Rhapsody

It was sometime in 1998 when my friend Rob Reid came into my office and told me about the new company he was starting. It was called Listen.com and he was going to develop an Internet service that would allow consumers to listen to any song they wanted at any time - all delivered over the Internet.

I thought it was a really good idea, but I had my doubts that he would get the record labels to cooperate. We were having a terrible time at Reciprocal getting the labels to do anything online with their music.

But Rob wasn’t daunted. And he got it done. Listen.com launched Rhapsody in 2002 and it has become a great service. Rob’s company was sold to Real that year and under Real, Rhapsody has continued to develop and add more music.

At this point, there isn’t much you can’t listen to on Rhapsody. I gave my brother Rod a subscription to Rhapsody for a holiday gift in 2002 and he is addicted to it. He came out of his own pocket to renew it. In fact, he just commented on one of my posts that I should get Rhapsody.

My friend Cliff swears by it too. He always checks out new bands he hears about on Rhapsody.

So I bought a one year subscription today. My only complaint so far is I can’t use it on the airplane. I guess that’s what iTunes and the iPod are for. Wouldn’t it be great if they combined Rhapsody and iTunes?

Comments

[Jake Ludington]

I think the service that combines Rhapsody and iTunes is called Napster 2.0. ;)

Seriously though, the biggest problem with all these services is they don't really expose you to new music. They expose you to what the labels are promoting just like radio, MTV, and every other pop-culture outlet does.

Instead of combining two good products to make a me too product, I'd like to see someone launch a service which provided "trusted friend" recommendations of new bands that might not even be signed to record deals. What you propose perpetuates the format we are already stuck with in other mediums.

[Stephen Bronstein]

Microsoft's service, launching this summer, will supposedly include a subscription option that will enable users to download tracks onto ipod-like devices. The tracks would 'expire' after some period of time, say a week. This should be the promised land for subscription services, and was likely the basis for Rob Glaser's comments to Jobs in the now infamous email that MSFT has DRM stuff that is tempting to Real.

Jake:

1) A number of the services, including iTunes and Rhapsody, enable export of playlists to the web. Combine that with...

2) Digital distribution firms such as IODA (where I work) are focused on bringing indie label content onto all of the digital music services worldwide. For unsigned artists, CDBaby provides digital distribution to the digital music services.

So I think we are getting closer by the day to bottom-up music discovery.

[Claudia Morgenstern]

Jake --

I too am a Rhapsody addict. Since you're a jazz freak, if you're into classic jazz you should love it. It's like having a CD library of literally thousands of CDs that give you a major part of the recorded work of not only the gods of jazz (huge collection of guys like Getz and Miles) but also the terrific players who are lesser known today. Since you've just signed up, I'll share with you what I've learned about finding and listening to music on Rhapsody, and where its strengths and weaknesses are. Feel free to pass it along to your friend who started Listen.com. He should be SO-O-O-O proud of what he's created.

Listening to the "newest thing" isn't what would drive me to choose a music service, so I'm less bothered by the dominance of the major labels or no file-sharing function. Just focusing on major jazz labels (not to mention rock, which is also great on Rhapsody), there's so much fabulous music recorded over the past 70 years that I've yet to hear. Rhapsody is like this bottomless box of hidden treasure. I've gotten to know the entire career of great musicians whose music evolved over decades like Gerry Mulligan, Horace Silver, Oscar Peterson, Bobby Hutcherson, Lee Konitz and Art Farmer. I've become more than superficially familiar with the work of greats who had their lives cut short all too soon, like Clifford Brown, Sonny Clark, or Grant Green. I've "discovered" the work of guys whose names were familiar from jazz radio but whom I'd never invested in, like Johnny Hartman, Eroll Garner, Art Pepper, Chet Baker, Lee Morgan, Paul Desmond, Harry Sweets Edison, Lester Young, Ben Webster, Johnny Hodges, and on and on. (you think maybe I've got a thing for horns?)

And the vocals! I own a lot of Sarah (the greatest of all the voices) and Ella, and knew pretty well Carmen, Dinah, Peggy etc. But I've gotten so into the ladies who you hear on collections (Cole Porter, Gershwin, swing etc) but who don't get the spotlight today even though each had her own distinctive sound and unique way of bridging the jazz and pop of their era -- June Christy, Anita O'Day, Julie London, Blossom Dearie, just for starters.

The playlist functions are terrific. For example, I've got several big lists of covers of Ellington/Straythorn that have artists over 65 years doing all the better and lesser known standards, from Mood Indigo, Satin Doll, Sophisticated Lady and Promise of a Kiss to U.M.M.G., Lush Life, Passion Flower and Isafan. What a way to listen -- you hear all sorts of things you'd otherwise miss when "Don't get around much anymore" is performed by Johnny Hodges, Louis Armstrong, Kenny Burrell, Ella Fitzgerald and Tony Bennett. The amazing diversity of approaches to the ubiquitous "A" Train shows how much creativity and artistic control the best jazz artists have had -- makes you appreciate just how really good they were/are. One of my Ellington/Straythorn playlists is exclusively vocals. Another all instrumentals. And another just CDs with piano, guitar or vibes leaders. It's so much fun! I've started doing the same sort of things with Monk covers. And I've also got "themed" or "mood" lists, like "evening saxes" and LatinAM (for days I need to get the blood moving). The next one I'm putting together is quartets/quintets of 1958-61 (what a golden age!)

Rhapsody is the most fabulous way to explore all these gems that were too hard to find or just too blame expensive to collect. When Rhapsody is on, I also have AMG's site open so I can look up any info on a particular CD (who were the sidemen, who wrote one of the tunes, etc), and Amazon, where the review info is also useful. One of the features of Rhapsody I like best is the Album List, which can display not only all the CDs that are available for listening, but those that aren't available. So you have a pretty complete discography of every artist, with info on even the unavailable albums (label, issue date, tracks titles). That way I have a quick way of knowing where the major gaps are in my knowledge of an artists. The same display arrangement is great for searching for artists as well -- when you search for an artist, you can get information on their recordings even if the person doesn't have any CDs you can listen to on Rhapsody. BTW, having AMG and Amazon open is a great adjunct to "exploring" -- I'll often find reference on one of those sites to an artist I don't know or a particular album I haven't heard, and use that to start searching Rhapsody. So having these text reference tools makes it a wonderful iterative exploration process.

Rhapsody is also great for getting to know the music of current artists. Yes, they don't have enough of the artists who aren't "household names" in the jazz world. But again, because they have quite a sizeable portion of the CDs put out by the "young lions," the major chanteuses, and the best of the keyboards, you could focus exclusively on the work of folks who have only been recording over the past 10-15 years and it would take you months to get through. The current artists with Blue Note, Verve and Concord aren't too shabby. And it's not as if it's only the mainstream or straight-ahead stuff that gets picked up by Rhapsody. Orchard and the Knitting Factory seem to have put virtually their whole catalogs on Rhapsody.

There are some obvious holes, but the gaps are a reflection of the labels. Some of the labels seem to have embraced Rhapsody and what it can do for their catalogs and artists. For example, Concord, Verve and Blue Note have obviously decided that services like Rhapsody give their artists unparalleled exposure and it won't cannibalize their CD sales. So the entire Live at Maybeck series of solo piano recitals produced by Concord is available, which has given me a chance to hear an incredible range of jazz pianists who I didn't know or whose recordings are otherwise not easy to find. For Verve and Blue Note, they seem to have grasped that Rhapsody is a great way to keep their lucrative reissue business alive. Rhapsody is such a wonderful tool for listeners to explore lesser-known classic artists, so it's a terrific vehicle for marketing those artists to a bigger audience (and probably one that's younger and web-savy). The same marketing logic is probably driving Bluebird, Legacy, Savoy, etc. On the other hand, included in the "weakness" list below is that a key jazz label like Telarc is totally absent.

As for the portability functions that you indicated any service must have if you're to use it, you should recognize that the portability benefits of Rhapsody don't just depend on burning cuts and playing them on an iPod. I've got Rhapsody on all the time I'm at the computer. Since my library is on Rhapsody's server, I can listen not just to Rhapsody but to MY Rhapsody from any computer that has Rhapsody's software installed. So office is just like home -- and I can make changes to the library in the office, and after synchronization, that's the library I have at home. Since I have wifi cable at home, I plug my laptop into my little Bose Wave, and cart them around together to any room I'm in to keep the music going. Now it's getting warm, out to the garden they go when I want to sit out there or have friends over for dinner. And absolutely NO sacrifice in sound quality!

One final note -- I probably buy as many or more jazz CDs as I did before Rhapsody. But I'm much more adventuresome because I have complete confidence that the CD is something I'm going to love. Some of the CDs are on Rhapsody -- I've found that they're "must haves" in a CD collection or I want to be able to play them in the car. Others are by artists I've learned to love, and there's a particular CD of theirs that I just must hear. Or the artist is on someone else's CD and, based on reviews from sources I've come to trust, the odds are very high that I'm going to like it. I'm also much more likely to notice a performer coming to town and go out of my way to attend a concert or go to a club to hear them live. (I live in DC, which has a history of having a pretty vibrant jazz community -- outside of NY, of course.) On the other hand, since I don't listen to music on headphones or a portable player, I haven't burned a single track. The economics of Rhapsody have to accommodate the variety of listening preferences of users.

Some things that could be better on Rhapsody.

(1) Although Listen.com has done a great job acquiring rights to play and burn, its "mini-reviews" on specific albums, and its artist bios, are a weak point. The reviews are, indeed, quite mini and available on only a small portion of the CDs, and the bios are exceptionally abbreviated. Another missing type of information is the other performers. This is especially important for jazz combos, where the sidemen on a certain date often makes all the difference. But with AMG a few clicks away it's not fatal. In the long run, however, they need to add value in the info dimension to distinguish themselves from a service devoted primarily to the "newest thing."

(2) Following up on the "missing sidemen" problem, the category "Other" is mostly "Appears On," but for the great sidemen, especially rythmn sections, they are woefully skimpy or haphazardly incomplete. (e.g. they've got a very long list of "Other" for Paul Chambers, but though Miles Ahead and 58 Sessions are noted, where is Kind of Blue? weird!)

(3) For albums where there are truly several "leaders" (e.g. Louis and Ella) you have no control over where the CD is placed in your library's Artists section. If you want it under Louis, tough luck -- find it under Ella. And you can't double file it under both Artists. Similarly, I can't put all of Fred Hersch's work under his name, even though a number of albums where he's not the leader are almost duets where his contribution is a major part of the music (e.g. with Art Farmer, Janis Siegel).

(4) As mentioned above, Telarc's jazz stable is totally missing, which is a real shame, and artists who record primarily for ECM have little to none of their work available. No Dave Holland -- pretty outrageous! Some smaller labels like MaxJazz, who have some terrific up-and-coming artists who ought to be getting agressive promotion, are also absent. And then there aren't many of the small independent labels where a lot of jazz artists get their first introduction to the public or find a congenial home (e.g. Jane Ira Bloom on Arabesque). Yet an independent label like Chick Corea's Stretch is taking advantage of his own popularity to get the other artists in Stretch's catalog some terrific exposure. I assume the problem with the small labels is that Rhapsody has focused its rights acquisition efforts first on the big catalogs. Hopefully, they'll get to the good indys sooner rather than later. I anticipate that the indys (and maybe even Telarc) will realize they have to work with services like Rhapsody or they're going to have a hard time signing and retaining good artists.

(5) It would be terrific if the Rhapsody library had a few more functions available that are standard features on PC-based media players, like being able to sort on genre or mood or composer. It would also be fabulous if a user could keep personal notes on a CD, or artist, or playlist. Obviously Rhapsody's web-based service requires a lean data management system if it's going to give users the ability to have a huge number of artists, tracks and playlists, while providing high speed of retrieval and editing of library entries. However, has anyone thought about offering a piece of software you could install on your computer that kept these data-intensive items stored on the computer rather than on the web site? It would clearly be only available on a single computer, but better than having to set up a separate data base that's not directly linked with entries in your own Rhapsody library.

(6) I'd love to get notices of when new CDs are added for artists or genres I'm interested in. You have to return to artist pages fairly frequently (even for artists who aren't with us anymore, so they're not producing any more music). If the musician recorded with a number of labels over a long career, Rhapsody may suddenly have a bunch of new CDs available from negotiating a new access deal with one of those labels. Even if they didn't have a notification service, it would be nice if they had a place on their site that had news, like which labels they have new arrangements with, or a listing and search function for new artists or CDs. Again, maybe they'll get to that once they've built up their library.

(7) They seem to be missing some features that might build user loyalty. Right now the service feels too vertically self-contained, both in terms of information content and in the nature of the relation between a user and the Rhapsody system. They're not taking advantage of the unique open, horizontal nature of the web, which gives easy access to relevant information and relations that the service-provider doesn't have to produce directly. For example, the ability to exchange playlists could be promoted on the site better -- if you don't already have friends who are into the same music you are, you don't have a ready way to find other Rhapsody users who'd like to share playlists. It would also be nice if Rhapsody could direct its users to other places where people with similar musical interests are doing things -- newsletters, reviews, discussion spaces, commercial magazines. Those places shouldn't have to be exclusive to Rhapsody in terms of either its subscribers or partners.

The thrust of the above list of observations/suggestions would be to make Rhapsody a true music "discovery" service so that, once users understand Rhapsody's services and are comfortable with the UI, Rhapsody would be their preferred music tool.
------- Rhapsody wouldn't have to compete with other music services on being THE place to go to if you want to be the first to know and access what the "newest thing" is.
------- Rhapsody would also be able to reduce the degree to which it competes with other services on the basis of price.
--------- For a user who's really into certain types of music, Rhapsody would be a "must have" tool to identify and explore in depth artists, genres, new releases, re-releases, information, communities of listeners, etc.

Warning, so my comments won't be misconstrued -- I'm not talking about an aggressively intrusive service that pushes proprietary or featured-partner content like AOL or WMP. Personally, I try hard to avoid the home page of the media browser in WMP (as well as RealPlayer) precisely because it doesn't help me get to what I want -- they try to stuff things down my throat, and I have to plow through a bunch of things I don't want in order to navigate to the reason I opened the browser in the first place. The garbage on those media browsers also interferes with the logic of navigation, making it less likely that I'll even find out about the availability of some functions or content that I'd find of value.

I have to give Rhapsody high marks -- its more "adult" and intuitive interface doesn't make the mistakes of WMP or RealPlayer. With Rhapsody I grasp immediately how I can get into Rhapsody's featured new releases, artists and playlists if I want to. But the featured items don't interfere with the core Rhapsody functions, and I don't have to navigate through them or around them to get to my music.

Rhapsody should adopt innovations in functions or content if they meet the following criteria (which Rhapsody currently satisfies):
(1) the interface brings to the attention of the user the availability of new functions or content (e.g., artists, external information sites, new releases, Rhapsody news) that might be of interest to the user; the interface doesn't force the user to use his own initiative to check lots of places on Rhapsody that might have useful new functions or content.
(2) the way that new options are brought to the attention of the user doesn't interfere with the user's ability to use Rhapsody as if the new options weren't presented;
(3) the user has the choice of whether to investigate new options or, without further navigation steps, simply ignore them;
(4) new functions or types of content would be added only if they clearly contribute to an improved listening experience or if they will enrich the user's perception of Rhapsody as a valuable music "exploration" or "discovery" tool.

There's no reason why Rhapsody should not be able to meet those criteria while giving users the ability to find many more channels of content directly relevant to the Rhapsody listening experience. Similarly, content doesn't have to be developed by Rhapsody -- it would be providing a valuable service to users by identifying links to high-quality third-party content that is relevant to the user's interests.

This is NOT a suggestion to try to create a sort of closed club or member-baesd community on the AOL model. Instead, Rhapsody should add functions that logically build on or extend the core Rhapsody services. Communities of people with shared interests emerge from the links between Rhapsody and other parts of the web. Since Rhapsody is now hooked up with Real, I assume there are web browsing technologies that Real could incorporate in Rhapsody -- no need to reinvent the wheel or create AOL-type technical standards that inhibit interacting with people who aren't Rhapsody subscribers.

I suppose some of these suggestions could raise uncomfortable issues re the relation of Rhapsody with RealPlayer, if those issues haven't alreay been addressed. IMHO, Real has some critical steps to take with Rhapsody in the very near-term if Rhapsody is going to be a long-term survivor in the music services business. If Real is really serious they better avoid Rhapsody's being caught up in competing over "price" (whether subscription or burn fees) or "distribution rights" (competing with other music services for distribution privileges such as the exclusive right to be the first with a hot new CD, or be the only service where a label is available). On price, there's no reason why Rhapsody should adopt the Walmart strategy of being a distributor of a commodity. It should be a value-added service. As for "distribution rights," competition could degenerate into costly and ultimately self-defeating bidding wars.

Real has a fairly short window to get the full competitive advantage of Rhapsody's being an early mover, because users get invested with a certain service. Based on my own experience, I'd be surprised if turnover in music services reaches the rates of ISPs, until there is another big technology-based innovation that Rhapsody can't easily adopt or match. I have used Rhapsody for 6 months, and I now know how to get the most out of the current features Rhapsody offers. I have a lot of sunk costs in terms of the time it has taken to create my library, my playlists, etc. For me to be willing to switch services to, for example, Napster, Napster would have to offer new services that would be a major enrichment over the excellent experience I enjoy with Rhapsody.

Hope this gives you some ideas for how you personally can get a wonderful experience from Rhapsody as well as some food for thought about where music services may be going. And for what it's worth, your friend at Listen.com has some free user feedback for the next iteration of their business model.

Enjoy!

[Rod]

Stephen, it’s nice to see someone who really appreciates Rhapsody. You were quite detailed in you analysis of rhapsody.

I would like to add some other comments.
Why do I only have the option to Burn and not download as an MP3? I can take my burned copy and make an MP3 out of it, and other services allow you to download. I don't really us Rhapsody for burning because of this. I use other music services for that.
Another problem I have is if you burn an album or playlist from Rhapsody it doesn’t generate a printable song list or cover.

If you like being exposed to new types of music, you can’t beat Rhapsody.
The biggest difference between Rhapsody and the other services is that Rhapsody will let you play the entire song, not just a 30-sec bite.

My 14-year-old daughter loves it as well, we share a subscription. Only one user can use it at a time, but that works for use. Like you said, it can be used on any computer (with Internet). I use it at work during the day, and she uses it at home in the evenings.

[Claudia M]

Rod --

You should take a look at Napster's premium service if you want to be able to download to a library -- though you can also just use Napster's streaming functions with or without your own playlists, like Rhapsody. You only have to pay when you want to burn. So it combines the streaming of Rhapsody with library features of some other services.

I'd guess that the reason Rhapsody doesn't have the download and library management functions is due to the fact it started several years ago, and the labels at that time were reluctant to make a lot of their catalogs available in a format that would be easy to copy and file share. Also, Rhapsody was really focused on its technology for CD-quality streaming and web-based content management.

In the deal the labels have struck with Napster to convert it to a legal service, the labels seem to have resolved issues re what types of controls a service would have to offer for them to be comfortable handing over their catalog for downloading without pay. Now that Napster has the precedent set of a combined service, I'd imagine Rhapsody is thinking about how to add that feature so as to remain competitive with Napster.

Several things to note about Napster -- follows up on some of the comments I made about Rhapsody before,

Some tracks are restricted. You can listen via the streaming service for free only to a 30 second sample, and you can't download without buying. In the jazz categories I listen to the most, it doesn't have a huge impact. But there may be some other types of music where it's a bother.

The coverage of music by Napster and Rhapsody have a large portion of overlaps, but there's also quite a difference in content where a lot is on small or independent labels. Clearly, the two services have reached different arrangements with various labels. In the jazz category, one of the most important labels available on Rhapsody -- Concord -- isn't on Napster yet. So for example, there's a major chunk of Stan Getz' work missing from Napster. And newer artists who have recorded primarily with Concord aren't anywhere to be found.

Napster doesn't have the "all releases" or "all artists" feature that I use so much on Rhapsody. If it's not available for play or burn, it doesn't show up on Napster. A shame.

As for navigation, I prefer the Rhapsody interface, where all the relevant info about an album is displayed at one time -- album issue info, tracks, other work by that artist, bio, mini-review, other "related" artists, etc. With Napster you have to do a lot more clicking to see those items.

Napster struck a deal with AMG, so they've got the AMG bios, which are excellent.

The "share your playlists," "view what other Napsterites are streaming now" and "view what other Napsterites have in their library" are a little too tricked up for me. And the emphasis is on the "Napster community." That may be fine for the teenage and college crowd, but I see that the sorts of things the Napsterites are listening to in "my" genres are extremely superficial, unchallenging sorts of stuff. So I'd want a service that facilitates linking up with people who have similar interests to mine, many who will be outside the service. I don't need the service to manage my interaction with those people.As Napster's membership builds, maybe it will become more diversified so that more "people like me" will be reachable through Napster's member interaction management system.

Napster has a "magazine" -- remarkably uninspired, but it's early days.

Napster's searches, especially if you're trying to get to an artist with a big CD library, can be slow, and then you get the info delivered to you as tracks. Advantage over Rhapsody, however, is that you can have multi-albumn track lists that you can sort and edit without having to move the tracks to the library or playlist window.

Napster has various ways of reducing the downside of having your library located and managed on your PC, so you can listen at work and home.

Taken all together, most of reasons I still prefer Rhapsody are probably a reflection of the fact I'm a "boomer." Although the younger audience is a prime target because of their incessant appetite for the next new thing, the amount of time each day they devote to their music, and their willingness to pay to get it, I do hope that music services won't ignore the old fogies. We've been big recorded music consumers for decades, and we've got more buying power than the younger crowd. But someone needs to find better ways to tap into that buying power. We're busy and there's a limit to how often we'll go to Tower Records or spend time hunting up stuff on Amazon. If someone makes it a easy to find new things to listen to (whether it was issued last week or 40 years ago) and to listen and/or buy the music we like, I'd imagine the "boomer" buying audience for music could be much bigger than it is today.

Napster has some 7-day free trial promotions going on right now, so you can take a look and see if it works for you. Your daughter may adore Napster.

Claudia M

[Tiny]

I found the coolest Rhapsody Playlist site. Hundreds of playlists.

http://www.scopecreep.com/Rhapsody/

[Chuck Moxley]

I too, am a Rhapsody fan, but I ache for improvements in playlist improvements. I'm seriously considering switching to MusicMatch because these capabilities are so far superior, yet still the easiest/best player IMHO is Rhapsody's. (I tried Napster but hated the player--far too song oriented vs. artist/album, so hard to assess by album--and the selection of music was quite a bit more limited, at least by my tastes.)

So in thinking about it tonight--switching to MusicMatch--I realized that if I could simply sort my playlist in various ways to better control playback, that'd I be willing to stick with Rhapsody.

To that end, I've played all night trying to export the playlist, sort it and reimport it. Alas, have had no luck. I haven't been able to get a program to recognize the data in such a way that I could then import it into Excel or Access and then export it back out to import into Rhapsody. I also searched everywhere for a utility to edit/sort playlists for Rhapsody, without success either. (That's how I discovered this blog.)

So my question...does anyone know of such a piece of software out there for this purpose? Or another solution?

[matt graves]

Hey there -- there's another site offering lots of Rhapsody playlists -- Rhapsody Rock School. I try to post playlists of new and recommended music in the service several times a week. You can check the site out at http://rockschool.blogspot.com if you're interested. Take care~

Matt