RealPlayer chief: Subscription will work
Published: 31 Oct 2003 14:25 GMT
At what level of subscribers does the business become really lucrative?
One of the delightful things about being a public company is I can say things that go forward one quarter or 10 years. In the middle, it gets a little bit tricky. I'll say this: we are focused on a long-term business. It'll be 10 years in February. And if I look back and ignore this financial bubble in '99 and 2000 and think about where we thought we'd be, we're ahead of schedule. In the 20 years in the information technology and Internet industries, I've never been associated with a legal, legitimate consumer product that had the kind of consumer excitement that Rhapsody has, so that's got to be worth something.
Is Real going to get into the portable business so that people can port their music collection around?
With RealOne, we support a couple dozen significant volume devices.
In terms of the economics (of the subscription model), that's still a model in which you have to pay 99 cents a track. If you look at all the excitement about the iPod, the content on the iPod is (largely) not purchased by either CD or download by the recipient. That business has been living off the afterglow of pirate services.
Yes, that category of product is a great product. The primary action is in support that's based on personal use content, where people ripped their own content. We've got great support for that. In terms of tying it into Rhapsody, it's the early days yet.
Has the RealOne subscription business flattened outside of Rhapsody?
No...we had overall growth. Because we broke out music for the first time we didn't explain to people what the number for music subscribers would have been if you rolled the clock back, other than to say that music was up 46 percent (quarter to quarter).
You cautioned investors, in your conference call, about the Major League Baseball contract -- is there heated competition for its hand in streaming ball games? What do you stand to lose, and how will you make up for it if that happens?
As you may know, I'm a tiny percent minority owner of the Seattle Mariners baseball team. I've been associated with them for 10 years and it's been terrific. So I've been around the block a bit with...the economics of baseball. We're trying to tell the folks that follow our business that we're not going to do something uneconomic when it comes time to renew our relationship with MLB.
Long-term, video is going to be more important than audio in aggregate. It's been a terrific relationship from the standpoint of fans. Baseball has been one of the most exciting ways to enjoy the Internet...I was in Berlin for the seventh (playoff) game between the Red Sox and the Yankees, up to the wee hours of the morning watching that amazing game. It's clear that it's a core part of the culture...but we're just telling people, "Don't expect us to do something irrational just for the love of the game."
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