RealNetworks has chosen Thomas Nielsen as its new president and CEO, succeeding interim CEO Mike Lunsford. He starts next week and is intended to bring what RealNetworks’ chairman and founder Rob Glaser says is a strong digital product background to the company.

Rhapsody hopes to move in to the black in the final two quarters of this year, after turning around subscriber decline following its spinout from RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) and Viacom (NYSE: VIA) largely thanks to uptake of its mobile service, the company’s chief product office Brendan Benzing tells paidContent.

In case you missed it, links to some of the top stories in digital media this past week—including our paidContent 50: The Most Successful Digital Media Companies In The U.S. »  The NYT Pay Plan’s Most Dangerous Foe: Perception »  Bloomberg’s Bascobert: Bloomberg BusinessWeek Doesn’t Need A Paywall »  Without…

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) CEO Bob Kimball, who replaced long-time CEO Rob Glaser just over a year ago and has been aggressively restructuring the company ever since, has resigned in a move that throws the company’s turnaround plans up in the air.

Spotify has doubled the apparent success of its freemium model by changing the way it reports one number.

What’s the perfect harmony between free and paid in the subscription music world? For March and April, Rhapsody has upped its usual 14-day free trial to 60 days.

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) founder Rob Glaser’s latest project: a video chat startup. SocialEyes, which launches today, lets users find friends or strangers with a common interest and video chat with them. Glaser is chairman, while Rob Williams, who was formerly an SVP at RealNetworks, is CEO. The two men are…

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), which has been undergoing an aggressive restructuring under CEO Bob Kimball, is cutting 130 jobs, or 10 percent of its workforce. This is the third round of layoffs since Kimball replaced long-time CEO Rob Glaser a year ago; the company cut 60 jobs in March and eliminated…

Since taking over as RealNetworks’ CEO in January, Bob Kimball has presided over an aggressive restructuring. He has led two rounds of layoffs, spun off the company’s Rhapsody music service, and focused resources on two of the company’s long-standing businesses—its software-as-a-service business for carriers and RealPlayer.

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), which has gone through a major restructuring over the last year and says it is now focused on growing its business, has added a chief marketing officer to its executive ranks. Judith Bitterli, who has provided marketing consulting services to RealNetworks for the last year, is taking…

It’s been three years since I started working at mocoNews. In that time—I turned my living room into an office, which I sentimentally call mocoNews World Headquarters—I’ve written nearly 3,000 posts, and I’ve met so many people—some of whom had million-dollar ideas and others who were destined to fail. I’ve…

Today, RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) has relaunched one of its oldies, but goodies: The RealPlayer. The new media player is in line with the Seattle company’s objective to make its current products more attractive as it beefs up its essentially nonexistent pipeline. To that end, the latest version of the RealPlayer…

RealNetworks’ GameHouse games unit, which has said it wants to improve its position in social games, is buying up social game developer Backstage Technologies. Backstage has developed several original titles for Facebook, include lottery game Scratch and Win and music app Vinyl City. It’s best known, however, for a social…

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) conducted a deep reorganization in the second quarter that led to the elimination of 85 jobs, including 25 percent of the company’s execs. Today, it announced that the changes are largely complete and is busy trying to increase revenues of current products, and trying to beef up…

Maybe it’s just me but it felt like RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) dragged out this whole CEO search for too long. It’s not like Bob Kimball was an unknown: He’s been with the company since 1999. Maybe a month or two after Chairman Rob Glaser resigned as CEO in early January,…

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK) is reorganizing once again, taking a $10 million charge this quarter as it cuts staff and office space. About 85 jobs are being cut, including roughly 25 percent of the company’s execs. This is the second round of layoffs at the company since Rob Glaser stepped down…

Rob Glaser has landed at his next gig, relatively quickly. He is joining one of the bluechip VC firms Accel Partners, as a Venture Partner, focusing on digital media technology, social media, and mobile service investments. He will remain at his homebase in Seattle, and will surely be looking at…

RealNetworks (NSDQ: RNWK), which is in the midst of a major reorganization of its business, posted another down quarter, with revenue off nine percent to $128.6 million. The company did however swing to a profit of $3.2 million, or 5 cents a share, compared to a net loss of $12.1…

		EPS*	Rev. vs Q0109	Net Inc. vs Q0109
RNWK	Release		9%	N/A%

* vs. Analysts' Estimates: Beat Met Missed

RealNetworks’ GameHouse is launching a new social gaming platform designed to transform single-player games into connected experiences—and to make it easier for developers to publish games across gaming portals and devices. It’s supposed to be able to “massively” scale for hundreds of millions of players. The first example of GameHouse…