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I've been using Rhapsody for nearly a decade, and I have a whole bunch of stuff bookmarked.

I've found some music I really like by browsing the Rhapsody link structure. For example, look up a band I like and then click on some of the "related" links, or look up a category I like and then click on some of the "most popular" links. It's how I found Zero 7, for example.

I tried using Spotify and I didn't see any real advantage to Spotify over Rhapsody, so I stayed with my bookmarks.

But I have an Android Auto car stereo unit now, and Google Play Music works seamlessly with that. I really wish Rhapsody would update their Android client to work with Android Auto so I could use that when driving around.

P.S. I guess Rhapsody is changing its name to Napster, but their web site still says Rhapsody on it.

http://www.rhapsody.com/

if a woman walks butt naked into a cell block full of hardened convicts...

The phrase is "buck naked." The analogy is to the male deer, a woodland creature not known for wearing clothes. Also, please learn how to use the shift key on your keyboard.

http://www.rhapsody.com/artist...

http://mog.com/
http://radio.com/
http://grooveshark.com/
http://last.fm/
http://zune.net/
http://rhapsody.com/
http://youtube.com/

No, because they wouldn't consider this message as piracy, despite the links at the bottom. Can you guess why?

Napster pay service
Rhapsody
iMesh

Sometimes justice really is blind.

I'm finding new music I like at a far faster rate than I was ten years ago. The biggest difference is that now, I have Rhapsody. (Just like the guy who wrote TFA mentioned that he has Spotify.)

I can find an artist I like, and there are links on the page. Hey, you like Genesis? Check out Steve Hackett, Brand X, and Mike + the Mechanics, and Alan Parsons Project and Yes; check out "Art & Progressive Rock"; check out playlists that other users made that relate to Genesis; in short there are literally dozens of links. Some of the links are tenuous and unlikely, yet I have used them to branch over to music I really like: Genesis to Peter Gabriel to Synergy (Larry Fast) to Zero 7 and Infected Mushroom.

Even if you don't sign up for a music service, you can do something similar with a large online store such as Amazon. You can only hear short samples, not the full song, but you can still navigate a web of connections.

It used to be that to even hear about obscure music, you had to subscribe to music newsletters or hang out in non-mainstream record shops or at least have a friend who did those things. Now you can click around from song to song, and if it takes you nine songs you don't like to find one you do like, you are still only out a couple of minutes. And if you are like me, and you listen to albums many times if you like them, it's totally worth spending a little time branching out. Add in a little bit of time looking bands up on Wikipedia and other sources, and you too can be as much of a music expert as someone who writes for a magazine.

The RIAA and the big labels fear this new world. They want to keep charging for music as if it were a scarce commodity. I read an interview with a guy from a studio, and he defended the high price of CDs: the price is fair because it's really hard to be a studio; you have to try to find new acts, and when you guess wrong, a whole bunch of CDs go into a landfill. Well, guess what: on the Internet, you can just provide the music, and if nobody likes it, it will just sit there; and if people do like it, you make pure profit. No CDs need be produced and then landfilled. The costs go way, way down with digital distribution. They want their costs to drop, while still charging the same inflated prices they try to justify on CDs; that won't work.

The future of music is: everything available on the Internet, at lower prices than if you buy CDs. Most artists will not bother to sign their fortunes over to big record studios; they will retain control of their music, and deal more directly with the customers. There will still be middle-men, but fewer of them, and they will make less money (which doesn't sound good if you are a middle-man but sounds pretty darn good to me). And absolutely nothing will go out of print. If an album sells two copies a year, it has paid back the costs of letting it sit on a server and it is already slightly in the black.

I remember, when I was in high school, how truly huge and popular certain bands were. Whether you liked them or hated them, you recognized Styx or Van Halen when you heard them. In the future, new bands may find it impossible to reach the same level of success and recognition, because everyone will fragment themselves into small sub-markets. It will be hard for any one act to capture everyone's full attention and hold it for more than a very short time.

steveha

"The difficult I'll do right now,
the impossible will take a little while."

Both Billy Holiday and Rod Steward sang it, with one letter difference. Personally I prefer Billy Holiday's rendition.

What would stop you from taking your data out of the cloud? SFTP not allowed? Can't access Mysql DB from outside? I'm asking honestly - I'd love to know.

Now back to the subject...
I just asked another poster if it's easy to move from say one database to another. Say I'm using MySQL but find out I need Oracle instead, can I move my database easily? Or will I have to convert it? If it has to be converted can it be done automatically or does it need to be done by hand? I'm hoping to start a photography business, which may not be a good idea during the recession, and want to start by using FOSS. If I find out later the FOSS tools I'm using isn't enough and I have to switch to other tools I don't want a hassle converting.

Falcon

There are many music download and music access services available. Just go elsewhere. Like so many "firsts" on the Net - e.g. eBay, Yahoo, etc. - iTunes seems old in the tooth. Couple that with egregious DRM policies and attempts to choke interoperability. Why bother. I like Apple products, but who really needs iTunes for music. Other than as a software platform for playback, I could care less about the iTunes music store. Try these: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Music-Download/b?ie=UTF8&node=163856011 http://pandora.com/ http://www.emusic.com/ http://www.slacker.com/ http://www.napster.com/ http://music.myspace.com/ www.youtube.com http://www.rhapsody.com/home.html http://www.walmart.com/music http://www.last.fm/ http://social.zune.net/music/ http://www.seeqpod.com/

Silo Lullabye.

Either that, or Tom Lehrer's We'll All Go Together When We Go.

Their site says it's 14.99 per month, not per year

Well, supposing a Grand AM (29 mpg highway) can keep up 5mpg at 100mph, it's been done. (Incidentally, that song is based on a genuine news item. More info.)

El Scorcho!

Who wants to pay a fee each and every month to listen to music, only to lose all their music should they stop paying?

That would be me.

I have an account with the Rhapsody online music service. For about $12 a month, I have access to over five million audio tracks. Five. Million.

Now, I would be the last person to claim that they are five million good audio tracks; there are plenty of lame covers and there is plenty of just music I hate. But that still leaves a vast amount of stuff I like, and I'm having fun exploring my way around. Recently I have been listening to the entire back catalog of Alan Parsons Project music; I found a few gems and a bunch of stuff I don't care about. Without buying anything, I figured out which songs I actually would want to get on a best-of compilation album.

I still buy CDs and I still buy music from Magnatune. But there is a place for music exploration using Rhapsody and Pandora.

If I wanted to be snide, I could comment that ITMS is vastly inferior to Rhapsody because you must pay a buck just to hear the whole song to find out whether it's worth buying or not. But why should we bash each others' preferences? There is plenty of room for both types of music service.

The worst thing about Rhapsody: buggy software. Really buggy. Maybe the Windows client is better, but I never use that.

The best thing about Rhapsody: Five. Million. Audio tracks.

steveha

The comedian was Tom Mabe, the album was A Wake Up Call for Telemarketers

Only place with samples I've found were on Rhapsody. Scroll down to the "Hotel Calls". They're not as funny as some of his other stuff where he just outright leads a telemarketer on, but they're funny in the sense of, you can tell the guys are tired as hell and they're getting a taste of their own medicine.

Here's a press release from before the album was made: http://www.reversespins.com/telemarketing.html

What the hell sort of excuse is that? Anybody could have done it, yeah. And some nut also could've gone out to the Army-Navy store, bought himself a stop sign, got a spy glass and looks through it - "Look Martha, we caught somebody down there"... but that doesn't mean you don't have to stop. Signs are ignored at your own risk: if you think a sign isn't legally binding, you're responsible for the violation if it in fact was.

Hi Marcus. I have a Snicker's and some new pens for your crazy pocket.

Or better yet, provide a proper buffet style subscription. Sort of like the playsforsure plan, pay a reasonable monthly fee and listen to anything and everything, with the tracks expiring when the person stops paying.

This sounds like Rhapsody. (You can try Rhapsody out for free, by the way.)

Having access doesn't necessarily mean that a person isn't going to value it enough to buy it. Plus opt-in anonymous stat collection ought to be able to do a better job of figuring out what people actually like than a bunch of execs in suits.

I agree with both of these points. When I find music I love on Rhapsody, that music goes on my "buy that CD" list. And the top lists are great; if you pull up some band, you can see at a glance what the most popular songs are. Sometimes when I don't know the name of a song, but I know the band, I can find the song just by checking the most popular songs list.

steveha

Rhapsody is an all-you-can-eat music service. I have Rhapsody and I love it.

Rhapsody costs $12-$15 a month (depending on your options), and you can listen to the music as long as you keep paying the monthly fee. If Apple can actually talk the big labels into granting unlimited lifetime downloads of music, that you can keep, for $20... I'll be stunned. That's a huge value there. Even at $80 that's a huge value.

I could see the labels going for a $20-per-iPod tax, maybe. I can't see them going for a special model that costs $20 extra. You just know that anyone who buys the $20 extra model is going to actually use the service. Maybe the statistics show that currently the average customer buys $20 worth of songs, but this all-you-can-eat plan slices away any future chance of that dollar amount going up. We're talking about an industry that is pricing CDs at $20... can Apple really get them to do this?

P.S. If you have never tried an all-you-can-eat music service, I suggest you try the two-week free trial for Rhapsody. You will probably see the appeal. It's easy and fun to find new music. Sometimes I don't make up my mind whether I like something until I play it all the way through a few times; it's nice to be able to do that.

http://learn.rhapsody.com/

Disclaimer: I don't work for Rhapsody but I do work for the company that owns it.

steveha

The industry will undoubtedly go down kicking and screaming, but down it will go - of that there can no longer be any doubt.

The Apple iPod does not work with Rhapsody To Go. At this time Apple does not support track "rental" from Rhapsody or any other subscription music service. Purchased Rhapsody tracks also cannot be played on an Apple iPod.

Well, I prefer to buy music in a lossless format, so I buy most of it as a CD (and then immediately rip to FLAC with Grip or Sound Juicer).

I heartily recommend Magnatune. They let you download the entire album in medium-quality MP3, listen to it as much as you want, and then if you buy it you can download a WAV file, FLAC, high-quality MP3 or high-quality Ogg Vorbis. (Or more than one of those formats.)

I found several albums from Magnatune that I really love.

Also, I'm listening to a lot of music on Rhapsody right now. I actually don't mind DRM for a music "rental" situation; I object to DRM on tracks that I buy. Rhapsody is a great way to listen to a whole bunch of music at once, and they also have old Bill Cosby comedy albums, holiday albums, and other special things that I might like to listen to once in a while but I don't really have an urgent desire to buy. Rhapsody doesn't have lossless, so I'm not likely to buy much music from them, but it's a great way to find albums to buy on CD. It is available for Linux and Mac as well as Windows. (Disclaimer: I work for the company that owns Rhapsody, but it's not my job to try to sell it to you. I get a free Rhapsody account as a job benefit, but if I didn't, I would definitely be willing to pay $13 a month to get access to millions of songs.)

steveha

http://play.rhapsody.com/album/grease/rocknrollisheretostay

Takes more than bad execs and bad decisions to kill this stuff.

Close but no cigar. Doesn't work fully w/ iPods. You have to pay twice for music to "own" it.

http://learn.rhapsody.com/faq?pageid=unagi.11894418.wrapper&pageregion=A1&src=rotw.learn_overview&pcode=rn&opage=rotw.learn_overview

Sounds like Rhapsody.

I think what you meant to say is that every song purchased from the iTunes music store can be burned to CD. In the non-apple world, there are a variety of subscription services built on microsoft DRM (of which this new service is basically another). Their business model depends on having the music only work as long you pay your monthly fee.

With these services, you can certainly burn (and re-rip) every song you purchase, but you also have the option of legally downloading music which you haven't purchased, and which you have limited rights for.

You can think of it as a superset of iTunes, if thats easier.

Few, though, can match the slick ease of use of RealPlayer 11 -- and it isn't even out of beta yet.

• Adobe employee (engineer?) bringing up some of the issues: http://weblogs.macromedia.com/jd/archives/2007/07/ real_problem.cfm
• Real's response to the above post: http://rws-blog.rhapsody.com/realplayer/2007/07/re alplayer-beta.html
• Flash/FMS communication details: http://blog.jaycharles.net/?p=9
• Other details. From comments here it suggests that RP11 is installing some kind of proxy for the Flash communication: http://www.flashcomguru.com/index.cfm/2007/8/1/rea l-bug

There's Rhapsody for that...I've been able to use the 25 free songs streaming per month through them. Listen to pretty much the whole album if you wish...

Here's your link:
http://www.rhapsody.com/lucindawilliams/liveatthef illmore

The general populace cannot properly build a PC. I have experienced firsthand the results of someone trying to build their own PC, time and time again. There are just too many things that can go wrong. But they should not have to settle for Dell if they do not want. That makes it my job to select quality brand name parts and assemble a quality PC, and if a person wants a $300 PC, then that's what I will build for them. If they want a $600 PC, ok. The more you pay, the more power.

Of course, the other great choice to be offered is Linux, or Windows, or both? Dual boot, VMWare Player, or both? I have now 250 customers, many local, a few not, who enjoy their linux PC and receive tech support and software updates from me, free for the first year, or longer if they wish (for extra $$).

Right now many of my customers are enjoying their new 3D accelerated desktops (video!), and hopefully everyone will have this by christmas. Flash player 9 is also going on select customer desktops, those who are comfortable trying out new software which is not official. All of my customers recieve emails describing services from rhapsody.com, emusic.com, abc.com, new features from KDE and related software (amarok!), and other news of interest.

The main theme here is support. It should not be as difficult as it is with Dell. I think it should be more personal, and that is what i hope to offer. That and, of course, a better quality PC than can be found elsewhere. That, above all, is why I entered this business.. working on Dell, Gateway and Compaq etc PCs for years left me wanting something more for my customers, like quality name brand parts, painless and inexpensive hardware and software updates, and of course, personalized tech support.

Real once again pays some attention to Linux and the same people who whine and cry about big software companies ignoring Linux are throwing a fit.

Also no surprise at the amount "I don't want DRM on my machine" posts. Like it's DRM they're worried about.

And of course, the people who used the RP last decade are still making the same buffering jokes, that never gets old.

Look, is there another music service that works on Linux? Rhapsody does. And on Mac. Does iTunes work on Linux? Any other music service? (Mandriva Linux is building a desktop with built in music service through eMusic, but is tied to their OS)

I dunno, look. I use Linux. I use Mac. I use Windows. On all three, I can listen to music from Rhapsody. I don't have DRM on my machine, I don't deal with buffering, I don't care that it's streaming and Real is the ONLY company who has a product I can do that with.

If I decide I want to watch movies on my Linux box without stealing them or ripping them from my own DVDs, or buy and download music I have two choices. 1- Use Windows or 2- Use Linux and not do either.
Meh.

And if you must have major label stuff, Real Rhapsody has a beta version FireFox plugin that allows you to use the entire jukebox service. Given, you can't download and keep it, but at least you can listen to the service, and Real is doing something for us Linux users.

If there's no God, Why do people keep asking Him to bless and damn everything?

Apple doesn't capitalise on the current media and consumer 'love' for iPods, then the plethora of other devices with similar or superior function will destroy Apples market

They already have for me. My setup is:

* Palm Treo 650 - smartphone / PDA.
* PocketTunes - MP3, OGG and WMA Windows Media DRM-enabled software player for Palm OS.
* Cheap 512MB SD memory card (going to upgrade to a 2GB one when the price falls).
* Rhapsody Unlimited "To Go" subscription - $15 a month for access to a 1.5 million song library on a portable device (although you can also pay $0 a month and buy music just like iTunes, or $8 if you only want to use a desktop PC with the installable client or Firefox streaming plugin).

Two things that Apple are not doing to allow this to happen with them:

* Apple refuses to licence their DRM technology. Notice above we have hardware & two pieces of software from different companies playing brilliantly because they use standard Microsoft Windows Media DRM. I can even play Rhapsody DRM tracks in Yahoo Music Engine. And WMA files on a frickin' Palm handheld. Seriously. Microsoft has their shit together with building DRM that is transparently usable.
* Apple refuses to offer "unlimited" subscriptions to their music store.

My theories:

* Apple is deliberately holding back. They won't licence their DRM as iPod users would then flood other music services (such as the unlimited music subscriptions).
* Apple also won't offer "unlimited" subscriptions as there is no customer lockin across "unlimited" services. You have all the music you want - so long as you have a subscription with *one* of the competing services, you can switch at will - the only thing you've lost are your playlists. Apple likes that you've spent money on tracks that you can't play anywhere but in iTunes.

Conclusion:

* Apple's continued success depends on them being able to maintain the "walled garden" around their iPod and iTunes users. It didn't work for AOL and it's not worked for Microsoft.

Because of this, I'm done with iTunes. AND I'm a Mac user - my main computer is a Powerbook (which is so great it's hugable). EVEN though I had to set up the Rhapsody client on my old Windows XP machine to transfer files to my phone. Yeah, clunky.

But the win is that Rhapsody Unlimited is an addiction - I listen to one or two new albums a day, which would cost about $600 a month on iTunes. For $15 a month, Rhapsody is a bargain and I can still afford to buy one or two physical CDs a month (for DRM-free MP3 ripping). But now I can listen to the entire album as much as I want first to make sure that I won't regret purchasing it. It's so much better than "The iTunes Way". Yahoo Unlimited is cheaper, but it has an ugly player.

http://www.rhapsody.com/

If you are seeing the honda civic ad, then your browser has the old site cached. Refresh and enjoy free and legal music.

Never mind, I found it. Click here and play.

As typical by this poorly organized and completely out-to-lunch company a great idea put together with horrible execution. Obviously companies try to launch products on their first day with a big media blitz. So far so good, they get the front page of Slashdot, many newspapers (http://seattle-pi.com/ articles and widespread coverage on mac news sites (http://www.macnn.com./

So, how about trying it? Well, you can go to the Rhapsody site, http://rhapsody.com/ and try to get to it. Well, NOTHING on the rhapsody.com site says anything about the web features. Nothing in the FAQ and the system requirements say Windows only. If you're going to launch a major new feature don't you think you would update your home page?

If you click to "TRY RHAPSODY" you come to a jump page and if you select either option, one says "Windows required" and the other says "Rhapsody is currently offered only on Windows..." Oh nice.

So, if you're super persistent, then you can go to http://real.com/ . You will notice the web page doesn't even load, and stalls somewhere around 50% loading of the 31 items on the page. Ooops, looks like their servers can't handle the load. Oh , some poor Sys Admin's pager is blowing off the hook right about now I'm sure. Real's CTO Mesrobian is probably trolling down the hallways with a bat clubbing engineers like baby seals and screaming like a banshee.

If you manage to find the small text link at the bottom of the real.com page "Rhapsody Unlimited for Mac" that page also barely loads. And then, there doesn't seem to be any obvious way to the 25 free trial without giving them your credit card number.

Horrible launch, a disgusting display of web marketing. My 15 year old sister could do 50 times better than this and she could create a website that looks more visually appealing than this blue and white patchwork.

Good luck Real, hope your servers recover and hope people come back to try it some other day when they can actually find the software.

Yes, Real today launched the beta Helix-powered www.Rhapsody.com, a Web version of the music service that offers consumers a free and legal way to play full length songs from all the major music labels. Any US-based consumer can freely access up to 25 songs/mo, via the new www.Rhapsody.com site and for the first time Linux and Mac users can experience Rhapsody.

The music service enables your favorite browser (IE, Firefox, or Safari) to instantly find, listen, and share, for free, up to 25 full tracks (from 1.4M+ songs) per month. Consumers also get free, unlimited access to 25 commercial-free radio stations.

There is NO credit card registration required to begin using the service and the music industry is compensated for each song played via Rhapsody.com

Real also introduced its new Rhapsody Web Services initiative, which will enable Web sites to access Rhapsody music services. Web portals, community sites, music sites, and other web sites wanting to integrate music services into their web experience can now access services such as song playback and editorial content.

The new Rhapsody Web Services initiative will enable websites to integrate Rhapsody music services. Tools for Web sites to create links, called "Rhaplinks," to individual music tracks, full albums, and radio stations that can be integrated into their Web sites and that enable immediate playback from Rhapsody.com;

* XML feeds, including RSS, of Rhapsody editorial information about music, which third party Web sites can integrate directly into their sites -- such as new releases, top 10 tracks, and top 10 albums.

* A blog for developers to participate in the future roadmap and development of the Rhapsody Web Services initiative.

More information can be found at http://www.rhapsody.com/webservices.

Initial companies supporting Rhapsody.com and the Rhapsody Web Services initiative include Comcast, RollingStone.com, and MSN. Specific implementations include:

* Comcast became the first service provider to launch a new Web-based Rhapsody radio service. The Comcast Rhapsody Web Radio service is currently available to Comcast's 8.1M broadband customers. The service further complements Comcast's online music offering, which also includes: Rhapsody Radio PLUS, Rhapsody Unlimited, and Rhapsody To Go. Comcast Rhapsody Radio provides 50 commercial-free, genre-based stations (www.comcast.net/music).

* RollingStone.com, the official online presence for pop culture icon Rolling Stone, has integrated Rhapsody web services technology throughout its site. The new site, http://www.rollingstone.com/ enables visitors to sample full length free tracks in Rhapsody and view music videos along with the magazine's archive of groundbreaking music news coverage, feature articles, interviews, photos, movie/album reviews and in-depth political reporting.

* In the coming weeks, Rhapsody.com will be available within Microsoft's WiMP 10, and in the coming months, MSN will be using Rhapsody Web Services to integrate Rhapsody into its MSN Search, MSN Messenger and MSN Music services.

For more information, visit http://www.rhapsody.com./

Yes, Real today launched the beta Helix-powered www.Rhapsody.com, a Web version of the music service that offers consumers a free and legal way to play full length songs from all the major music labels. Any US-based consumer can freely access up to 25 songs/mo, via the new www.Rhapsody.com site and for the first time Linux and Mac users can experience Rhapsody.

The music service enables your favorite browser (IE, Firefox, or Safari) to instantly find, listen, and share, for free, up to 25 full tracks (from 1.4M+ songs) per month. Consumers also get free, unlimited access to 25 commercial-free radio stations.

There is NO credit card registration required to begin using the service and the music industry is compensated for each song played via Rhapsody.com

Real also introduced its new Rhapsody Web Services initiative, which will enable Web sites to access Rhapsody music services. Web portals, community sites, music sites, and other web sites wanting to integrate music services into their web experience can now access services such as song playback and editorial content.

The new Rhapsody Web Services initiative will enable websites to integrate Rhapsody music services. Tools for Web sites to create links, called "Rhaplinks," to individual music tracks, full albums, and radio stations that can be integrated into their Web sites and that enable immediate playback from Rhapsody.com;

* XML feeds, including RSS, of Rhapsody editorial information about music, which third party Web sites can integrate directly into their sites -- such as new releases, top 10 tracks, and top 10 albums.

* A blog for developers to participate in the future roadmap and development of the Rhapsody Web Services initiative.

More information can be found at http://www.rhapsody.com/webservices.

Initial companies supporting Rhapsody.com and the Rhapsody Web Services initiative include Comcast, RollingStone.com, and MSN. Specific implementations include:

* Comcast became the first service provider to launch a new Web-based Rhapsody radio service. The Comcast Rhapsody Web Radio service is currently available to Comcast's 8.1M broadband customers. The service further complements Comcast's online music offering, which also includes: Rhapsody Radio PLUS, Rhapsody Unlimited, and Rhapsody To Go. Comcast Rhapsody Radio provides 50 commercial-free, genre-based stations (www.comcast.net/music).

* RollingStone.com, the official online presence for pop culture icon Rolling Stone, has integrated Rhapsody web services technology throughout its site. The new site, http://www.rollingstone.com/ enables visitors to sample full length free tracks in Rhapsody and view music videos along with the magazine's archive of groundbreaking music news coverage, feature articles, interviews, photos, movie/album reviews and in-depth political reporting.

* In the coming weeks, Rhapsody.com will be available within Microsoft's WiMP 10, and in the coming months, MSN will be using Rhapsody Web Services to integrate Rhapsody into its MSN Search, MSN Messenger and MSN Music services.

For more information, visit http://www.rhapsody.com./

They keep their DRM in place, and they get access to sell the music in the catalogs. No other online music seller has said access.

I think you forgot a few.

I like the way that Windows Media Player 10 seems to have built-in 'buy music' links to all the online music stores except iTunes...

First, WMP10 is not Longhorn-specific. It's out (has been out for a while). Second, the links to music stores have been there for a while too (not some Longhorn conspiracy). Third, they don't link to all online stores. For example, Rhapsody is not there. Finally, the linked stores are part of the Plays For Sure program. iTunes and Rhapsody are not, which makes sense -- they don't "play for sure" in WMP (there are different codecs you can install that will make them work with WMP, but they don't work out of the box). So, why would Microsoft link to stores where the music you buy can't be played in their music player?

The music store integration with WMP is very unobtrusive. It defaults to MSN Music (naturally), so if you didn't know any better you'd just think there's an MSN butterfly icon on the screen because MSN == Microsoft. You can use the stores if you want to, and you can totally ignore them if you don't. WMP will never navigate you to one of the stores unless you tell it to (by clicking one of the stores in the drop-down).

Longhorn looks better than the garish XP, at least. But is it anything more than a re-skinned update?

Well, there is Avalon and Indigo, part of that whole WinFX thing (which will be available for XP). Aside from that, sure, Longhorn is just the next revision of the operating system that started with NT 4 (and earlier, but NT 4 was a fairly large change from 3.x). In that sense, yes it's just a reskinned update of XP. The question is, how big is the update?

After the routine updates, I'll load Rhapsody for my mom. She has a broadband connection and she enjoys music but wouldn't know where to find it online. I love the Rhapsody service myself - a huge selection of albums, including reissues from when my mom started buying records, well organized and easy to explore.

It would be matricide-suicide to give my mom one of the adware-supported programs like Kazaa, truly penny-wise and pound-foolish. But the legitimate digital music services are a great application of computers and broadband.

iTunes, bought by the song, seems more for kids who want to burn their favorite hits, or wealthier and mobile yuppies who will take their iPods with them everywhere. The free radio in Windows Media Player and Real Player is nice but doesn't always scratch a specific itch. Rhapsody doesn't provide easy mobility (though it does allow CD burning), but it offers a huge selection of albums for listening near the computer, and intelligent links from one artist to others, for a modest price.

I will likely re-encode all of the CDs (3 of 12 boxes to go) into...

Ughh... I consider myself a big music fan, and after I discovered music subscription, I knew I had seen the future. In 10 years, there's no way people are going to be encoding boxes of CDs, nor are they going to be buying hundreds or thousands of tracks via music stores like iTunes. If someone isn't really a music fan and only wants to listen to the same few songs over and over again, then the Walmart or iTunes store will be fine for them.

Not for me... I currently subscribe to Rhapsody, and I'm looking at Napster and the new Virgin Digital Music Club service. I strongly dislike the concept of DRM, but with subscription music, I find it a non-issue. I don't actually buy the music, and so as long as the service provides the functionality I want, DRM is not an obstacle. Believe it or not, after a month or two of "renting" the music, I was glad I didn't own it. Here's why:

Economics. As a music lover, I take advantage of the subscription service to listen to hundreds of new tracks every week. If I had to buy each one individually via Walmart or iTunes, I would go broke quickly.

Music Discovery. The Rhapsody service I subscribe to is really well put together. I've discovered lots of new favorite artists by browsing from artists I already like and from editorial recommendations. Music stores might offer similar advantages, but they generally cut you off after 30 seconds.

Music Library Management. This is what I was getting at in my response to the parent message. I've got boxes of CDs too, and they've been collecting dust ever since I started renting music. I would say roughly 80% of my CDs are available for stream and download via Rhapsody. That saves me days of in and out with my CD drive. When a new album comes out, all I have to do is go to the artist's page and start playing it. No need to whip out my wallet and buy a bunch of new tracks, or worse yet, buy the CD and rip them to the format du jour.

Having said all of that, there are still some issues that need to be fixed to make music renting even better:

Portability. Rented music is tied to the PC. This is the biggest problem, but all the services are working on device solutions, so hopefully this won't be an issue for much longer.

Incomplete Licensing. You won't find the Beatles on any subscription service yet (or download store, for that matter.) Lots of artists and labels are still holding back from allowing their stuff to be distributed online. I'm hopeful that this will also be resolved soon as well. In the meantime, all the labels and artists that do participate are making extra dough.

Sound Quality. In general, the sound quality is good. But as an audiophile, I won't be happy until it's lossless. This will take longer, both because the average consumer won't demand it, and because the the bandwidth is expensive. But hopefully this too will come to pass.

OS Support. None of these services work with Linux (or Mac, if you care about that.) That would be nice... but ultimately, I expect the service to operate directly with my stereo and my car stereo and my cell-phone/music device. So the OS will be embedded, and I won't really care what it is.

Quoted from Rhapsody:
"MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS:
Windows PC, 350 MHz, 350 MB HD Space"

Go with Rhapsody. All you can stream from a pretty huge library is around ten bucks a month. I do most of my music listening in my home office, so this is perfect for me. I barely use CDs anymore. It's especially nice being able to satisfy those weird urges to hear things you normally hate at no (incremental) cost whatsoever. (I'm not going to by an America CD just to satisfy my psychotic need to hear "Sister Golden Hair", but if I can have it streaming for free in a few seconds...)

I'm sorry, the Itunes idea isn't new, is being done better and cheaper per track elsewhere, with a more extensive catalogue, jsut a smaller advertising budget.