Well… guess I should chime in with my take on Real's campaign called "Freedom of Music Choice".
I think it's a great marketing idea, to be honest. But… I think Real is trying to put a silly facade over what they want to achieve. The Freedom of Music Choice website puts out the message that Real is there for the people and just wants Apple to open up FairPlay, yada yada yada. However, in reality, all Real wants it more marketshare in the music store business. By dropping the prices of singles to US$0.49, they can lure a whole bunch of people to the Real music store (I'm not sure of the name), who will then be able to play the downloaded songs on their iPods. Here's the thing. What happens if Apple then breaks Harmony-encoded songs, so that they don't play on the iPod? Uh oh. A whole lot of cranky iPod users who can't play the ton of songs they splurged on during this campaign. Chances are any Real-supported players can, though, so Apple could face a backlash from that.
However, it doesn't look like things will turn out the way Real thought they would. Tons and tons of Apple supporters posted comments on the petition and boards on the site, forcing Real to take them down. Whoops. At least according to CNet.
DrunkenBlog has a good post on Real's motives behind this. He makes an excellent point in saying:
… at the moment, it's not about actually selling the songs, but cementing their technology for licensing. The more users they have in their service, the more willing the makers of digital players will be to license their technology.
By making the downloads cheap, Real gets a whole lot of users onto their store. By doing that, they can get licensing from other companies and get more vendors to play files downloaded from the Real store. A cheap and quick way to increase marketshare!
I'm not sure whether Real's campaign will work or not, but it will be interesting to see how people react to this in the future, and whether Apple will be put under pressure to open up the licensing system.
It’s also worth noting two things, one of which alluded to and one which I didn’t; every user they get using the iPod with their store is going to be one which is going to be really pissed at Apple for intentionally breaking the functionality with a firmware update. Doesn’t sound like a big deal now, but it will make a lot of noise. The other which I didn’t allude to is that much of the ‘backlash’ is mostly just noise from fanatics who don’t really count that much in the grand scheme of mindshare, in fact I don’t think they really realize they’re helping Real by creating more of a horse race with their shenanigans.
With regards to the first point, you’re right. I mentioned that in the post, but didn’t phrase it very well.
I hadn’t thought of the ‘backlash’ that way, but I can see your point. Since so many Apple ‘zealots’ will flock to bash and mock Real, it has (and will) draw more people to the site, making Real’s campaign more effective. Heh.