Real comes slumming for controversy with Rhapsody iPhone app
By Ronald O Carlson
Whenever Rob Glaser and RealNetworks sleaze on over to this side of the tracks, you don’t need to ask what they’re looking for — some cheap publicity on the down low. This time around the Seattle-based company is pimping an iPhone application for rejection by Cupertino’s App Store grannies, which is to say there’s more mileage in Apple’s good name than money spent advertising their worse than also-ran music service.
Bloomberg reports that RealNetworks has announced that they plan to submit a music streaming software for the iPhone. Given that there are already plenty of similar applications/services already available — Pandora, Last.fm, AOL Radio, etc — you’ve gotta believe that Real has done something to spike the app to insure that it gets rejected by the famously finicky old ladies minding the App Store.
Seriously, there are two potential scenarios here: 1.) Rhapsody for iPhone has been designed to pass muster, which will make it just one many music streaming services already available, 2.) contrariwise, Rhapsody has been built from the ground up for rejection and Real CEO Glaser is going to be Johnny on the spot with flame bait sound bites for any blogger or reporter willing to listen.
Why so cynical? In the U.S., NPD reports market share for the digital download market as iTunes (69 percent), Amazon (8 percent) and “all other players” (23 percent), so Real is scraping for any exposure it can get and getting approved on the first go won’t help them maximize the opportunity.
Banned in Boston!
Back in the day, when you wanted to attract publicity to a novel you were publishing, one of the best marketing ploys available was to provide an advance copy to Boston officials and hope they’d ban it, which would immediately label your book as salacious, tawdry or at the very least controversial. Sometimes all you needed to get the ire of the morality police was a racy cover that might not have anything to do with the book.
This strategy is very similar to Palm which announced ahead of the Pre’s launch that their hail mary smartphone would sync seamlessly with iTunes, a feature that Cupertino simply couldn’t countenance. Of course, the troubled, money-losing company was telling everyone to look for an iTunes update that would block the functionality, which of course Apple was obliged to provide.
Thereupon, if the App Store grannies reject Rhapsody on the grounds that it duplicates iPhone functionality, or that it just sucks, and there’s no one around to hear them say it, do RealNetworks or Glaser exist? It’s important that we see yesterday’s announcement for what it is — a shameless ploy…
What’s your take?
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