Real to announce new media organizer next week
Kimball says Real has no intention of competing with Apple to build a media store, even though it does provide media store technology and services to carriers that they pitch under their own brands. In fact, Kimball says, the media aggregation service will make iTunes and other media stores more valuable to consumers by enabling them to move their content around to all the devices they have, no matter what technology platforms they're using (except for all-Apple users; Kimball admits people who live completely in the Apple cocoon don't need an aggregator). The service will handle music, videos, and photos. It will respect digital rights and not enable streaming of protected content (in other words, movies and TV shows), but it will make it much easier to move music files and playlists between devices. The first version will focus on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) and computers. Future versions may work with living-room devices like digital video recorders and game consoles. Also not in the launch version is support for users' subscriptions to streaming services like Netflix or Pandora. The service will work with media files you own, not rights to stream.Keeping in mind that we haven't yet had a demo of the product, it sounds like a reasonable and potentially useful product to help consumers tame their media archives, although with important gaps in coverage. It could, if Real sticks with it, bring the company back to public awareness. When I said to Kimball that there's a whole generation of technology users that have never heard of Real, he said, "I view that as a good thing, because we get a chance to make a first impression." It has in fact been that long since Real has been a major player (sorry) on the consumer's desktop.But without some potential for revenue generation (and by that I mean actually selling media, not pay-for-cloud-storage fees, which I don't think will add up), this is not going to move the needle much for Real's bottom line.Previously:RealNetworks plots cloud media management service early in 2011.RealNetworks: A tale of opportunities missed.
