RealJukebox A Money Maker or Market Share Grabber? Forrest Stroud
A Money Maker or Market Share Grabber?
It isn't clear exactly how RealJukebox will produce revenue for RealNetworks. Executives say the company plans to make a premium version of the product available by the end of the year, probably in the same price range ($29.99) as its current high-end streaming media player. And the "Get Music" button reachable via a panel on the Jukebox's interface could become a source of advertising and commerce revenue for RealNetworks, in much the way splash screens are for AOL and anchor tenants are for Yahoo.
Yet RealNetworks does not seem as concerned with making RealJukebox a near-term revenue producer as with establishing RealSystem MP as the preferred interface for downloaded music. In that sense the company is trying, as Jim Barksdale of Netscape occasionally liked to say, to find a parade and get out in front of it.
