I’ve just started using the Sansa e250 mp3 player with Rhapsody to Go and boy do I like it. I’ve been an ipod mini user for close to two years, but the battery is going on the iPod and I got the Sansa e250 cheap. It’s a 4gb player, but what is nice is that with my Rhapsody to Go subscription, I can put any song in Rhapsody onto my player with having to download it or rip it from a CD to my hard drive! I put some old Faces, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Black Eyed Peas, Them, Radiohead and Tragically Hip songs on. Some of which I own the CD and some I don’t. This is really nice as I’m able to break out of the list of songs in iTunes that I’ve imported from my rather extensive CD collection. I have over 725 CDs, most of which have been ripped into iTunes, but am always looking for new music to listen to. Totally worth the $14.99 per month….

One of my favorite features of Rhapsody is the personalized radio system. You can select up to 10 artists and Rhapsody will use it’s music relationship technology to select songs from the artists plus songs from related artists. It’s a lot of fun to select artists from way different genres like a Frank Sinatra and Live and Beethoven and Tim McGraw to see what Rhapsody comes up with. It’s really easy to, here’s how:

Click on the Radio link in the upper left navigation box. Click on the Create New Station button and start adding artists. Listen to the station, then save it if you want as a keeper. It rules.

Playlists are lists of songs you create to take care of a certain mood (rockin’, lovin’, etc.), artist (The Tragically Hip) or situation (party, dinner, random). They are easy to create, live with your Rhapsody account regardless of which computer you are on and can be shared to the public or emailed to a friend. Here is the simplest way to create a playlist:

1) You need to have the songs you want on the playlist either in Your Library or in The Mixer. You can add songs to Your Library just by clicking on the “+” button next to the album, song or artist. The Mixer automatically adds the songs played recently.
more »

Your library in Rhapsody is a central spot for finding, organizing and managing your music whether it is music you have streamed from the online Rhapsody Music library or music that you have burned to your harddrive from a CD or music that you have downloaded from Rhapsody or music you have purchased from rhapsody. The My Library function gives you a nice iTunes like interface for quickly finding an artist, album, genre or track that you have previously listened to through Rhapsody.

Everytime you find a new song and play it through Rhapsody, it is added to your library automatically. Anytime you burn, download or rip a song - it is added to your library. It’s the fastest way to find music that you have already listened to.
more »

So, I’ve been using both the Rhapsody.com web music service and the Rhapsody 3.1 music player back and forth and there are some big differences in both features and quality of streams. Rhapsody.com is still a relatively new service so I think it will get better, but I prefer to download the full Rhapsody 3.1 client and use that. I have a Rhapsody Unlimited account (which you can get here for free for 14 days and 5 free song downloads) which you can use for both so there is no difference in monthly costs, but here’s the break-down on the other issues.

Rhapsody.com - uses an active X plug-in for explorer 6+, firefox 1.01+, safari 1.3+(mac) and Netscape 8+. This is nice because MACs and Linux users can get Rhapsody (there is not a player version that supports MAC and Linux yet). The plug-in lets you surf the Rhapsody.com website, find the music you want and play it in a separate music player window. The music player window stays live while your doing stuff on the net in other browsers, etc which is nice. The upside is that you can go from 0 to music faster than using the Rhapsody 3.1 client because it is a couple of clicks away. Since the plug-in is much smaller than the player client everything uploads more quickly. The downside is that the streams tend to be spottier meaning that I experience more stop/pause/load issues while playing. The other downside is that there are features like CD Burning, ripping CDs, creating personalized radio stations, creating playlists and managing music in a central library that aren’t available from the website yet.
more »

Fired up Rhapsody this morning and one of the featured albums was the soundtrack to Blow-Up (1966) featuring Herbie Hancock and the Yardbirds. I’ve heard the “greatest hits” of yardbird and knew it was a pivotal band in the British Invasion. I also knew it as the cross over point of the Holy Trinitity: Clapton, Page and Beck. The Blow-up soundtrack has one of only three songs recorded with both Beck and Page together (Stroll On). I listened to Stroll On (sounds like Train Kept a Runnin’) loved it and dove into the Yardbirds section of Rhapsody. Found “Roger the Engineer ” with Clapton and loved it! That’s the power of Rhapsody.

Another good music resource is Wilson and Alroy’s Record Reviews (www.warr.org) who has a great write-up on the Yardbirds.

Okay, it’s time for me to finally say goodbye to my portable disc player, and join the online and portable music revolution. Okay, the revolution isn’t so new any more, nor is my computer, but as I wade through the sea of options for how to download music, listen to and buy online tracks, I grow more eager to get my feet wet and eventually suit up to take the plunge. But I happen to be a bit more practical than that. So, I’ve spent a considerable amount of time over the last few weeks trying to determine what’s best for my lifestyle, my wallet and my computer.

First thing I realized when searching all of the music services is that things seemed to work a lot smoother with a broadband connection (and most services seem to point that out from the get go). Just like my CD Walkman, the time had come for me to lose my ancient dial-up connection to the online experience. It actually turned out to work in my favor as my cable company gave me a good deal on high-speed, and also threw in a discount on my existing costs for cable TV.
more »

Here are the exact steps to download music that you want to own and use for creating CDs, etc. If you just want to listen to music or download music so that you can listen off-line (but not burn CDs) you don’t need to pay the $.89 per song. I’ll post how to listen to music off-line without paying for it in a different post.

Step 1 - Log-in to Rhapsody (or click-here to sign up for a free trial account)
more »