I've been a very happy rhapsody subscriber for a couple of years. They've done everything right. Good pricing, elegant interface, lots of additional artist information available, tight and fast performance, no ads, no spyware, lightweight, low overhead, etc. When I'm on a PC, it's playing music and never disrupts what else is going on, even with processor-intensive applications running. It just works perfectly and unobtrusively. Plus, their library is extensive and always expanding.
Naturally, when Real bought Rhapsody I got scared. Rhapsody uses WMP and Real is reportedly looking to switch over to RM. This could be good or bad. They can use a lightweight realplayer with rhapsody to send me tunes and easily add Linux and MaxOS support in the process, or they can use the current memory-consuming version of RP10 that doesn't run under Linux, and I'll cancel my subscription. The version of RP10 for Linux is much lighter than the Windows version, but ironically, they don't offer it for Windows.
rhapsody (Score:5, Interesting)
Naturally, when Real bought Rhapsody I got scared. Rhapsody uses WMP and Real is reportedly looking to switch over to RM. This could be good or bad. They can use a lightweight realplayer with rhapsody to send me tunes and easily add Linux and MaxOS support in the process, or they can use the current memory-consuming version of RP10 that doesn't run under Linux, and I'll cancel my subscription. The version of RP10 for Linux is much lighter than the Windows version, but ironically, they don't offer it for Windows.
I'm not real optimistic.