I just downloaded the latest build of Rhapsody (build 4.545). I don’t see any changes to the interface so I’m guessing there are updates/improvements under the hood. I haven’t seen any technical notes either and very little chatter on the RealNetworks forums. It’s an easy update and all of your previous settings are kept, but if you haven’t updated yet - you might want to hold off until the early adopters pipe in. I’ll post my thoughts after using it for a few days.

I’ve just posted a feature by feature comparison of Rhapsody vs Napster. I selected the elements that are the most important and quantifiable and left out things like look and feel, stability, etc. as those are hard to get hard facts around. Click here to compare Rhapsody vs Napster.

Ipsos, a global market research company, says that Apple Inc.’s iTunes, No. 7 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, still is the alpha dog in the world of fee-based digital music. But Amazon.com Music (No. 1) and RealNetworks’ Rhapsody (No. 89) brands are making inroads.

The fifth annual TEMPO Digital Music Brandscape study, conducted by Ipsos, shows that awareness and use were steady among the most dominant brands this year, but did increase for three top competitors while declining among many lesser-known players. For example, iTunes continued to grow in terms of awareness, usage, familiarity and “best brand” mentions in the study. But Amazon had a strong first year, with initial awareness, usage, favorability and “best brand” ratings comparable to any of the top brands after iTunes. And Amazon matched iTunes in user satisfaction.
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Verizon Wireless and Rhapsody have teamed up to bring the subscription music model to cell phones. This partnership expands the Rhapsody DNA platform and once again proves that Rhapsody is more dynamic, far reaching and solid than any other subscription music model like Napster, eMusic, Yahoo! Music (oh, wait - Rhapsody acquired the Yahoo! Music business earlier this year). You can get Rhapsody on TiVO, Sansa MP3 devices, Sonos, Squeezebox, Verizon Phones, Denon Receivers, Panasonic MP3 devices, MAC browsers, Linux browsers and of course PCs - software and browsers.

So, how does it work with Verizon?
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It was bound to happen, but Rhapsody finally launched a DRM Free MP3 store and integrating the DRM Free MP3s into the Rhapsody Jukebox. So, what does this mean?
- If you have a Rhapsody membership (subscription) you can listen to full songs as much as you want and buy songs for $.99 that work on any MP3 player including iPods.
- If you don’t have a Rhapsody membership, you can still listen to up to 25 song streams per month and buy DRM free songs for $.99 or $9.99 for the album.
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Rhapsody and Virgin are running a promotion that gives you a 30 day free trial of Rhapsody to Go (vs the standard 14 day free trial). You are forced to watch the Virgin Mobile video commercial merchandising the Flare from LG. It’s short and painless

Click here to see the promotion.

The Consumer Electronics Show was very good to Rhapsody. I chatted with some folks who were there and heard that a lot of people were very interested in the Rhapsody DNA functionality and how Rhapsody has integrated into TiVo, Denon, Sansa and Sonos. Rhapsody is packaging these as “Music as a service” playing off of the “software as a service” trend.

As part of this move - lots of new partnerships and devices were announced including:
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I’ve been playing with the new search box on Rhapsody.com which was launched in December and I must say it is vastly improved over the previous search experience. Two big changes:
1) two new drop down categories have been added - By Lyrics and By Video.
2) the search results display as you type out the letters. For example if you type inn Dan it shows all the artists that start with dan - as you type in more letters it gets closer to what you need.
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A 3 or 6 month subscription to Rhapsody makes a great stocking stuffer or send item for those far away music lovers. Both Rhapsody Unlimited and Rhapsody To Go (transfer tracks to your MP3 player) are available as well as a download pack of 50 songs for $34.99 - that’s $.70 per track for those of you who are math impared :-).

Click here to see the gift subscription options on Rhapsody

Rhapsody announced in October that the music service will be available to TiVO subscribers through their DVRs. This is like taking all of the 800 poorly programmed stations on channels 900 - 999 and replacing them with a library of 6,000,000+ full songs, 750,000+ albums, 100’s of good channels and playlists that you choose. This is great for both Rhapsody who gets the service in front of millions of TiVO owners and TiVO who adds a really great option to their DVR.

Here’s a screenshot of the TiVo menu with Rhapsody:. Notice how it is built seamlessly into the TiVo interface.
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