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February 27, 2006

Why Oh Why Can't The iPod Alternatives Get Their Acts Together?

I love iPods. I've had three of them, and each has served me well. KT just got the Nano, which is gorgeous. And I'm sure I'll eventually break down and get a video iPod. But when my last iPod disappeared last November, I decided to take a flyer on something different: the Creative Zen Micro. The big selling point for me was the new Rhapsody To Go service.

I've been a subscriber to the basic Rhapsody service for years. It's amazing - just about every album you could want (with a few exceptions, like the Beatles and obscure indies), all streaming to your PC for one monthly fee. I've discovered so much great music I never would have found otherwise. It's a whole different way of thinking about music - as a utility, rather than a commodity. (I take this up further in the chapter on digital music in my book.)

The idea behind Rhapsody To Go is to extend the utility model into the domain of the iPod, allowing you to fill up a portable player with all the music you want for $15 a month. What's supposed to make it work is the Windows "Plays for Sure" digital rights management system, which makes sure you can only access the music on your player if your subscription's up to date.

Fair enough. Except Plays for Sure is rarely a sure thing. Sometimes, Rhapsody will claim it can't transfer a track to my player because there's no space left, even when there's plenty of space. Other times, it'll insist the music's already on the player, when it isn't. And every month, when the subscription turns over, it doesn't politely remind you to plug your player back in to prove that you've paid up - it just locks up without warning and refuses to play any tracks. Very annoying if you're away from your computer, as you're likely to be when you're using a portable player. Scans of the support bulletin boards confirm that I'm hardly the only one with these problems. And the lack of official responses to any of the plaintive posts for help confirm that Real Networks, which bought Rhapsody a couple of years ago, is blowing off its frustrated customers, either through arrogance or ignorance.

I was still so enthralled by the whole portable-subscription concept that I bought another player, the Rio Carbon. Brought it home only to discover that the reason for the deep discount was that Rio had just gone under. Unsurprisingly, it didn't mesh with Rhapsody any better than the Zen did.

I tried Napster, which is now a legit music service offering its own To Go system. Neither Zen nor Carbon could make it happy.

With so many vendors failing so completely, the fault must lie with crappy underlying code, courtesy of Microsoft. What a shock.

Actually, I'm sure the problem isn't just Microsoft, but also the record companies that demanded DRM that they thought would be airtight enough to withstand decryption. As a result, the whole system is so clunky that it takes the Zen fifteen seconds just to boot up, and another ten seconds to start playing a new playlist. That's if it works at all, of course. And the DRM can still be easily evaded by anybody who uses Replay Music, a program that can turn any audio you play on your PC into an MP3.

Apple products may be overpriced and overhyped, but they're elegant, they're easy to use, and they work. That iPod that disappeared last November turned up last week - a saint of a GSU student found it and returned it. I'm packing up the Carbon and the Zen and reinstalling iTunes. I'll still use Rhapsody on my PC - and at least now I can use it on my Mac, too, thanks to a new cross-platform web-based version. (It's buggy, but at least it admits it's still a beta.) But for now, it's back to pay-as-you-go listening again.

Actually, I just read that Amazon's coming out with its own portable subscription service this summer. I'll try not to get my hopes up too high . . .

Posted by tedf at February 27, 2006 11:56 PM

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