Goodbye Rhapsody

For those of you who know me well, you know that for a long time I have been an avid user of Rhapsody.  Matter of fact, during my sophomore year, as I was using Audiogalaxy to download hundreds if not thousands of illegal mp3s, I began to feel convicted that what I was doing was stealing.  The biggest barrier to me purchasing all of those tracks on cd was the eclectic nature of my listening habits.  I listen to a lot, and I like to listen to new music often.  That is where Rhapsody came in.  Rhapsody launched in December of 2001, and I quickly subscribed.  For a monthly fee (that has gone up and down over the years, but usually settled around $9.99), I could listen to unlimited tracks by most of the artists I wanted to listen to legally.  The downside was that the service only worked streaming (they later added the ability to purchase mp3s).  This wasn't too much of an issue for me since most of my listening was in my dorm room.  Much has changed over the years, and much has stayed the same.  For many of those years, Rhapsody was a player installed in Windows, and recently, they launched a web player and iOS apps.

I have been a faithful customer for all of those years.  Rhapsody really has been a part of my music life, especially now that I'm a worship director, listening weekly to new albums and artists.  So, why am I saying goodbye after all of these years?  Simple, something better and cheaper came along.  This week, the Chrome app store launched, and one of the reviewers commented that the Chrome version of the MOG web player was really nice.  To be blunt, it blows Rhapsody away, and it is an early beta with features missing.  Rhapsody has been slow to change (in 9 years, the player changed little), and has become in many ways bloated, including the web player and the amount of resources it uses.  In my geekiness, I have switched to Ubuntu, and the only way to play tracks is through the web player, and it's just plain awkward, and it hasn't changed in two years.

So, MOG it is.  Maybe someday I will return to Rhapsody, but for now I'm going with the new kid on the block.  Oh, and did I mention that MOG is half the price of Rhapsody.  Makes a big difference!  I figured out how much I have paid to Rhapsody over the last 9 years, but I will spare you the wincingly large amount.

Goodbye Rhapsody, you will always be my first music streaming love.