Rhapsody Renaissance

The news hit the tape about two weeks ago that Real Networks’ Rhapsody music service is to be spun off as an independent company.

In some circles, this is being viewed as a proof that subscription model of music distribution is not working. Others have cited Steve Jobs’ statement that “When you rent stuff, in the end you're left with nothing."

As a die-hard Rhapsody fan since 2003, I’m disappointed by the news that Rhapsody hasn’t been the music industry panacea I envisioned way back when.

I still have faith in Rhapsody and the subscription model in general as the best legal means of discovering and enjoying new music. I’ll limit my argument to the case of pop music, a genre I know well, and a crucial source of music industry profits:

• Top 40 pop music is a rapidly decaying commodity, in other words, songs are introduced, get popular very quickly, then disappear. Every 2 months there are introduced probably 20 new songs which I enjoy hearing, but which I would not want to spend $20-$30 to acquire on iTunes

• I can rarely decide whether a song is worth buying on first listen, it took at least 5 listens of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” to convince me it was a keeper

• Rather than buy a bunch of songs and find that I only enjoy half of them, why not rent them with the reasonable confidence that when I want to listen to them again, I can

• Beyond Top 40 pop, I have a lingering interest in keeping tabs on a handful of rock / punk genres. The way I’m discovering music nowadays is by going through Spin magazine periodically, and populating my Rhapsody playlist with any bands that seem interesting. This “Try before you buy” concept doesn’t really exist in iTunes. Once again, it takes far more than 30 second song clips for me to determine that I truly love a band’s album

• Even when I truly love a Top 40 single or a new rock album, what’s the point of buying instead of renting? I pay an extra $3 a month for my Rhapsody subscription so that I can access my library on my iPhone. Granted, an AT&T connection is pretty rough for streaming music, but the phone’s WiFi capability allows me to access my library in an ever increasing number of environments.

If I had to guess, it will be the proliferation of WiFi and the improvement of cellular networks that provide subscription music services their second act. A friend just raved about the joys of WiFi enabled planes. Can we not envision a not too distant future where media-quality internet access is available in 99% of the instances where we wish to listen to music? When that becomes the case, $15 a month to rent songs might not seem so bad after all. . .