As a growing field of music and video suppliers huddle around proprietary platforms and formats to secure their portion of the online music pie, CNET News covers Real Networks' announcement of a multi-format multimedia "jukebox" that will incorporate content in Apple's QuickTime and iTunes format, as well as its own and other major suppliers'. At long last someone has figured out that arbitrary differences in formats do little for their customers and a great deal to inhibit the widest dissemination of content possible. Yet again timid publishers have been left in the lurch by technologists who understand the value of providing aggregation services that meet the needs of the marketplace instead of fretting about using technology primarily to exclude competitors. There's nothing wrong with having clever retail outlets/aggregators such as Real and others manage the complexities of client relationships, just as Factiva, LexisNexis and others do for professional content, but as noted in this week's News Analysis, today's content technology leaves very little room for additional "middle men" to add value to underlying content unless they can use it to establish ongoing relationships with the end-users who best perceive content's value in a context. Publishers of all kinds will be smart to embrace open standards for delivery and rights management pertinent to their industries so that they can continue to provide mediation value that will otherwise fall to technology players that are more adept at managing client needs and expectations.