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Rhapsody Overview
If you're an avid music listener, for years you knew that the future in
music delivery is on the internet. The music industry has struggled to find a
way to deliver music quickly and inexpensively to the consumer. The golden age
of music delivery is here and we'll help you navigate to the best source out there without breaking your bank...and
if you think you know the
answer, its Rhapsody. Before I go on to tell you more about Rhapsody, let me
tell you where other popular music sources fail to please me.
When you think of "music
downloads", there are two things that come to mind...illegal music downloads and
Apple iTunes, and we don't blame you. Lets talk about these options.
Illegal Music Downloads (File Sharing, P2P, etc)
- First things first, illegal music is NOT free! Most of the illegal music
sharing software out there will install "Adware" or "Spyware" to make money
on your usage of their networks. Have you heard of your friends complaining
about their computer getting a ton of pop-ups and being extremely slow to
the point that it crashes all of the time? One of the most common ways to
ruin your computer is to download music sharing software such as Kazaa.
Unless you're a computer expert, it will cost you $50 to $200 to get your
computer working again and even more if you want to retrieve any data lost
from your hard drive.
- The other type of illegal music software will make you pay about $30 to
$40 for a lifetime membership for access to "billions" of tracks. Anybody
smart enough to think about an extraordinary offer like that will realize
that billion songs don't exist in the world, there are only a few million.
These fraudulent companies will usually charge you simply for information on
how to download free music from the same illegal networks that we discussed
in the first point. Yes, in many cases you are still going to get adware and
spyware. To make matters worse, since you are paying with a credit card,
your billing information will make it very easy for the music industry to
find and sue you, as they have already done to thousands of people around the world,
especially in the US. And this leads us to the last point...
- You should know the last reason. Its simply stealing and too risky to
download illegal music. While it may seem that music is free, it takes
countless of hours for dozens of people to create music. Thus the collective
music industry organization RIAA takes pirated and illegally downloaded
music very seriously and prosecutes offenders, close to 20,000 to date in US
alone. Reason enough to avoid illegal downloads.
Apple iTunes
While extremely popular, iTunes is not a great way to get music, and for many
reasons. So why is it used by so many? The hundreds of millions of dollars they
spend on catchy promotions of "iPod + iTunes" combo though advertising, TV,
movie and music video placements made the iPod a fad and a "must have" product. The iPod is a great gadget but the iTunes
Store that Apple forces you to use so
dearly is far from great and for anyone who listens to more than 15 tracks per
month, its extremely expensive, not to mention misleading. While iTunes markets
itself as a music store and says that you own the music you buy, its misleading
because you are only able to listen to the music you "own" on your PC or iPod.
Due to iTunes' protective file format, it won't support the hundreds of portable MP3 players out there.
So even
if you have an iPod, you will be forced to buy the expensive iPod again if it
breaks, and they break!
We Chose Rhapsody...Why?
 After spending time with many music services, we fell in love with Rhapsody
and that is why we decided to put together a detailed review and guide to get
you familiarized with the service before you even
sign-up for the free trial.
Here's why Rhapsody stands out from the pack:
- Rhapsody To Go is not just a music store. Its a subscription service
that gives you unlimited access to over 2,000,000 tracks for a flat price of
$14.99 per month. You are free to listen to 20 or 20,000 songs and still pay
the same low flat price. To make things even better, you can listen to them on
your computer or on a portable device. The songs will be stored on your
portable device for as long as you are paying the subscription fee (except
for the songs you buy of course, those are yours to keep forever).
- Huge music catalog of 2,000,000+ tracks, 70,000+ artists, 160,000+ albums
and growing!
- Prefer to permanently own and burn music to a CD? You always have an
option to buy the songs for $0.89, a 10% discount over iTunes.
- Compatible with hundreds of MP3 players, including iPod (iPod is only
compatible with downloaded tracks).
- Free music videos! While iTunes charges $1.99 per video download, you
may stream unlimited music videos from Rhapsody absolutely free.
- Ad-free radio stations and tons of them.
- I can create my own radio stations by selecting a few artists and their
system creates a custom radio station with hundreds of tracks tuned to my
taste.
Sounds good? Let's get started...
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