Anyone used this yet? Right now I pay for Napster which is 3x the cost. I don't listen to it that much, but it helps pass the time at work and at home when working on something mundane. I've yet to get an MP3 player to work with either service (the list is about the same, actually). Just wondering if Yahoo doesnt' have that many songs up yet. I generally listen to obscure stuff, most of which is not to be found on either service to be honest, but of course I can find some old cheesy 80's to make me feel young again.
Rhapsody > * subscription based music services. The exclusives, sound quality, price ($9.99 a month), number of songs etc. easily destroy the other contenders.
DRM is not my friend, especially since my CD Walkman can only play MP3s :smt009 I usually just buy an album on CD if I like it enough. It's a small price to pay for quality. Well actually, it's a big price -_-
I use iTunes music store, since I like the interface, and it works with my iPod. I don't spend enough on it to get a subscription service - if i want an album I buy it, like others here, and so I only download the odd track through it
einbop: Thanks for the reply. Everyone elses wasn't really what I was looking for. Most poeple have shitty tastes in music, so Shoutcast is out. I buy albums I like enough for full price... which is about 3 each year. In the meantime, I'll listen to old/weird shit for a subscription. Does Rhapsody support MP3 players? The idea is to have stuff for the car/gym.
I'll only buy a CD if the band's recording lable isnt part of the RIAA. Of course there are exceptions; Oasis for example.
For an extra $5 a month (so $14.99 total), you can put the music on a compatible MP3 player. I didn't test this out, since all I have is a PSP (which I don't think is compatible), but they have a list of a ton of compatible MP3 players. I scrolled through the list, and they have a ton of popular ones -- iRiver players etc. No iPods, sadly, as Apple's a complete bitch about what music formats they'll allow it to play, but other than that, your model is *probably* covered. The cool thing about Rhapsody, at least it used to be this way, was the first month cost $.99. So basically you got the first month as a trial to check it out. Don't know if it's still like that. I really liked having Rhapsody, it was a nice service -- when you open up the software and play a song, it'll give recommendations similar to that song, and they're generally spot on. For example, searching "Nirvana" yielded a list of their songs, at which point it flashed a trivia bit in the top right, telling me that Boston's "More than a Feeling" features a similar riff to "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It's stuff like that that really made Rhapsody much better than Napster (I tested that out as well). Additionally, stuff like Foo Fighters: Live in Roswell at a streaming 160 kbps bitrate didn't hurt.
I'll have to look. I"m sure the compatible list of players is the exact same as Yahoo's and Napsters. The thing is, Yahoo has the cheepest service by far. $5 and you can load it up on your MP3 player. Rhapsody would have to have a HUGE selection for me to pay an extra $10 for music I'm only halfway excited about.
I haven't had iTunes for a while as it's a resource hog on my machine, so I'm not sure what their prices are, but if you're holding off on going with them on account of their shitty DRM scheme that favors iPod over other MP3 players, there's a nifty program called JHymn that will convert Apple's proprietary song formats into vanilla MP3. I had a bunch of songs from when they were doing that song giveaway with Pepsi, but they wouldn't load onto my Minidisc player or work in my media player (foobar2000).
its funny, realisticly apple pulls a sony when it comes to their music format off their store, however there prices are just a $1 a song, they dont have any subscription fee, of coure if you get the whole albulm they sell it at a slight disocutn.
Is there no option just to convert them to normal non-DRM MP4/M4As? Converting to MP3 means they'll have to be re-encoded, and you lose a lot of quality converting two lossy formats like them - it's much like what is said with copying VHS tapes: "Crap in, crap out"
