Did you know that you can get unlimited, all you can eat music on your MP3 player or smart phone for about the same cost as buying one traditionally priced CD per month? This looks specifically at plans that cover using the music on your portable device as well as on your PC.
At Macworld 2008, Steve Jobs reiterated his position that people want to own music rather than rent it. (He apparently doesn’t feel the same way about movies.) Apple’s iTunes is the second largest music retailer in the US.
Amazon Digital and Wal-Mart also sell music, but in MP3 form. Unlike iTunes music, these MP3s can be used on all of your devices. (But you shouldn’t share them as they are still copyrighted.)
A problem with both iTunes and MP3 players is that you can spend a fortune filling your device. 80 gigabytes is 81,920 MB. At an average file size of 6 MB, it would take 13,653 tracks to fill that 80 GB player - at $0.99 or $0.89 per track!
If it’s prohibitively expensive to purchase enough music to fill your iPod or MP3 player, what are the (legal) alternatives?
Well, you could skip the MP3 player and get a portable XM or Sirius radio for a $12.95 monthly subscription. This music is commercial free, there are a lot of channels and content, and the quality of the music itself is sufficient for listening on the go. But it’s still radio. It’s not guaranteed to play music that you like all the time, or to play songs that you haven’t heard 2,000 times before.
The other solution for music on the go is renting the music. For about the same price as buying one traditional CD per month, you can get a veritable smörgåsbord of music for your MP3 player. You can access literally thousands of tracks, truly “all you can eat,” and your music is good as long as you pay your bill.
Napster to Go and Rhapsody are two sources of subscription music.
Rhapsody describes their portable service as “drag, drop, and roll.” It costs $14.99 per month compared to their $12.95 PC-only plan. To search for music, start to type in the name of an artist or song and the search feature will start filling with suggestions. Once you select an artist, it will show you all the tracks from that artist. Clicking the + sign next to a track adds it to your playlist. Saved playlists can then be synced to your MP3 player. You can use up to three portable devices and three PCs with your subscription. Rhapsody offers a free trial in which you can download the application and listen to up to 25 free plays per month or purchase tracks for $0.99 each.
Picture 1 below shows Rhapsody detecting a portable device and offering to transfer local playlists to it. Despite the software offering this, however, the 25 free plays do NOT transfer to the device. They stream rather than transfer, so you can listen to them only on the PC. Since the sync is not enabled for streaming music, you’ll need to trust them when they say it works.
Rhapsody is also trying to build traction by branding devices. Here is a list of Rhapsody-enabled players:
Below is an image of Rhapsody detecting a portable device. (Click to enlarge.)