The Internet Jukebox

[DudeAsInCool]

Does Rhapsody have the answer to the downloading wars?

Clive Thompson of Slate takes a look at Rhapsody's pay streaming music service and praises its 30,000 song collection, and its easy usability versus the varous formats that the other pay services offer.

You can read the full review here:

http://slate.msn.com/id/2099282/

[DudeAsInCool]

lol - Come on guys, I thought you would eviscerate this article...

[Malicious Intent]

I can provide a nuber of reasons for no responses:

The forums have been slow the last few days. Slow as in not many posts.

The article is long.

But perhaps most importantly, it is about legal services. People simple arn't interested. Looking through the news stats at Slyck, it can clearly be seen that people just don't care about Napster, iTunes, mp3.com. I'm not saying they get less hits, I'm saying they get relatively none.

[jipper]

..er...yea, what he said^

[Umma]

I somehow missed this earlier.... I think streaming is ok for music you want to sample before commiting yourself to purchase. It's just the same sort of service as the radio has been providing for decades.

I have a similar idea set up on my computer.... 'netjuke' is a personal jukebox kinda thing that provides streaming audio or downloads.... but on a dial up connection it's pretty much useless for anything other than personal use. It's a great alternative to P2P for those that want to have a private music server.

[Umma]

I should have read the whole thing before I posted... lol

[Malicious Intent]

Here is the summary version:

Legal services are crap because (all the resons we know, mostly because of DRM and competing file types)

Rhapsody has launched a jukebox. $10 a month for unlimited access to 30,000 files. A wide range of music is available. Sound quality is surprisingly good and thanks to up to a gig of pop music cached on your HD, music plays quickly without skips. However, no bass or treble control, lousy search, big holes in available cotent. It also won't work for anyone who isn't on broadband, or around a broadband connection when they want to listen. The music, for obvious reasons, is not portable. The article also makes a point of the pyscological need for people to own and control their music.

His conclusions: I'm a "guilty user of KaZaA" and therefore I have no idea what I'm talking about and I've givng into the industry thanks to all the "decoy" files they release. Therefore, this looks OK to me.

END

[DudeAsInCool]

lol - thats the spirit!

[Bombardier]

Isn't Rhapsody what Audiogalaxy used to be?

If it is, that's a reason to hate it right there. It's just like my strong dislike for this "new" Napster 2.0. It may say "Napster" but it's brand name only.

It's not really the Napster people came to love. ;)

Edited May 16, 2004 by Bombardier