Wednesday, November 22, 2006

Real should buy MusicGremlin


Someone asked me the other day what I thought of MusicGremlin. Fact is, I think they've got a pretty killer little wifi media player grafted on to a fairly standard MusicNet-powered service. The devices does everything that Zune wants to do - but doesn't yet. A little company like MusicGremlin is never going to be able to compete on the same marketing scale as Apple, Microsoft or even Napster. Which is sad because I hate to see good products and services wither on the vine.



So, Real should take the cash from $700million dollar settlement from Microsoft and acquire the little company with the Zune-killer. Wouldn't that be sweet revenge for Real? Use Microsoft's money and MSN's ad placements (part of the settlement) to buy the device that does well the one thing Zune gets most hammered for.... direct-to-device dowloads and device-to-device sharing. They could also totally abandon Windows Media DRM (Plays For Sure) in favor of their own (like they have done with SanDisk).



Real could then subsidize the hardware when users commits to a year or more of Rhapsody-to-Go. I'm sure I'm not saying anything that others haven't said (or may be considering for all I know). But as a consumer, I'd buy it.





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