Archive for December 5th, 2005
Rhapsody.com
Monday, December 5th, 2005
Props to Rhapsody.com, Real’s new through-the-web version of their music service, for supporting Firefox not only at a minimum level, but completely. The player that streams the music from the site? Yeah, it’s a Firefox plugin. Good job guys. The instructions for setting it up were also just about perfect, getting every detail of the Firefox UI exactly right. I love this extention to the service, which should let me play music from several places I couldn’t before (ahem–the computer science labs), making the limitation of streaming a little more bearable.
I’ve been a Rhapsody member for about 2 months, by the way, thanks to UC Berkeley’s deal with them. Three bucks a month for unlimited streaming of any music in the world is definitely worth it, even if Rhapsody’s UI could use some improvement when compared to iTunes.
My point: I’m paying this much just to discover and listen to new music, and it’s fulfilling exactly that–which is all I used to use P2P networks for. I still buy CDs, and I always will. Just gotta have my raw bits that I can use as I see fit.
Oh music labels, when will you trust your consumers? Or rather, when will you realize that trust will be lucrative?