Rhapsody takes another step.
December 7th, 2005 by JoshReading Memeorandum this morning, I’m surprised to see no mention of the newly unveiled (and still quite beta) Rhapsody.com service. I’ve raved about Real’s Rhapsody service for a while now, so it’s great to see them taking at least tentative steps to broaden their platform and widen their appeal with this new web based approach:
RealNetworks is to extend its currently Windows-only Rhapsody music subscription service to Mac and Linux users next week, the company said last night. However, even then, they will not gain access to the full Rhapsody package.
On Monday, Real’s Rhapsody.com website will go live. It’s currently in beta-testing mode, but once fully operational will allow Mac and Linux users to log in and stream any number of songs – provided they continue coughing up the monthly rental fee, of course. The site also incorporates links to Internet radio stations.
The Register article does a good job covering the caveats of the service – no purchasing on Mac or Linux and being limited to US-located IP addresses, but I think they’re a bit too negative on the service in general. I find $9.95 a month a perfectly reasonable price to pay for the unlimited ability to stream a very large music catalog, and now from anywhere I can find Firefox.
The hidden aspect in this is the incredible potential that Rhapsody.com has as a Web 2.0 app. Now admittedly, Real has to work with the record labels, so much of its innovation and feature set is likely to be either crippled or botched, but I’m so excited for ideas like RSS feeds of music I’m listening to, RSS playlists (hopefully taggable), embeddable players, and ideally someday a web service API that will allow anyone to write software that interfaces directly with Rhapsody. As they give away 25 listens a month to each subscriber for free, I could very well see a situation where I could post a review of an album and you could click a miniplayer right in the post that would stream the album to you. Or how about a Friday Random Ten with play icons next to each track!
Of course, as of last night, the Windows desktop client wasn’t really working and I couldn’t get web streaming working in either Safari or Firefox on OS X (another Web 2.0 “feature” – the perpetual beta), but I’m sure that they’ll work the kinks out soon. Now they just need to get The Beatles and Radiohead on board. Oh, and higher quality streams. And how about supporting WordPress from the blogging interface? And a Palm/Windows Mobile client…
December 9th, 2005 at 6:23 pm
I noticed this the other day as well, tried it out and it seemed to work okay for me.
You hit the nail on the head with the Beatles and Radiohead. With MJ being sued or his house being foreclosed on he may have to give up his beatles songs eventually.