Rhapsody on the web! Really?
A MarketWatch article looks at RealNetworks Rhapsody service - which now is available over the web.
Personally I’m uncertain I really want to spend my bandwidth on playing songs. Downloading is one thing, playing is another.
Anyway, I decided to have a look. I looked around for a bit, then clicked on a link to a Rolling Stones album. I could see from the URL that they had already detected I did not have their player (”http://..has-player=false”. Shouldn’t be a problem with a web based service, right?
Well, not so. While the site was advertising I could check the music out for free (or at least that what I thought it said), they just wouldn’t give me access. Why, I’m on a Canadian IP address!
So while this system might work well in the US, forget it if you are going on holidays outside the US or just happen to live in Vancouver, BC, the “most desirable place to live in the world“.
I guess, with my new iPod [story], that I can manage well without them.
I wish though they had done more for me that just to tell me “no”. Why not take me to a page showing what my alternatives were? My guess is that they would be OK selling me music???
roar at roarweb dot com
Note: This post moved from Blogger December 6, 2005