We’ll chalk this one up to glass half-full. Led Zeppelin in now on Rhapsody but only as a catalog to buy, not stream. It’s nice to see the entire catalog and there are some live interview clips, but unfortunately, we can’t stream them. I don’t see Led Zeppelin at all on Napster (other than some lame tribute bands) so score another one for the Rhapsody label relationships.

Not to fear! You can stream Led Zeppelin on Rhapsody via the Classic Rock music channels (located on the channel guide tab) AND the Led Zeppelin artist channel (located in the upper right side of the Led Zeppelin artist page). If you have Zep albums on your harddrive, make sure you have imported them into your Rhapsody library (file > add media to my library) and rock on!

On Nov 1, RollingStone launched it’s first full digital edition. This is pretty cool because they have never put ALL of their articles, reviews, etc. from a single edition online. It is a very interesting combination of words and the ability to hear the songs immediately through Rhapsody Online. If you go to the Charts page (pg. 212), you can listen to most all of the tracks and albums that are on this page. Click here to go to the digital version of 40 years of RollingStone.com

Overall, I like the integration of content and music. However I have some issues with the viewer they are using and how difficult it is to read. Literally, they have re-created all the pages of the magazine in a viewer format. Same pages, same size, same delivery. While kind of cool, it doesn’t work as well as using dynamic web pages and formating the content for the web. There is not an easy way to skip large chunks of pages, the resolution is not great when the entire page is in the viewer and even when expanded to be readeable - it’s not very condusive to browsing and linking. I think they need to ditch this viewer format and figure out a way to integrate the content into the web browser with the same links to play the music. They’ve already started down that path, now the need to finish it.

I’m more excited than a princess dog at a pink sweater symposium! One of my all time favorite bands is finally going to release their full catalog to digital music services. No word from Rhapsody if this includes them (I hope it does!) but the mere thought of accessing Dazed and Confused while at work or digging through albums I haven’t listened to in forever or sampling live and/or rare stuff that I’ve never heard just gives me the willies.

The release is set to coincide with a one night only renuion show at the O2 in London in November and the release of a greatest hits album Mothership. Additionally, LZ has signed a deal with Verizon to sell ringtones. Can’t wait to have a meeting broken up by the opening riff of Whole Lotta Love. Sweet!

I’ve just added a new page in the How To’s section that describes how to create and burn a custom CD with Rhapsody. When RealNetworks acquired Rhapsody 4 years ago, one of the things they were able to add to the Rhapsody client was a really nice CD burning technology that is available in the premium version of RealPlayer. The CD Burner in Rhapsody creates a really good sounding, well balanced CD that burns in a .CDA format which is the widely distributed version in standard CDs. Click here to read how to burn a custom CD with Rhapsody.

DRM (Digital Rights Management) free MP3s are the same sort of buy it/use it where you want type music files you get when you buy a CD. As long as you are using it for personal purposes, not re-selling or swapping in the peer to peer networks - they are totally legal eagle. Better yet, because they are in DRM free universal MP3 format - they play on ipods, Sandisks or any MP3 playing device without the need for re-coding - FREE AT LAST! This is hot on the heels of releases by both iTunes and Walmart for selling DRM files - however there are some big differences. The table above helps separate the wheat from the chaff on what’s what.

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Thanks to the partnership with Viacom, we’re seeing some new music channels that we’re digging. I’m loving the TGIF Blues channel - lots of fun classic blues like Albert King, The Kinsey Report, Lonnie Brooks and Ruth Brown. They even throw in some Cream and Blues Brothers - Yes! My wife is enjoying the VH1 - I Love the 80’s channel. She is re-living her party peak with tunes from The Smithereens, Talk Talk, Pet Shop Boys and Sinead O’Conner. There is also a CMT (country music television) channel, VH1 Classic (Jackson Browne, INXS, The Byrds). All nice adds to the channel guide at Rhapsody.com!

The creation of Rhapsody American joins RealNetworks, MTV Networks (a division of Viacom) and Verizon Wireless in creating a broad scale offering of the music subscription service model. Up until now, Rhapsody has remained a relatively niche product compared to the mammoth that is iTunes/iPod. I’ve always felt that the Rhapsody model is superior from the stand point of enjoying lots of music for a low monthly price, but have always found it lacking in marketing muscle (when was the last time you saw a Rhapsody ad on the side of a bus?). Rhapsody, the service, is also harder to describe to someone whereas you can immediately understand iTunes. I like this deal for a number of reasons:
1) It gives Rhapsody access to the MTV Networks and their marketing clout. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot of GOOD Rhapsody ads come out. I like Eric Clapton and all, but the last set of ads I saw about Rhapsody and Sansa were lame.
2) Rhapsody goes mobile by getting on Verizon handsets and service. Verizon has it’s own 3G network and a relatively tight operating system/backend system combination making it easier to roll out new products and services across the network of it’s million of subscribers.
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Is this the first step towards the Beatles catalog being online or just Paul’s way of making a little extra $$ to pay off his horrid ex-wife/gold digger? Either way - I love it! Rhapsody has everything including an album entitled Paul Talks which is a series of clips from radio programs, etc. There are 25 McCartney albums plus compilations and performances on other artists albums.

Did you know that Paul released his first album two weeks before Let It Be was released? Here is the album review from Rhapsody on the first McCartney solo album. “This home-recorded charmer is the most humble No. 1 album in pop history. In 1970, Paul McCartney was ostracized from the rest of the Beatles and was holed up in a shack with his family on the Scottish coast. Filled with anger and frozen by the legacy of the Lennon/McCartney partnership, Macca decided just to record for fun, setting the stage for the rest of his solo career. Bypassed at the time, the future hit “Maybe I’m Amazed” is an autobiographical marvel (as is “Every Night”). “Junk” is a real beauty like “Teddy Boy” it was ixnayed by Lennon as a Let it Be-era Beatles song. Paul plays everything on this one.
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I just updated my Rhapsody client to version V4.0 build 1.193 (In Rhapsody go to help > check for updates to get the latest version). This is a great thing to do because it brings back the Mixer. If you used Rhapsody V2.0 or V3.0, the mixer was the main way to build play qeueus based on songs you’ve selected and you can also drag songs into it to play next. The Rhapsody Mixer let’s you line up a bunch of music to play and gives you a list of what you’ve been listening to. It’s like a quickie playlist that you don’t have to save. It rocks!

The new version of Rhapsody is out with the SansaRhapsody e200r series player. I’ve been using both the player and the software for weeks and I love the new version of Rhapsody. I like it so much, I’m not putting iTunes on my new family computer in the kitchen. I had planned on doing this with the old version of Rhapsody because it didn’t manage my personal music collection on the computer as well as itunes does, but the new version of Rhapsody is light years better in terms of interface, using drag and drop features, finding songs, importing songs and combining with the Rhapsdoy subscription tracks. I can even import my iTunes catalog which I’m going to try with the Network Magic software (all of my iTunes songs are currently stored on my upstairs computer). Viva rhapsody 4.0!