Music Service Comparison: EMusic and Rhapsody

eMusic
Website: http://www.emusic.com
Price: $9.99 per month (eMusic Basic: 30 song downloads per month)
Features: editorial reviews, member reviews and song lists, community features
Introductory Offer: 14 day trial with 25 free song downloads
Sign-up requires credit card information

Rhapsody
Website: http://www.myrhapsody.com
Price: $14.99 per month (Rhapsody To Go: access to over a million songs, pre-programmed and favorite artist-based Internet radio stations, 10% discount off music store downloads, unlimited transfers of songs to a mobile device)
Features: commercial-free radio stations, editorial reviews, customized radio station, celebrity and editor playlists
Introductory Offer: 14 day free trial
Sign-up requires credit card information

Review

I recently tried both of these services to see how they worked. Each one offers a free trial. You must remember to cancel membership if you do not want to start paying the monthly fee. Each one requires you to give credit card information when you register. eMusic basic is $9.99 for 30 downloads per month ($.33 per download). They offer a more expensive plan with more downloads. The Rhapsody To Go plan is $14.99 per month and allows unlimited access to listen to their song library, commercial free Internet radio programming, and unlimited transfers of songs to a mobile device. This is their premium plan. Rhapsody also offers less expensive, more limited plans.

Being inexperienced with electronic music, I wanted something easy to use and flexible. I also wanted to be able to burn songs that I downloaded to a CD for backup storage. What I found is that eMusic and Rhapsody are quite different services with their own advantages and disadvantages.

eMusic is a service for downloading songs to your computer and then you can listen, store and burn the files as you wish. It allows you to listen to 30 second samples before you download. If you download the eMusic download manager, you can download a whole album with a single click. Otherwise, you can download individual tracks one at a time without downloading any software. Because all the songs are mp3 format, you can use the widest variety of software or devices to play the files. The sound quality varies, although I was satisfied with all that I downloaded. A few tracks I have to turn the volume setting up a bit. I did see reviews from members on a few albums that the quality of some recordings was poor.

eMusic offers a limited selection of albums and individual tracks for free. I got 2 hours of gorgeous classical music from the BIS 35th Anniversary celebration sampler. Another especially good find was "Lull" by Andrew Bird from "Daytrotter Sessions, Vol. 2". All from the free downloads section, so they did not count towards the 25 song trial offer.

eMusic proudly champions independent music. Their music collection is large (over 2.8 million songs) and covers all major genres. It does not include many well known artists. eMusic offers individual track downloads in the universal mp3 format at a good value to make the music most accessible and flexible. The major labels will not contract with them because they want to make more money. Several artists on my list, like Regina Spektor and Kristin Chenoweth, were not on eMusic.

A unique aspect of eMusic is the community. Members can set up profiles. According to your download history, you can see "neighbors" who have similar taste and other artists that they have downloaded. You can message other members and add people as friends. You can create lists of songs and view lists other members have made. When you are looking at a page for an albums or track, you get reviews from editors and members.

Rhapsody is primarily a streaming service for their library of over 1,000,000 songs as well as pre-programmed and favorite artist-based Internet radio stations. You get your own station customized to your personal music taste as you set up genres and rate songs, artists and albums. You can also download songs, but you have to purchase them ($.89) in order to burn them to a CD. The sound quality of Rhapsody is clear as a bell. They have plenty of major top-40 content. I downloaded the songs I couldn't find on eMusic from Rhapsody. Even of relatively obscure things like Broadway cast recordings, Rhapsody had albums and artists I could not find on eMusic. I got "The Book Report" from the show "You're a Good Man Charlie Brown".

Rhapsody requires you to download their music player to access all their content and play the songs. To centralize all your music, you can import from your hard drive or CD's to your Rhapsody player's library. You can also import from iTunes. It takes just a click add songs you are streaming on Rhapsody to your library so you can listen to them again. Your Rhapsody library is stored online, so unless you take an extra step to download the song to your computer, you cannot play it without being signed-in to the service. When you download a song, it is in their exclusive format. A new feature is that you can buy mp3 downloads. Most of the mp3 content for sale is whole albums, usually $8.99. There are some single tracks available for various prices, from $.89 to $3.45.

eMusic and Rhapsody allow you to redownload tracks that get corrupted or erased. They have good search functions for finding music and offer suggestions of similar artist or albums. Both have editorial reviews and "What's New" features to introduce hot music and artists just off the presses. I found them simple to use, although Rhapsody was not as intuitive and took more time to get used to. I didn't use customer service at either site, so I can't speak to how helpful they are.

Summary

eMusic
mp3 format
No content from major top-40 labels or artists, but variety of genres included
Allows redownload of tracks that get corrupted or erased
Sound quality: good/average (varies by track)
Short samples available before download

Rhapsody
Must play songs on their software
Content from most major artists and variety of genres
Allows redownload of tracks that get corrupted or erased
Sound quality: excellent
Play whole songs before download

Both services are good but meet different needs. If you want popular artists and unlimited, commercial-free listening, go with Rhapsody. If you want to download mp3 files at a good value, like indie music, and appreciate the community aspect, eMusic is for you.