The Real Rhapsody

In my latest passion for music, I have been prowling CD shops and CD sections of malls for the best price CD and the latest gig. I came across this cache of online music subscription cards at a corner of Target and one that really caught my attention was Real Rhapsody. For $14.99, the subscriber gets one month of free flow listening to their 800 000 collection of songs and on top of that, the subscriber gets 15 songs to burn directly to the CD. Tempted by this offer, I bought one off the shelf and started the easy process to signup. Initially I thought RealRhapsody will work off Real Player, but after signup, I was prompted to download and install a separate RealRhapsody player. It is actually a simple player, which I believe is web based, and have direct connection to the web. RealRhapsody needs to be connected to the web to operate. There is an option to save the songs to the local drive, so that you do not have to stream the songs all the time, however, again, if the web connection is disconnected, the tool would shutdown. I guess this is their way of controlling subscriptions. The monthly subscription cost is $9.95 and if you want to burn any of the songs to a CD, it cost extra 79c. If you work out the math, with 15 songs, $14.99 was a bargain.


The sound quality is not bad. I have a light weight sony headphones(below, cost $14.99) and this is second to the cheapest headphones from sony ($9.99). Real Audio technology has improved much since it’s beginning, however, the sound is not as near as a good MP3 compression. Again, it could be my headphones. I have not burn any CD’s yet, will check out the burn quality later, currently just cold not get my hands of scrolling the 800 000 songs, it is like I have the entire collection in my computer, just a single click and the song will start streaming immediately.



To my surprise, there are no options to download MP3 format songs. There is only the stream or burn option. Which means, if you want to own any of the songs, you will have to pay the 79c and burn it directly to a CD. I kind of suspected this when I browse the card at Target as the card says, “Choose your 15 Songs to own” and only mention of burning on CD and none of MP3. I have read some review (after I have bought this) that ripping from the CD later will have drop in the sound quality. I will have to try this out.


Other than purchasing music through RealRhapsody, the Real Music Store also offer music at 99c and for this, we can download the song, but again, it did not mention any MP3, that leads me to conclude that the songs downloaded are in Real Audio format. Similar to the ones that we rip from CD though the Real Player. At Real Music Store, there are the weekly Rolling Stones favorites, which the songs cost only 49c to download.


I have also found Walmart offering music download at 88c a song, and the song is in MP3 format.


My laptop is now my iPod, with wifi, I could practically listen to music at any hotspots. My huge lapPod will not be as heap as the funky iPod, but it can view photos, and do some major processing, including viewing movies and even can surf and chat with friends. I wonder if RealRhapsody have handheld versions..??

Comments

mgrooves said…
hey there -- i just stumbled across your blog and saw that you posted about rhapsody. one feature that you don't appear to have discovered yet but which you may enjoy is the ability to drop links to your rhapsody playlists directly into your blog. i run a blog, rhapsody rock school, that's devoted entirely to rhapsody playlists. check it out at http://rockschool.blogspot.com if you're interested.

the "blog this" feature, which you can use by right-clicking on the playlist window on the lower left side of your screen, is a cool way to share the music you're grooving on with other rhapsody subscribers. take it easy~

matt
11/15/2004 3:46 PM
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