Rhapsody, RealNetworks' version of Listen.com, thinks it's hit the make-a-killing-with-online-music mark with a way to get people to spend money on its downloads.

For $10 a month, subscribers can tap its "hybrid caching/ streaming system across an army of Intel/Linux-based applications and streaming servers, which has improved music quality and minimized delays," says PC Magazine's Brad Grimes here.

"The first time you play a song, Rhapsody breaks it into two pieces, encrypts the pieces, and sends the larger part — about 99 percent of the file — to a cache on your PC's hard drive," says Grimes. "When you play the song, the remaining part is streamed to your PC, where it reunites with the rest of the file and begins playing. (Rhapsody can cache up to 1GB of data.)

"After the song plays, the 1 percent of the file is deleted, rendering the file unusable. When you want to listen to the song again, all you need is the missing 1 percent. Click on the Play button and the song starts playing again almost instantaneously. You can possess the entire file after paying to burn it."

Of course, this is all for the benefit of music fans, but as an incidental bonus, guess what? "Rhapsody is good for music companies, too, meaning that happy record execs are likely to make more songs available through the service," Grimes goes on.

"Because the songs are broken up and encrypted, they're very secure; the two pieces are useless by themselves. The larger pieces are merged into one huge cache so individual song data can't be identified.

"Finally, record companies, performers, and songwriters all get their pieces of the pie. Once a month, the record companies receive huge database files or XML feeds detailing every one of their tracks played or burned in the preceding month."

Hey! Great! I'll grab my credit card, rush over to the site and ...

... but wait a minute! When the record firms get all "huge database files or XML feeds detailing every one of their tracks played or burned," what details are in the 'detailing'?

And if "After the song plays, the 1 percent of the file is deleted," does the 1% automatically explode with no outside assistance?

Only The Shadow knows ....

And why would we be paying 10$ a month for a personal radio station? I could get that at launch.com, or better yet, get indie music for free!

or... I could use kazaa, and download what I want(quake with fear greedy bast(erds))

I mourn the death of AudioGalaxy. Rhapsody is a cruel mockery of AG's remaining shell.

The RIAA can lick my stripey butt.

Wow, all that hard drive space taken up by unusable junk? Sweet! I've been trying to find a way to fill up my drive without actually having anything of value on it. Note to riaa: I don't want to be on the net just to listen to my music! I guess they still don't get it. The boycott rolls on..gets easier everyday.

"Finally, record companies, performers, and songwriters all get their pieces of the pie.-

since when does the performers get a piece of the royalty?? Bet that doesn't happen. sounds like more ways to get into our computers to track us

"Finally, record companies, performers, and songwriters all get their pieces of the pie."
Im a songwriter and a performer, can I have some apple pie? Perhaps people dont relize why ARTISTS are boycotting the RIAA? Why so many dont sign evil contracts and are truly independant musicians? If Rhapsody has a way for the indies to get some pie then I might approve
boycott continues

The bigger they are, the harder they fall

Rapsody sucks. i tried it once. I don't like signing up and subscriptions. I want the mp3 that i paid for on my PC. no strings or bullshit. Just a little FYI, i recently bought Madonna's new album American Life and I ripped the tracks onto my pc and after a month or so the tracks would not play. I and read the CD and looked for anything about about secure cd or any of that shit. I was pissed. talk about deciet. Fucken bitch. I burned the CD. that's what made me boycott the RIAA.

I definately do not like this. Talk about a waste of money.

Dumb idea really, i'm not having 99% of a song taking up my hard drive space when i would have like a 1000 useless files on my drive.. 10 dollars a month for a radio station.. what a rip off really..

I like this as much as I like Disney's idea of the self-destructing DVD.

Sounds like a pain in the butt, and there are way to many things to screw up. And how much exactly do they want to allow me to burn? Whats to keep people from simply recording the sound.... They can go ahead and ecrypt the crap out of it, but if it's going to be played for me in any way and its going to reach my speakers why not just hook up another computer and record the audio.... Glad they are still working towards such viable solutions to their industry's troubles. I wonder when they will stop trying to fight 60 million people and give them what they want.

Sounds like a pain in the butt, and there are way to many things to screw up. And how much exactly do they want to allow me to burn? Whats to keep people from simply recording the sound.... They can go ahead and ecrypt the crap out of it, but if it's going to be played for me in any way and its going to reach my speakers why not just hook up another computer and record the audio.... Glad they are still working towards such viable solutions to their industry's troubles. I wonder when they will stop trying to fight 60 million people and give them what they want.

128k WMA.

So we'd be paying $10.00 a month for the recording companies to get free marketing info on what we like in music.

I THINK NOT!!

OMG im gonna Hurle