 12:29 PM

Getting the quality/compression trade off right is in part black-art given the wide variation in source patterns. Some encodes over 300k will get it right.

Score: 0

By wes_517

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 2:34 PM

Is it just me or has anyone else noticed that Real changes business focuses at least 3-4 times a year?

ok, all efforts are going into the Arcade, then all efforts are going into changing the players name from RealOne Player (version 9) to Real Player Ten. Now we just want to be Real instead of Real Networks. Now we want to buy Rhapsody... Now we want to let people rent and download movies, now back to rhapsody...

I don't think they can keep a business focus for more than a few months... how long will it be until rhapsody is pushed to the back burner and they try going back to selling movies over the internet?

That and i personally will NEVER give them a credit card number after working for them and seeing firsthand how they make it easy to get sucked into recurring charges without knowing it...

Score: 0

By Joeyman101

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 4:23 PM

Ok, I could agree with real player being junk, but have you tried real rhapsody ? Thats alright if you are ... go on paying 99 cents a song and I will stick with real ... I can't want for the anouncement!

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 3:02 PM

I've been a Real customer for years now, and never had any problem with the program or the service. In fact, their customer service is the best I have ever seen. I can't imagine any reasonably intelligent person getting sucked into any recurring charge. As for business "focus". I don't understand why adding new services for your customers would be considered losing "focus?" If that were the case then most companies that sell anything but a primary widget would lack focus.

I'm excited to hear what they have in mind, and I'll evaluate after the announcement.

Score: 0

By KSzostek

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 6:35 PM

Good luck if you have been a real customer for years you know their service sucks. Compatibility issues, cost etc. Give me a break!

Score: 0

By nate

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 2:47 PM

Well stated. It's important to adapt to the times, but Real sometimes seems as if it's walking around in the dark trying to find a light switch. For example, they spent a lot of resources on MusicNet just to buyout Listen.com.

Score: 0

By DaemonFF

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 2:46 PM

Agreed, plus all the junk they usually include with their players is horrible. Install Real and you have 2-3 other programs running in the background consuming resources while doing nothing useful.

Score: 0

By ogman

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 3:04 PM

It seems obvious that you have not tried a recent version of Real and are basing your comments on old, tired stories. As for the "background" programs, the options menu can be very useful.

Score: 0

By KSzostek

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 6:36 PM

No plain and simple they suck!

Score: 0

By wes_517

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 4:22 PM

RP 10 is the first real player that you can turn off the messaging center. all versions before it always came back.

and they still do bundle addons (i consider IE toolbars to be something i don't need/want)

Last i remember (a few months ago) to get the free realplayer you still did have to go about 4 levels into the website always making sure you hit the free player, lest you get to the premium one, which is still a decent program, but you have to make sure to also uncheck the strongly recommended addons for $30 each.

while i worked for them, i knew a number of people doing phone support before that was shipped out of country, and the majority of calls from what the agents told me were people seeing charges on their credit card statements not knowing what they are paying for, so then instead of just canceling, the agent is very strongly urged (and rewarded for) doing anything possible to stop the cancelation, even many times not canceling, but sending an email with another week, then if you want to cancel, you respond to that instead.

plus, the only way to cancel over the internet is to tell the system you have windows 95. everything else will make you call in.

Score: 0

By horsecharles

posted Apr 14, 2005 - 8:18 PM

I heard your same story from other insiders-- since a long time ago. They got into hot water with the EU and were forced to supply for Europe a non-misleading & non-privacy-invading version-- i recommend folks use that one: it will be Real One v10 instead of 10.5: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/audiohelp_install.shtml

Score: 0

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