CREAF news mention today:RealNetworks CEO/newser...
It might become "fresh meat" for internet investors.....
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Friday April 16 10:52 AM ET
Glaser takes swipe at MS Audio
By Matthew Broersma, ZDNet
LOS ANGELES -- Rob Glaser, CEO and president of RealNetworks Inc.,
took a not-so-veiled jab at Microsoft Corp.'s competition with the MP3
music format in a speech at Spring Internet World here Thursday afternoon.
"Our view is that the way to participate in this market is squarely and directly, to work within the
system," Glaser said. "Don't introduce another format and tell everybody the compression is better.
Just as HTML grew and got better, that's how this market is going to go forward."
Currently the CD-quality MP3 format has become a popular way for broadband users, such as
college students, to exchange songs -- often illicitly.
Many legitimate MP3 sites have sprung up, and Creative Labs and Diamond Multimedia both offer
Walkman-type players for the format.
RealNetworks (Nasdaq:RNWK - news) has bought into MP3 as an important tool for developing
the market for digital media distribution.
But Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT - news) on Tuesday introduced the Microsoft Audio 4.0 format,
which it says offers superior quality to MP3 with files half the size.
Coming soon: Broadband
Glaser criticized media companies for resisting digital distribution formats, comparing their fears to
the worries that VCR movies would cannibalize theatrical revenues.
"In the long term, the right way for people to build their media-based businesses is to make their
content as widely available as possible," he insisted.
Glaser also predicted that the market for media over high-speed Internet connections will reach
critical mass sooner than many businesses expect.
When you count college students and office workers on T1 lines, as well as home users with DSL or
cable-modems, half of the audience for streaming media will have broadband access by 2002,
Glaser said.
"It won't be everywhere, it won't be in 50 percent of homes, or in cars, but in terms of the growth of
the market we see that cut point as a very important one," Glaser said. "Now is the time to market to
this space, to build businesses and to build infrastructure."
RealNetworks, which was introduced at Spring Internet World in 1995, is now a $5 billion business
and the leader in the market for streaming media, the instant-playing format for the Internet.
Getting personal
Besides broadband access and a secure, high-quality format for music delivery, Glaser suggested
that personalization will greatly alter the way most people use online media.
The next stage for portal sites, for example, will be to add direct links to video and audio content.
Personalized pages such as My Yahoo! or My Excite will offer customized news and information
clips, just as they offer customized text stories today.
Users will even be able to search the content of a video clip by keyword. Portal site Lycos Inc.
(Nasdaq:LCOS - news) (Nasdaq:LYCO - news) says it is developing such a system in anticipation
of widespread broadband use, and CNN is currently making its entire video library available online.
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