Comments on: Rhapsody Review

By: sorryZunefailed

sorryZunefailed — Sat, 27 Aug 2011 20:14:39 +0000

I’ve been a Rhapsody subscriber for 4 years. It’s OK for me, because I generally download 10-20 tracks a week. Most I listen to for a while an discard, so it’s a cost-effective way to try out new music on an extended basis without paying a fortune in phone bills for streaming music to my phone.

BUT … the software is full of bugs. It constantly freezes in mid-transfer, and generally will only download 80-90% of any given playlist. Customer support is useless, and the problem has persisted for years. We’re given elaborate instructions to reinstall Windows Media Player, delete DRM files, update Windows components, but nothing works. Then they say to reformat your device and reload everything. That works for a week or two, but then the downloads start freezing up again and you’re back to square one.

I subscribe, as I’ve said, because it’s a cost-effective way to get most of the music I want to listen to downloaded to MP3 without paying for each track. Potential subscribers should take notice and prepare themselves to accept the service for what it is. Cheap, unstable, and frustrating. That works for me, but may not for eveyone.

By: asfw

asfw — Sat, 13 Nov 2010 14:06:03 +0000

asd above is spot on. I have no idea why rhapsody has so much trouble syncing a device. I’ve had to switch to making rhapsody download all songs, then using windows media player to put them on the player.

Also, the player has a lot of trouble simply downloading large number of songs. I tried selecting 400 of the songs in my library for download. That was 2 days ago, and rhapsody locks up after every couple dozen.

It’s been like this for as long as I can remember. Since I had to move from yahoo music to this

By: asd

asd — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:23:28 +0000

The Rhapsody software is very, very buggy if you are trying to download to a mobile player. Be prepared to spend hours trying to get your device to sync. The software can’t seem to add new playlists to your device. You have to format your device and download your entire library.

By: Sharon

Sharon — Sat, 23 Jan 2010 14:59:17 +0000

Hi-We’ve had Rhapsody for a few years now and it is a good service, however there are a couple of things about it that I find quite irritating.One thing is the music skipping as it plays. There are repeated breaks and skips. I don’t know why, and it’s never been fixed. Sometimes it’s fine and there are no breaks or skips, and other times, there are plenty. If you are like me and trying to play an intrument along to a song for practice, this will begin to annoy you very much. It ruins your practice and it also ruins your mood. You should be relaxed when trying to play and learn, not building up irritation because you can’t listen to more than 30 seconds of a song without it skipping, usually at a crucial moment, always throwing off your time.Also, when I search for songs and have them in the mixer, sometimes I’ll have 200 songs in there that I have painstakingly collected. It’s highly annoying to come back into the account and realize that everything has been wiped clean, for no apparant reason. Yes, you can drag them over to the library and they will most likely stay there, since the library was never wiped out, but still, this is irritating and it happens to my son on his computer, too.If you listen to a wide range of music that would cost hundeds or thousands of dollars to own, like my husband does, then it is worth it to have the Rhapsody account and get so much exposure to music. It was thanks to Rhapsody that I discovered Iron and Wine so I thank them for that. If the skipping would stop, it would be perfect and I would have no complaints because the other things are pretty minor gripes that I could live with. But music that skips is just irritating.

By: WesFX

WesFX — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 18:09:01 +0000

I have a Rhapsody subscription. It’s missing a few old albums from the Electronic genre, but otherwise a great selection.

By: crescentdave

crescentdave — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:44:36 +0000

In Zune, I chose electronic/dance. It opens to a page with 10 sub-genres. There is no further breakdown. I can order them according to “Most Played” or “Year.” The “year” category sorts by decades only. It doesn’t even order the years within the decade. The 00′s for example, will have 2003 albums next to 2008 albums.In Rhapsody, I chose electronic/dance. A page opens with 9 sub-genres. Picking a sub-genre yields a breakout of further sub-genres. There are a total of 34 sub-genres within that spread of 9 basic electronic/dance subgenres. Each page contains an Album spotlight, the sub-genre spotlight and description, top artists, a sampler in order to get a feel for the sub-genre, top playlists, top artists and top albums. Chose the top artists and select one. It takes you to the artist’s page, a description of them, top tracks, an artist channel, similar artists, top playlists, top albums and a list of their albums and compilations they appear in- sorted by date.

By: ashiiya

ashiiya — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 23:08:53 +0000

@Ben: I agree. Of course, if this fact was an essential part of choosing a service, I’d understand, but whether or not that’s true doesn’t make a difference. Nothing to complain about. It’s all about whether the service itself is good for you or not.

By: becca

becca — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 11:06:15 +0000

I’ve been a rhapsody to go user for almost 2 years now and i LOVE it! I specifically bought the samsung s3 b/c i already had the rhapsody account and i knew they were compatible. i simply refuse to buy into the glitzy packaging of the ipod brand. i’m sure it’s a great product and they do a great job marketing their pretty little toys but i’m not buying it. i like rhapsody b/c it allows me to listen to all the music i like without having to iconform.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 20:41:10 +0000

@EricI’m sure that people who are actually trying to decide which service to choose, couldn’t care less about this specific detail.:)

By: Eric

Eric — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Andreas,I have been reading your music store/services reviews and I have to say you are not doing a good job. For starters, you certainly aren’t a “journalist”; you have a a problem with simple fact checking. As pointed out already, Best Buy doesn’t own Rhapsody and there is absolutely no reason for you to have stated that except that you made an assumption and are being ignorant and lazy. It is also very well known that Best Buy in fact bought Napster. For someone working in the digital media field, I’m not impressed with your knowledge of the industry. You should try a little harder.