Recommendation: Real Rhapsody

[soniCron]

Folks, I've been using Real Rhapsody for a little over two months now. Real Rhapsody is a digital music service with several different types of availability. First, you have an option to "buy" songs (like iTunes), or you have the option to subscribe. "Subscribe?" you ask.

Subscribing allows the user to pay a flat montly fee (like $9.95) and in exchange, they will give you free reign of their entire library. You can listen to whatever you want, as many times as you want, for as long as you want. (And they've even got a subscription tier in which you can listen anywhere you want.)

So, for $9.95, I have access to a heck of a lot of songs, recommendations, playlists, photos, videos, biographies...the works. And since I spend most of my time at the computer, it's a comfortable option for me. (There is even a device you can get that will stream up to 10 different songs to up to 30 different rooms. If listening at home isn't your thing, download your songs to your digital music player.) I am literally listening to this thing from wake to sleep. For $9.95.

Now, this isn't the only service like this. Music Match has something similar. And I'm sure you've all heard about Napster's new thing.

But Rhapsody has something truly unique: Excellent sound quality.

If you're going to shell out bucks to listen to digital music, then you might as well get something that sounds good. And I mean, real good. These are high-bitrate AAC+ streams. And I don't care what you think you know about AAC. If you haven't heard AAC+, then you don't have a clue what you're missing. Literally imperceptible from the original source. For real this time.

I highly recommend Real Rhapsody's subscription service, because it offers a great bang for the buck. In addition, there is a truly wide selection of music to listen to, and I rarely find myself wishing they had more. (It seems to be the largest.) The audio quality is unparalleled. And best of all, it's really cheap. (There's even a free option where you can listen to up to 25 full songs per month.)

Real Rhapsody (http://www.real.com/rhapsody/), folks, I couldn't give it a higher recommendation. Absolutely superb service. It's worth checking out, if for nothing more than to try out the 25 free songs. You won't turn back. And with this kind of freedom to listen to whatever you want, you just may find yourself discovering music you never knew you could have liked.

[Leper]

Yeah but they dont let you keep any of the songs, you can't even get the songs in mp3 format, so you're stuck with them on your hard drive or portable devices that support real... unless that's changed?

[soniCron]

Rhapsody will transcode the songs you buy/subscribe to WMA.

And it's less than a CD per month. C'mon.

[Raptisoft]

Sonicron, do you have instability issues? I have a machine-- my main machine-- that, when Rhapsody is installed, goes absolutely crazy. Programs close, but remain in the task list, internet explorer windows crash, my Visual C++ compiler locks up while compiling, I can't delete ANY folder or file because windows tells me it's being used by some other program-- all this only if I run Rhapsody. If I don't run it, it's fine. In fact, even if I run it, and shut it down, these problems persist. It's a matter of, if I run Rhapsody, I must then reboot my computer before trying to do anything else.

I love the program, but I just can't use it reliably. Has there been a patch, or updates, since October?

[soniCron]

I'm not aware of any patches since October. I'm also not familiar with the problems your are having. Have you attempted to isolate the problem? Tried booting in safe mode? Closing everything? New drivers?

I know they've been having problems with version Rhapsody v3, but I had never heard of symptoms like those. That's horrible. I wish you luck, because it really is such an awesome service.

[Hiro_Antagonist]

I signed up for rhapsody 2-3 weeks ago, and I'm loving it. I had some minor problems at one point, but I have no idea if it was rhapsody causing the issues or one of the gazillion other programs I run at the same time.

Rhapsody came very highly recommended to me by people I trust, and I have to say, I'm not let down.

And if you're complaining about rhapsody not being in mp3 format, you're missing the point. Rhapsody exists in a whole different paradigm then traditional buy-it-and-carry-it-anywhere music. (Much like how Netflix is different than buying DVD's.)

Yes, it comes with limitations and it's own personality quirks, but there's something pretty damn liberating about being able to listen to almost anything on demand, for less than the cost of a single CD per month.

By absolutely any calculation, it's highly economical, at least for me. (I guess it's also like Netflix in that regard. =)

-Hiro_Antagonist

[Matthew]

http://www.pandora.com/ is a neat music service that's great for discovering new artists. It's a product of the Music Genome Project, which attempts to distill music into a set of numbers. You type in a song or artist you like and Pandora will start playing similar music. You can give any song a thumbs up or thumbs down which will change future selections. If you constantly shoot down songs with lyrics, for instance, it’ll eventually stop giving you any songs with lyrics.

You can ask it why it picked any given song. For Girl/Boy Song by Aphex Twin, which is playing right now: "Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features busy beats, off beat style, use of tonal harmonies, busy synth hat and emphasis on instrumental performance."

I found it works really well for some genres but not so well for others. I’ve discovered a ton of post-rock artists I had no idea even existed off starting points like Godspeed You Black Emporer, but not as many off starting points like Aphex Twin. Best of all, it's free. Sound quality is mediocre but definitely listenable (they say it’s 128kbps MP3, but it sounds slightly worse than that to me).

[Hamumu]

I've found a huge flaw in Pandora in the first 5 seconds of using it. Two really, but one is just that it SUCKS for dialup (it doesn't try to buffer a big chunk or a whole song, it's playing 1-2 second chunks, then loading for 3-4 seconds, as if I would somehow enjoy that - but it does say in the FAQ it's broadband-only). I put in "Stephen Lynch" as what I like, and I don't know what it's gonna recommend, but it's way off on the reasons: "playing because of mellow rock instrumentation, folk influences, a subtle use of vocal harmony, mild rhythmic syncopation, and acoustic sonority"... that's NOT what's good about Stephen Lynch, nor the connections I would hope to find (I tried it out in the hopes of finding other comedy music that is pleasing musically as well as humorously). Once music has lyrics, there's a lot more to consider than harmony and syncopation!

Although I am impressed that they HAD Stephen Lynch. Tenacious D too! If this was listenable, I'd try forcefeeding it musical comedy and see if it catches on, but so far it looks like it's not considering the content of the lyrics in any way (though it does claim in the FAQ that it counts the lyrics).

I miss broadband. I would totally fiddle with this a long time if I could.

[Matthew]

It's best to put in a particular song you like rather than an artist, especially if the artist has a wide range of work.

[sumner]

I have had issues with Rhapsody stuttering when I run non-optimized game builds simultaneously, and even while using a few other programs if memory serves. I think it comes down to Rhapsody not playing well with other problem apps. Other than that, I've been using it happily for a year now. The selection has been getting better and better, but I still find myself angered when I get an itch to hear something and I go looking to no avail. When it comes to newer, more mainstream stuff, you can bet they'll have it. If you're looking for something a little less known or a little older, it's a total toss up. Worth 10 bucks a month, IMO. But I'd be a lot happier if Apple would wake the f up and play well with others. :)

[soniCron]

I have had issues with Rhapsody stuttering when I run non-optimized game builds simultaneously, and even while using a few other programs if memory serves. This is easily fixable. The problem is that Rhapsody hiccups if too much of the CPU is being used by other programs. Easy solution: Elevate its thread priority in the task manager.