Stop stealing music and check out these fee-based music services.
iTunes Music Store
You can download from a library of
over 1.5 million songs. iTunes boasts the
largest legal download catalog of any service. Unfortunately, the iTunes Music Store's 99 cent AAC copy-protected songs will only play in iTunes or on your iPod. However, PC-based iPod users have another option. They can use Real Network's
Rhapsody (see below) to purchase songs and transfer them to their iPod.
Rhapsody To Go
Rhapsody is
Real Network's music download service and offers a catalog of over one million songs. When you sign up for the subscription-based Rhapsody service, you choose from several different options. We chose
Rhapsody To Go as it was the only option that allows you to download
most of the Rhapsody catalog to a subscription compatible device at no extra cost. That means you can
fill and refill your
Dell DJ (or any other supported device) with
thousands of songs for just $14.99 per month. However if you cancel your service, your device will
no longer play any of the songs you have downloaded (this is true of all subscription-based services).
Note that you will not be able to burn any Rhapsody songs to CD unless you purchase them at a cost of 89 cents each.
We
liked the Rhapsody user interface and appreciated the
music suggestions and variety of streaming
commercial-free radio stations available. These things are important when you consider that there are more than
one million songs you can listen to
at any time.
Rhapsody also offers a free service called
Rhapsody 25, which lets you listen to 25 songs a month
for free. It's a great way to try out Rhapsody.
Yahoo! Music Unlimited
Yahoo! Music Unlimited offers basically the same thing as Rhapsody except it's
much less expensive - $6.99 per month. You'll still be able to stream music and download songs to a subscription-compatible device. However, if you want to burn any of your selections to CD, you'll have to pony up an extra 79 cents per song.
There were a handful of things we didn't like about the Yahoo! service but the inexpensive monthly fee was hard to beat.
If you want to hear us rant about Yahoo!, you came to the right place.
Why Y! Music Unlimited is less than perfect:
- We found the Yahoo! Music Engine Software clunky and unattractive.
- Yahoo's music suggestions and streaming radio stations were not as good as Rhapsody's.
- Download speeds on Y! Music Unlimited were dodgy - sometimes slowing to a crawl.
- It's not compatible with iPods.
- The Music Engine installer forces you to install Yahoo! Messenger.
- And if you're not careful, Yahoo's installer will:
- make Yahoo.com your home page (we'll keep ours as about:blank, thank you very much)
- make Yahoo! your default search engine (as if!)
- make Yahoo! Music Engine your default music player for almost every audio filetype.
Music to Our Ears
Even though the Rhapsody service outshined Y! Music Unlimited, we liked
Y! Music Unlimited best because of its
inexpensive subscription fee and services
comparable to the $14.99 per month Rhapsody To Go service. What can we say, we're cheap. Still, it wouldn't hurt to try out the free Rhapsody 25 service to see if the extra features and cleaner (and FASTER) interface are worth the extra money.
If you
only want to listen to streaming music and don't want to download anything, then the $9.99 per month
Rhapsody Unlimited service is your best bet. You'll still have the entire Rhapsody catalog at your disposal, albeit in a streaming format. Rhapsody Unlimited just works and looks better than the Yahoo! service and is
definitely worth the extra three bucks.
You'll
need a broadband connection to use both Y! Music Unlimited and Rhapsody to their full potential. Dial-up users might want to stick with the iTunes Music Store for now.
Both Y! Music Unlimited and Rhapsody To Go let you copy downloaded songs to a compatible portable music player. However, we found that some songs and albums were only available for streaming and
not as downloads. Sometimes we weren't even able to purchase burnable copies of certain songs. These are the
pitfalls of legal online music.
If you're a music lover, any one of the subscription-based services are
the way to go. You'll have a huge selection of high quality (160 kbps) streaming music available to you at
any time from
any computer. This is your chance to actually
learn about and
listen to music and songs you've never heard before. This is your chance to listen to every Bob Dylan song or study the roots of rock and jazz without spending a fortune. This is your chance to never use the iTunes Music Store again. It's up to you.
iTunes Music Store
Rhapsody
Yahoo! Music Unlimited