In my retirement, while reading and parked in front of the PC, I have heard`countless albums on Rhapsody over the past year or so. Not all complete, unfortunately, as individual tracks as well as many CDs are not made available. Yet, there is an incredible amount that is available. Each day is an adventure in exploration, listening to a range and depth of music I could never have thought possible, such as 70 Miles Davis albums (with 2 to go). I suppose the new AOL service and Rhapsody have 99.9 percent identical music, so I have no reason to change, at present. And the tens of thousands of Rhapsody radio stations, one for each artist, often have tracks from prohibited albums - CDs that the record companies will not permit to be played, but some of the music can be found, anyway. There are other sources, such as a site featuring rare pop songs of the '20s and '30s, but Rhapsody alone could keep me tied up for years. And it keeps adding new albums.

And how great is it to have *multiple* strong services available to choose from? When there's no competition, companies get lazy so this way they have to stay competitive (in regards to both price and innovation). So let's hope there *doesn't* end up one best service that everyone uses!

Ted - thanks for sharing that. 70 albums, wow, that's cool.

Good point, Doc. With Apple admitting that there isn't much profit to be had from this online music stuff, that concerns me a little that many will get into this but not be able to stay in it long term. A company can only lose money for so long if it doesn't have an iPod or other hardware to push. I don't know if Rhapsody is making money with their model and maybe I should have addressed this in the review, but that will certainly have something to do with their future.

And speaking of competition, Doc, did you see that Creative has come up with a device to compete against the iPod?

TDavid, you suggested on a previous post that I obviously love iTunes and suggested that I need to be more objective. And then you write this love letter to Listen.com? Something about a pot and kettle comes to mind. <grin>

Anyway, you also suggested over there that Windows users are saying, "I've seen this before," and I'm curious about where that might be, because I've tried all of the services, and I haven't seen anything like it before. Which one did I miss, or did you just not look very closely?

Anyway, as you say, some people prefer to listen to customized radio, while others prefer to own the music. Put me down in the latter camp, and you down in the former. I get that. I never suggested that nobody could possibly prefer Rhapsody to iTMS. I was merely listing bullet points that had come up in previous conversations about Rhapsody, and that many people — the majority, it seems — find to be a problem.

So to rehash yet again, you've listed the upside of Rhapsody, I'll remind readers of possible downsides. Some of these may bother you, some not. I'll number them so you can provide counter-evidence. I haven't used Rhapsody in something like six months or more, so some of my info might be outdated, after all.

1. Connectivity
1a. To use Rhapsody, you must be on a PC running Microsoft Windows with a broadband connection.

1b. If your internet connection goes down, you get silence, since none of the music is ever stored on your local PC.

1c. If you are at work and your company monitors internet traffic or has a policy against streaming music (as many do), you cannot use Rhapsody.

2. Availability
2a. Selection — You can burn music to CD (and theoretically rip it back to your hard drive afterward if you wish), but not every track you can hear is available for burning. The percentage is unknown, but if we go with your initial reaction of 90%, that's roughly 350,000 tracks. iTMS is promising 400,000 within two weeks, if they're not there already.

2b. Availability — More importantly, it might bother some people to see and hear a song but not be able to burn it. This is one of things that is hard to quantify, but when you're in an environment in which things just work, it's nice.

3. Economics.
3a. This is an interesting issue. Most of the problems with Rhapsody's economic model come from the idea that you won't always subscribe to Rhapsody. And you may, but experience tells me probably not. I just canceled eMusic after being a satisfied customer for a long time. Do you really want to put all of your economic eggs in the RIAA's basket? Rhapsody exists at their whim, as do all of the online music services. If they shut them all down tomorrow, I still have all of my music. All a Rhapsody customer has is memories.

3b. At the end of a given month, a Rhapsody user has paid $9.95 and has nothing to show for it but memories. TDavid, for one, places a pretty high value on those memories, as do XM Radio subscribers. For the purpose of these points, I'll assign a value of zero to the memories themselves, simply because I don't know how to value them. Consider the value as it is three years later, when you've long forgotten what you listened to that month. By comparison, an iTunes user that has spent $9.95 that month has either ten songs or an entire album that is theirs to keep forever.

3c. Let us assume that both users like to burn CDs since they don't live at their computers and want to be able to play music in their car or the backyard or the beach or wherever. I'll keep it easy and say that the iTunes user pays $9.90 for ten songs. It is common for an iTMS user to pay that amount for 12 or 14 songs in "entire album" form, but I recognize that I am in the minority in always preferring full albums to individual songs. The Rhapsody user pays $17.85 for ten songs, or $7.95 more. Let's go up to 20 songs each, that's $19.80 for the iTMS user and $25.75 for the Rhapsody user. I'll cut the suspense and tell you that the break-even point is 50 songs. The iTMS will pay $49.50 for 50 songs, while the Rhapsody user will pay $49.45, a nickel less. For each songs over 50 in a given month, the Rhapsody user saves another 20 cents. Personally, I haven't bought 50 songs or five albums in a single month online, but some people do, and Rhapsody is a better deal for them, so long as they do it every month.

3d. TDavid suggested that few people would ever burn only a single track to disc in a given month, but later states that he has never burned a track to CD from Rhapsody - that's even worse. Instead of paying $10.74 for one track, he is paying $9.95 for zero tracks. In any case, I based my argument on something I've observed about Netflix memberships. I've been a member of Netflix for four years now, and I know several other people who also are members. And any one of us can tell you that there are some months, here or there, where we are paying out monthly membership fee to just keep the same darn movies sitting in a drawer. In fact, I keep track of these things, so I can tell you that in January 2003 I had exactly zero new DVDs shipped to me from Netflix and in March of 2001 I had only two shipped to me. My cost per DVD for March of 2001 was $10.80. Ouch! I could have rented those far more cheaply at Blockbuster! Still, my average cost over time is barely over two dollars, so I'm okay with it. So I'll stand by my assertion that people who burn zero or one tracks (or less than 50, for that matter) aren't getting their CD-burning value from Rhapsody.

3e. Which brings up another point. If you have computer problems or internet problems or are out of town on holidays or have family in town or whatever, you might actually pay your monthly fee and not even get the soft benefit of listening to music online at all. You still pay every month, whether you use the service or not.

4. TDavid is suggesting that he uses Rhapsody for online music and iTunes to manage existing MP3 collections. (Three services and still he can't listen to music in his car?) In my case, I've got an extensive MP3 collection, all ripped from my extensive CD collection which now sits boxed up on my closet shelves. Perhaps this is why I don't care so much about Rhapsody's customized streaming services - I've got a 120GB hard disk full of MP3s which give me as much listening as I need. And I user one application - one - for all of my music needs. If I want to listen to streaming music, I listen to admittedly-inferior and non-customizable radio Shoutcast stations in iTunes. If I want to listen to songs I've ripped from CD, I use iTunes. If I want to rip more songs from new CDs, I use iTunes. To edit meta-information for songs, I use iTunes. Album artwork? iTunes. Purchasing new music? iTunes. Sharing music with the other computer in my house? iTunes. And so on. Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather not use two or three different programs when one works so well.

So there you go, TDavid. I know from past experience with other rapid Rhapsody fans that I will have changed your mind not a whit. And I don't have any beef with Rhapsody or the people that subscribe to it.

I happen to prefer pay-as-you-go over flat-rate for things I don't purchase regularly (unlike DVDs, which I watch constantly), but some people like the predictability of flat-rate.

I don't like paying for things I can't keep when I can help it. I own my home instead of renting, own my car instead of leasing, and so on. Still, I leased my last car, and I suppose that I use Netflix to rent DVDs before deciding which ones to purchase - though I don't purchase them from Netflix.

I'd probably consider something similar, using Rhapsody to "rent" music before deciding which albums to purchase via iTMS, if radio wasn't already serving much the same purpose for free.

P.S. Lots of companies have devices that "compete against the iPod," and I've used a few. So far, they all suck, and I suspect that includes the much-heavier and much-larger Nomad Zen Xtra, just based on the photos of the controls for the device. Personally, I'd be happy if someone came out with something in the same ballpark as the iPod but for much less money - I don't own an iPod because of the price. But it hasn't happened yet, and this doesn't look like it.

Phillip - first of all, thank you for the lengthy response. I appreciate you taking time out of your schedule to comment. And I consider it a real bonus that you went to such great detail :)

Secondly, there is no right or wrong answers to the question of personal preference. You have yours, I have mine and we both seem to agree on that. I even said in the article very clearly:

but IMO Rhapsody is better for me -- for you or maybe others it might be different.

This wasn't a "love letter", nor intended to be, it was a review of Rhapsody, which is what I thought that Blogcritics was looking for -- yes, no?

I took time to compile and prepare this review and I was serious about the point of view it was written from. I wrote about half of this before you ever posted back to me in that other thread and as I said (which I linked it in the article if you noticed) I just lumped in my response with the existing review I had because it was relative. It seemed like it would be more interesting than just taking Rhapsody by itself in light of the iTunes for Windows release. A timing thing.

My point was to present this as a possible alternative to iTunes and the question mark in the article title is not accidental. I was trying to present more of a general response to the issues you raised in addition to the review which I had pretty much already completed.

And, BTW, I do fully intend to review the iTunes for Windows but since I am still new to this program, I'm giving myself a chance to fully work through its features and to make sure I give it a fair review and don't make obvious errors.

I really do think, at least at this moment in time, that I'd like iTunes on a Mac much better than I do on Windows. Why? I have listed many of those reasons in that article but they almost all boil down the convenience and selection available to me instantly. If you asked me to give iTunes a grade right now, then I'd give it a C+ or maybe a B-, but the jury is still out as I haven't even downloaded one track from them. I am going to go through that process and then I'll weigh in.

I have never admitted that I was an iTunes expert or anything remotely close to it, so give me a chance please to get familiar with it and see how it can fit into things. What, where, how, if anywhere. Some of the information you provided has been helpful to this study, thank you.

And I'm certainly not in bed with Real (who owns listen.com, yes?) In fact I can't even stand the Real player (the intrusive way it behaves is too much like a virus, IMHO), so suggesting that I am in "love" with them or any of their partners would be quite a stretch. I think you'll find that if you re-read my review very carefully that I did bring up several negative issues and that I said Rhapsody was not perfect.

My point remains that iTunes for Windows is clearly, factually NOT the best Windows application ever. They shouldn't be trying to sell or promote it that way (which they are) and as a long time Windows user I can ascertain you that it is not the best Windows application ever. Far from it!

Is it better than Rhapsody and other online music services? I think so at the present time, but that doesn't mean that with some refinements and improvements it could become the best. Maybe it many other people's minds iTunes is the best option and they don't like the idea of essentially renting the music. If you read the comments above, Ted points out a very compelling reason that the Rhapsody model makes sense.

And the iPod isn't the only game in town for portable devices either, but that doesn't mean that I might like to have one someday like millions of other folks :) I just have to figure out where this device would fit into my situation, if it could. Dropping the $400 or whatever it costs for something I'm not going to use doesn't seem very sensible.

Generally speaking, I like Apple, I like what they are about and the fact that they strive for quality. But they do confuse me with some of their business decisions. They almost behave from a business point of view like they like being a niche OS instead of simply taking Windows head on when they can. If they had released iTunes for both platforms they would own the market. My only guess why they didn't do that is because they couldn't -- due probably to issues with licensing with the labels. The music labels, and this is just a guess, used Apple's smaller, niche user base to feel out the viability of the online music scene.

Competition is good!

And where did I ever say that I could not listen to music in my car? LOL. I wrote that I have over 250 CDs (do CDs not play in people's cars in your neck of the woods? LOL) and what I didn't write was that I do have many of those CDs burned to MP3.

The point is that in order to organize those songs into playlists and listen to them -- in my car -- I can't do that without burning additional CDs or working out some sort of output from a portable player. Sure, I've got all the tracks there, but what if I want specific playlists? Can you make various playlists from the same library of music on the iPod and output through a stereo connection (to like the CD-in for a car)? That's a serious question, I don't know, and didn't go looking for the answer on the web, so please anybody with the answer LMK.

I'm talking playlists and you are talking songs, so our language is not quite the same here. Also, I'm talking about not going through the process of burning the songs versus saving the material externally and pulling down from a server.

If you say because I haven't paid for a track to burn yet that means I've had no value that's just silly. I've been able to make many playlists of music that is out of print and/or hard to find. I've made several lists and have enjoyed listening to the music. Am I renting the music? Sure I am! Do I own any of it, no! But the point was that I didn't have to pay a buck a track to find out if I liked the music. So to suggest that there is no value in that 10 bones a month is plain silly.

There is much to be had for the convenience of not having to carry around yet another device (I have a Creative Nomad player but I have rarely used it). I already carry around a Palm, a camera phone, a laptop, a suitcase ... too many things to carry around to carry a music device also -- so for me, anyway, convenience and less things to carry is great.

I will look into your specific comments and try and address those when I get some more time. Thank you again for the lengthy response and hope your day is going well :)

TDavid, my comments about listening in the car had more to do with the fact that Rhapsody had (the last time I checked) exactly zero functionality for managing existing albums and songs or even playlists, all features I use constantly to update the discs I listen to in my car.

And yes, the iPod can use multiple playlists containing some of the same songs. My brother has one. I believe all of the playlists must be created in iTunes, though - I think that they're read-only on the iPod itself.

And you're welcome!

Hi Phillip - Rhapsody has great playlist features as I wrote about in the article. These days you can organize and name your own playlists, send them to friends, even blog about them using Movable Type, blogger, or javascript (bookmarklet) code. It would be neat if iTunes would build in this blogging feature.

I have been able to explore all kinds of Thin Lizzy music that has been very difficult to find in music stores (stuff from Shades of a Blue Orphanage, Nightlife, Johnny The Fox) for example.

A Scorpions CD, Moment of Glory, in our collection bit the dust recently and I didn't have a burn of it -- no problem, I just added that CD to my "possible_download" playlist in Rhapsody because they have the complete CD and every track is burnable. iTunes only had 5 of the 10 tracks (the dreaded "partial album" syndrome), unfortunately. buymusic.com has 8 of the 10 tracks, with a couple tracks priced at $1.99!

So this is more evidence that in order for one to get to the best selection they are probably going to have to visit more than one online music service. I know you are happy with just using the one service iTunes, but there very likely will be songs that iTunes won't have (either not at all or partial) that another service will have.

When I go on my next music buying spree, I'll be able to utilyze the burning features of iTunes and Rhapsody to compare bitrates (quality).

I think this is a great time, convenience-wise, for music fans right now. There are several different legal avenues to approach to listen to and acquire music with more coming soon (the return of Napster on Oct 29, for example) and it doesn't bother me to have to use multiple places to buy the songs I'm looking for. It's that way in the offline world too. Some stores have the CDs I'm looking for and some are out of stock.

As for your comment about not being able to use Rhapsody if one doesn't have a dialup connection?

Technically this is incorrect. It will work, albeit with a 20k stream, which isn't nearly the quality. I guess one might still work to be able to prescreen the music on a dialup connection and choose which music to burn. Details from Rhapsody

One thing I am going to be curious about is what bitrate the downloads for both iTunes and Rhapsody will be when I get to burning. If they are 128k like buymusic.com, I'm going to be disappointed.

Minimum bitrate should be 160/44 for burned music. Anybody know the bitrates yet of either of these two? If so, please weigh in.

But the fact that it isn't available for the Macintosh automatically damns rhapsody to musical hell.

I am a monthly Rhapsody subscriber with All Access. I love the service needless to say. Mainly I use Rhapsody to explore new music and check out 'questionables' I can not download before I buy them. I believe the service works well for me because I only use it as a resource. For my playlisting and so forth I still use what I assume is now antiquated Windows Media Player 9.0.

TDavid, the radio channels are excellent. They give you plenty to choose from (genre wise) and the play quite a nice mix. If you are an all access customer you have access to skips and I love the 'more info' button which allows me instant access to that album, if available.

Nice Post!