Rhapsody is trying to provide iPhone users with something that Apple may be giving them later on. Apple bought (and is closing) lala.com which allowed users to listen to music (at least the first time) without purchasing it. When users did buy a song it was only to hear on lala and only cost a dime. The end user hadn’t bought the music only rented it. The Zune Marketplace already provides a subscription service that allows users to fill their mp3 players with songs. Users have been having to wait for Apple to catch up.
Rhapsody is a subscription service that allows members to listen to songs an unlimited number of times online and on the iPhone. The service did cost somewhere just South of $20 a month. Now, they have dropped the price to $10 and have begun to allow iPhone users to download songs for listening on their phones when a connection is absent or too sketchy.
That is all great news…when it works.
The app is newly upgraded so I’ll be patient for a while longer but it is very slow and makes the user click through a number of pages before allowing them to actually hear any music. Where is the setting that sends the app straight to the playlist? The Rhapsody app is clunky and crashy and inelegant.
As usual, it looks like we’ll have to wait for Apple to rescue the idea by being the folks who finally do a decent job of implementing the subscription process. Or maybe we just need a Zune.
