I once said I would never allow a peice of software by Real Networks onto my system, but I installed RealRaphosody and love it. The collection of music and comedy they have is amazing and for what I pay a month it’s well worth it.
I haven’t bought CD’s for a long time because I didn’t like paying 10-15 dollars for a CD where I would only like one or two songs but I’m happy to pay the 9.99 or whatever it is per month to access their music collection.
Sure I don’t own the music I listen to and I need an internet connection to listen but thats fine with me. If there are some songs I want to keep I can buy the rights to burn or use a workaround.
Going through some of the music threads here like worst cover song let me find new music to me thanks to Raphosody.
I like it too, and I use the Rhapsody To Go service to load songs onto my mp3 player. I really don’t think I’ll ever buy a CD again. I know some people don’t like the idea of renting music, but once you try it you find that it’s a good deal. For the price of a CD a month, I can have just about any music I want. It’s like a candy store. I can download 10 albums, and then if I find another, I just download it too. It doesn’t cost me anything extra to do so. If I don’t like it, I dump it. I also just download entire albums. I don’t have to pick and choose what songs I want like I would if I were paying 99 cents for them. Ever single song on my mp3 player (all 844 of them) are subscription, in addition to the 2500 on my hard drive. I’ll add about 20 to 25 albums per month.
I also like the playlist sharing feature. Pick a genre, look around for someone else’s list, and play it. This type of service is great for finding new music.
In addition to Rhapsody, I use Yahoo Music Unlimited. It’s a bit cheaper and has better bitrates than Rhapsody, but Rhapsody’s software is far better.
I was as wary as you were about Real. I swore I’d never use RealPlayer again because the last time I used it it tried to take over my PC. The latest version isn’t like that, as long as you do a custom setup and deselect it being the default player for everything other than Real files.
I tried it a while ago and found that, contrary to my expectations, I really enjoyed it. That is, until I ran into a song that their compression did not treat kindly. I noticed that the background bass just sounded terrible. At first I thought it was my speakers that were bad, but then I pulled out the cd (I had taken to downloading music I already had because, hey, it’s easier than finding the cd) and the difference was huge.
I’m not generally an audiophile, but once I heard it that one time, I couldn’t help hearing it in every song I played. Here’s hoping they’ll fix their compression algorithms or just go with lossless encoding in the future. I’d be willing to give it another shot. I still have a bad taste in my mouth about music rental, but I’m now convinced that there might be a rental service that would satisfy me.
Ive been using RealRhapsody for a long time, and I love it! Its so useful, it honestly has almost everything I need. There are a couple of artists I like that it does not have, but I have their music on my computer anyways, so it is all okay.
I used to download music like crazy, but once I started using RealRhapsody I stopped. Why bother downloading when you get the music for cheap anyways?