Rhapsody 2.0 - Page 2

RIPPING BURNED TRACKS TO MP3:

* Ripping a Rhapsody-burned CD in AudioCatalyst is uneventful, except that in one case CDDB look-up uncovered nine matches of a complete album (Linkin Park's "Hybrid Theory") burned from Rhapsody.

* The burning-ripping method represents a circuitous way to acquire authorized MP3s from Rhapsody.

VALUE:

* Cost of Linkin Park "Hybrid Theory" CD (12 tracks): $11.88 vs. $13.49 at Amazon.

* Downside: audio quality is presumably inferior; no art.

* Upside: one burns only selected tracks; art is irrelevent to many in the MP3 lifestyle.

* Value Summary: I believe 99 cents is a fair price for full ownership of an auditioned track. The monthly subscription fee provides much more than mere access to a music store, because members can audition full tracks indefinitely and use Rhapsody as an interactive listening service in its own right. As a product-oriented retail outlet, Rhapsody now offers a budget alternative to the traditional CD purchase. In fact, once the catalog fills out (even if the per-track price doesn't drop, though it probably will), I expect this type of authorized service to erode CD sales more than unauthorized file-sharing does.

FINDING BURNABLE TRACKS:

* When v2.0 was installed I had albums from several non-classical artists in My Library, including Chico Hamilton, Deep Forest, Jesse Cook, Jethro Tull, Jimi Hendrix, Linkin Park, Norah Jones, Pink (don't ask), Rachelle Ferrell, Ronny Jordan, and William Orbit. Of these, Linkin Park was the only artist with burnable tracks.

* A small red "burn" icon, supposed to appear "throughout the service," does not appear next to artist names on Key Artists or Most Popular Artists lists--you must drill down to a page dedicated to that artist before learning whether the artist is burnable. Nor does the icon appear in the track control panel when a burnable track is playing as part of a station mix. So, burnable material is hard to find. I achieved some success (and fun) by searching the service by song title, a method that spins out matches by many artists. Following the burn icon from there is rewarding. In my preliminary experience with Rhapsody v2.0, I've found artists to be either entirely burnable (all tracks) or entirely unavailable for burning.

Article Author: Eric Olsen

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