Originally published on: 9/21/2006 4:41:36 PM
If I hadn't been certain of my decision before the call, I was determined beyond all doubt after arguing.
Anyway, the reason I cancelled is mildly convoluted, but makes sense to me. It all stems from the reason I signed up in the first place: to get access to my listening history via API.
The Rhapsody API gave me that, albeit limited in form. It was on the lines of the "Last XX" tracks. That's not ideal (I want access to complete history), but was a step in the right direction. Given that one of my favorite things about these online subscription music services is that I can listen to any new album that comes out, new artists, etc. without knowing in advance whether I'll like it or not. Unfortunately, that's already resulted in several instances where I listened to an album, liked it and couldn't remember who it was a week later.
Then, I found a plugin for Yahoo Music that submits the listened to tracks over at Last.FM. Those API's are also hooked into by other players as well, providing a much better place to store the musical attention history.
That left the 2 services open to a more fair comparison and Rhapsody lost out on pretty much all other counts.
So, I'm dumping Rhapsody. I'll be porting over the What I'm Listening To page to the Last.FM API instead. Otherwise, I'm just back to using Yahoo and will likely keep that subscription for a long time.
That's because, for the cost of 1.5 albums a month on iTunes (for tracks that I could only listen to on a specific MP3 player and a couple of computers), I can get ongoing access to thousands of albums on a few computers and a specific *class* of MP3 players. Given that I used to easily buy 2-3 new CD's a month, this is cheaper and I can still get the obscure CD's I want in addition.
http://www.wynia.org/wordpress/2006/10/02/grabbing-musical-attention-data-from-lastfmaudioscrobbler/
"Yahoo is selling its digital music subscription service to Rhapsody America - a partnership of Real Networks and MTV Networks - as it revamps its music strategy.
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Yahoo Music will continue to offer music videos, Internet radio and music downloads. But customers of its monthly Yahoo Music Unlimited service will be migrated to Rhapsody. No firm timetable has been set. Yahoo, which expects the deal to close by the middle of year, did not disclose terms."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20080204/tc_usatoday/yahoosellingmusicservicetorhapsodyamerica
Is there an alternative music source out there other than iTunes and Rhapsody? If there's a decent one, I'm so there. My subscription is up in May 09, and I'm NOT paying Rhapsody for another year's worth of misery.
PLEASE FORWARD A LINK OF THIS SITE TO ALL RHAPSODY MEMBERS YOU KNOW.
The guys in India need to stop using fake English sounding names too. It's insulting. We're not ALL living in a trailer park here in the USA.