I’ve been seeing commercials for Rhapsody, and program where you pay a set monthly fee and supposedly have unlimited music downloads. A coworker thought it was not actually a program to download the music to your computer, but thought it worked more like Pandora - you have access to the songs while you’re connected to the Internet, but you don’t have the actual file.
Has anyone used it? Can I download songs to my Ipod with it? Is it worth the $?
With Rhapsody you pay a subscription, typically $12.99 monthly and can download an unlimited amount of copy protected wma files. These are typically playable only on your computer and a few portable music playback devices (but not iPod). They are not mp3’s, as in you own the rights to the content. Ownership typically stays with Rhapsody, which periodically renews your ability to play the music as long as you stay subscribed. If you cancel, that music will become unplayable.
Rhapsody also lets you buy non-protected mp3’s that you can do with as you wish, burn to a CD, put on an iPod, whatever. This typically costs 99 cents a track, or $9.99 an album, similar to Amazon. IMO, if you want unprotected music you can do with as you wish, I would just use Amazon to download my music, and not pay a subscription fee. The only other advantage to Rhapsody is that you can preview an entire song or album before you download it, instead of in 30 second snippets.
Rhapsody is two different services with one interface.
You can download songs that you have purchased and use them how you want. I have used this and you can listen to 25 non-purchased songs a month before the service prevents you hearing anymore. I would prefer they allowed unlimited cut off songs, so I could search for songs to buy, but they don’t. I think it’s a big mistake on their part. They have made an effort to convince the artists to offer their songs in mp3 format without DRM and many are participating.
There is a subscription service by the month to listen to unlimited songs. i haven’t used this service so i can’t go into detail.
This is a repost after database error.
I subscribe to it. I pay 23.97 every three months. For that, I can stream any song they have, as many times as I want, as many times in a row as I want. There are very few songs that won't stream. Songs to purchase in .mp3 format and can be transferred anywhere are .99. Full albums are usually between$6 and $10.
I’ve been with them since it was MusicMatch, then Yahoo Music, and now Rhapsody. The Rhapsody player sometimes has serious conflicts. I had conflicts when I was running XP, and had to do some tweaking. Then, when I got Vista, I had to undo the tweaks. (It’s a little check box in preferences.)
I can log into Rhapsody anywhere and stream the music, which is great at work. This is handy when I’m teaching guitar class and the kids want to hear certain songs.
The catalog is pretty immense. Almost anything modern they have. They have a great selection of indie folk rock. I love listening to my local NPR affiliate’s online stream of indie music, and then looking up bands I like on Rhapsody. Only once recently have I not been able to find a band. (LOL…lo and behold, they finally have them now! Yay! The band is called Celilo.)
The classic rock bands aren’t all there, but they aren’t on itunes, either, are they? No AC/DC, but there is all of Pink Floyd. No Beatles, but all of the Rolling Stones. No Led Zeppelin (they’re there, but for purchase only–no streaming), but there is Van Halen.
Rhapsody’s recommendations for me are dreadful. I think they’re just selling under the guise of “recommending,” but I don’t care. I find my music elsewhere.
The selection of classical, jazz, blues, and other genres is pretty big, but I’m not an expert, so you’d have to check for yourself.
I don’t own an ipod and I never will. This works well with my Iriver. I use the Rhapsody player to add and delete tracks. You can edit tag info, which is great when downloading podcasts that aren’t tagged.
Another thing I love about Rhapsody is looking up old albums from the 80s. In many cases, I might still have the CD, but don’t want to dig it out. Or, they have a lot of other CDs by those old bands that I never had at the time.
It works both ways - there is a large program you can download onto your PC and use that to both stream and download music, and a web based application that you can use to stream from any PC (a small download is needed). You can have the large program on three computers.
I like the subscription music the best, I can download all I want and put it on my MP3 player (Plays For Sure players like Sansa, Creative and others, but no iPod). That’s really nice - for one low price, I can get all the music I want - even if I didn’t think I wanted it. It’s easy to download music that you probably wouldn’t buy, but since it doesn’t cost any extra, why not? I’ve found some good music this way.
Rhapsody also has quite a few radio stations (by genre) that are really quite good - far better playlists than you’ll find on say, XM or Sirius.
Finally, the few times I’ve had to talk to the billing department, they have been prompt and helpful, so they have pretty good customer service.
Worth it, in my opinion.
I’ve got it and love it. Every once in a while I’ll have to go to eMusic for some of my more indie tastes that aren’t available on Rhapsody.
I use Napster which sounds similar. The one service is like $15 every three months giving you unlimited streaming and 5 downloads a month. Sounds stupid as you can just buy 15 songs for $1 each off iTunes.
The other service is about $15 a month for unlimited WMA downloads which do not play on iPods.
There are programs that do batch convert WMA to unprotected MP3 files though. If one were so inclined.
Yeah I have it at home, have had it since MusicMatch, and it’s basically my radio station. We do a lot of entertaining at our house, and the collection is pretty decent, tend to listen to the indie rock station mostly. For songs for my iPod though, I um, go elsewhere.
Oh, yeah, I think it’s worth it if you are at home a lot or work listening to music. It’s really cheap as well, like $12 a month or something.
I used it in the past and enjoyed it, but found that the quality of the music was too low for my tastes. I am not by any means an audiophile, but I could clearly hear the difference between a song I played off of a cd and one from Rhapsody. I usually can’t hear the difference between CD and a reasonably encoded mp3.
This was 4 or 5 years ago, though, so they may have improved that.
So I could pay the $15 a month, get unlimited downloaded (not streaming, downloading), and then convert the files to mp3s?
For some reason, this application confuses me and I want to make sure I understand what it can and can’t do before I waste my time and money.
Yes, yes, and no.
The subscription files you download are protected and cannot be converted to mp3s. As long as you have a player that is compatible with Rhapsody (and there are many) it is not a problem. If you have an Ipod, you are out of luck.
Purchased files you download can be converted to mp3s. The subscription does not included purchased downloads.
If you can afford it, get a compatible mp3 player and try it out for a few months. As long as you stay on the subscription, there is no need to actually purchase the music. If you listen to a lot of music, and like to try new artists, I think you’ll find it to be a very nice service. I have a few thousand subscription songs on my computer (I don’t know the exact nuymber but I’d conservatively say 2,000). If I paid 99 cents for each of them, I would have spent enough to pay for the subscription for over 10 years. Seems like a good deal to me.
One upside to this is that unlike purchased music, if you accidentally delete a subscription song (or lose a hard drive) it’s not great loss - just download it again. If you do that to purchased song, you have to buy it again.
When my current iPod dies, I might consider getting a different mp3 player, but I’m not willing to switch at the moment, so I’ll have to look for other alternatives.
Is there a program out there that will do what I’m looking for? One monthly fee, unlimited downloads, iPod compatible?
No, and not likely to be in the near future.