Rhapsody is one of the largest American-based music file-sharing retail services, with more than 6 million songs in its library and about 750,000 paying users of its subscription-based service, according to company estimates. Run by Seattle-based RealNetworks, which provides delivery platforms for digital media, the service was launched in December 2001 by online music directory Listen.com as the first music service to offer streaming on-demand access to nearly its entire library of digital music. Real acquired Listen.com in August 2003.
Subscribers are given the option of paying $12.99 a month for unlimited access to music from their PCs or Web browsers or $14.99 a month for the ability to download music to digital players. In 2007 Rhapsody made its service available to TiVo subscribers, charging $14.99 per month in addition to TiVo's monthly $12.95 fee. Rhapsody recently struck a deal with Verizon Wireless to create "V CAST Music with Rhapsody," a mobile music service that charges $14.99 a month for unlimited access and the ability to purchase and play individual songs (priced from $0.69 to $1.99) via up to three streaming devices and/or three portable devices. V CAST is available only with certain mobile devices.
Rhapsody's downloaded files come with Helix, a digital-rights management system owned by RealNetworks. DRM is an umbrella term used to describe a technology that makes the unauthorized use of digital content and devices technically difficult (although there are always technophiles trying to develop means of circumventing DRM). The "up to three" limitations mentioned above are examples of Helix's DRM capabilities.
What came to be called Rhapsody began as TuneTo.com in 1998. Developed by Tim Bratton, J.P. Lester, Sylvain Rebaud, Alexandre Brouaux, Nick Sincaglia and Dave Lampton, TuneTo offered personalized CD-quality streaming radio to Internet audiences. It was acquired by Listen.com in April 2001.
While Rhapsody tracks are compatible with most major MP3-playing devices, it is not supported by Apple and its non-MP3 tracks are not playable via iPod. While tracks purchased from Rhapsody can be burned to CD, streaming tracks cannot.
If a Rhapsody subscription is canceled, purchased tracks and MP3s will still be playable, but tracks that were streamed and listened to will not. Former subscribers can, like non-Rhapsody subscribers, purchase MP3s from the service and can listen to 25 songs per month for free.