Posted by: mlapora on Jul 01, 2008 - 10:20 PM  | Topic: General Announcement 

As many of you may have heard, Rhapsody is now selling DRM-free 256kbps MP3s. And coupled with this release, is a release of a new flash-based web player. I personally worked on both of these projects, and I'm excited to see what everyone else thinks.

The MP3 store is meant to be a slightly separated experience from Rhapsody.com. The site is focused on people who would like to buy and download music, whereas Rhapsody.com remains focused on delivering subscription content. Of course they have interlinking between them, so users can be in either camp.

Buy links in the store are set up in a very similar way to the goto links on Rhapsody.com. Here is an example of each:

Rhapsody Goto Url (Goes to track's album page)
MP3 Store Buy Url (Goes to track's album buy page)

You can use the above example if you are looking to point someone at a particular track to buy. In the below examples, you can use the MP3 store buy URL to point at artists, albums, or single tracks. For example:

Album Buy Url - The SAWG, Saga Passion
Artist Buy Url - Itzhak Perlman
Track Buy Url - Mouse on Mars, "Schlecktron" on Iaora Tahiti

When using the single track goto url, you'll see the single track highlighted in the album list when navigating to the page. Also, depending on copyrights, some single tracks may not be available to buy outside of buying the whole album. As for downloading the tracks, it is available in a download manager, or contained in a zip file.

Secondly, the new flash player. Only users who do NOT have the Rhapsody Engine plugin installed will be able to see the new player. The Rhapsody Engine has a better quality music bitrate at the moment, so regular users of web streaming are recommended to stick with the Rhapsody Engine plugin. Also, users coming from certain partners will be directed at the Rhapsody Engine as well.

Over the next few months we'll be working on adding features to the player as well as getting out any of the kinks. If you have any comments, suggestions, or philosophy, please bring it all to us via the forum!

Matthew Lapora
Program Manager, Rhapsody.com and Web Services