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Merry Christmas -- Your Rhapsody is broken!
Written by Jimmy - December 25, 2006
I'm not much of a product reviewer, or user at that. It's rare that I find a product that I enjoy and use daily. When I do, however, my adoration of that product is generally rabid and I suggest it to all of my friends.
Enter Rhapsody. I've been a Rhapsody subscriber for several years. I absolutely love it. I don't even download mp3s anymore. Why bother? It's probably on Rhapsody. I installed it at work, and I use it all day at home while I'm programming and designing. I only wish I could put it in my car.
If you're not sure how Rhapsody works or what it is, allow me to explain. Rhapsody is a music product from Real Networks. I know, they have a bad reputation, but hear me out. It's a competitor to iTunes and Napster. It focuses more on listening to music than purchasing it, however. For that reason, their subscription based service is amazing if you spend a lot of time at your computer.
Rhapsody has partner-based branding. You may have heard of "Audiogalaxy Rhapsody", "Road Runner Rhapsody", "Real Rhapsody", etc. There are different logos for every "brand" of Rhapsody.
Several months ago I noticed that Real Rhapsody had a screeenshot of a white Rhapsody on it's homepage. I use "Audiogalaxy" Rhapsody (don't ask, it's just where I signed up), which still had the older style black theme. There are no differences between the branded players, it just takes a while for a change to the main Rhapsody to roll out to the branded versions.
Imagine my delight when I got the message; "There are updates available for Rhapsody! Download now?". Absolutely, friendly message box!
Everything updated, all systems are go. I fired it up and was greeted with several major changes. "Now Playing" now has it's own entire page, and the former "Now Playing" area was dedicated to playlists. I found this to be a minor annoyance since I would rather see the current playlist full-time than to see a list of my playlists full-time. Other updates include poorly-done mouseover tabs everywhere you look, and song ratings.
This is where everything went *really* wrong.
I wanted to listen to the Kelly Sweet christmas album, so I did a search for Kelly Sweet. Her rhapsody page came up, and after laughing at the poorly done mouseovers on the play button, I clicked play next to one of her songs. Nothing happened. No music. No happiness. I ended up having to add the song to my library before I could play it. Later I found I could also drag the song title to the play button and it would begin playing. Incredibly annoying.
Then there was the straw that broke the camel's back. I got Kelly Sweet added to my Christmas playlist. I tried the "Save As Playlist" from the "Now Playing" page and again nothing happened. No saving. No happiness.
I truly hope Real makes an update to fix these issues in the Rhapsody software soon. I enjoy it immensely when it works. At the moment I have no way to add a song onto my "Now Playing" list without it playing automatically, and I have no way to save a playlist. No happiness.
James Thomas is a web developer living in Orlando. During the day he can be found working at Disney Internet Group, and spends most of his evenings working on various projects while clicking about angrily on Rhapsody.
