Now this is more like it.

July 26, 2003

Fresh from the disappointment that is BuyMusic.com, I tried another service: “Rhapsody”:http://www.listen.com/, a subscription service recommended by a friend and a person or two on the ScriptyGoddess thread on BuyMusic. Rhapsondy *is* a subscription service, but then I like subscription services.

I don’t think I even bothered to check this one out when it started. Streaming music you can’t download? _Ick_. But I’ve been using streaming music services for awhile now and found them to be pretty reliable at least as good-sounding as my MP3s. So I decided to give Rhapsody a shot.

The genuinely exciting thing about Rhapsody is that I can listen to entire albums at a time. This is incredible! Let’s say, for example, that I’ve been hearing a lot of Coldplay on the radio and I’m considering buying their latest album, _A Rush of Blood to the Head_. Well, I can listen to the whole thing — as often as I want — before buying it! I mean, I don’t even have to judge based on the three songs on the radio, like I used to. And I don’t have to spend three hours assembling MP3-parts from Napster.

This for $10/month or $25/quarter. Not half bad.

And here’s the kicker: if I like it I have three choices:

# Click the “buy now” link and order the CD.
# Cruize to my local used CD store and try to locate a copy
# Burn my own copy for $0.79/track.

The $0.79/track thing can get pretty pricy if I’m burning They Might Be Giants albums (which can run 20+ tracks for a 40 minute album), but on the flip side it does make Pink Floyd’s _Meddle_ $4.74.

The interface is pretty easy to use, too. In contrast to the horrible experience I had *just surfing* the BuyMusic.com web site, Rhapsody has everything laid out quite nicely. The genre categories make perfect sense, there’s background on the artists, links to reviews, and such. In truth, I spent over an hour reading about some bands I’d recently discovered before I ever actually started any music playing.

So far, so good. I’ll have to try burning a CD next. Thanks, Trish!

Posted in Archived Unsorted