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- 4,500,000+ Song Library -  Listen
to Unlimited Music- 100% Legal - Import from iTunes - Burn CDs & Transfer to MP3 Players - Includes Free Music Downloads - Listen from Any Computer (home, work, school) - 14 Day Free Trial - Cnet's "Editor's Choice" Award - "Rhapsody, not iTunes, in my opinion, is the future of music." - Fortune Magazine |
Instant Artist Search
See what artists Rhapsody has available. Plus checkout artist bios & latest albums all from this page!
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Getting Started
Date Updated: 12/07/07
Software Version: Rhapsody 4.0 (build 2.359)
About Rhapsody & Getting Started
Real has been making some great strides in their multimedia-ware lately, as the
newest Real Player is one of the most functional pieces of software available
online. One of the functions that the Real Player has is a gateway portal that
links you to their amazing Rhapsody music service. But if you'd prefer to simply
use Rhapsody on its own, you are more than welcome to download the stand-alone
software, install it, and begin your playlist building journey, using the
cleanest audio files available.
Setting Up
Alright, so with the installation complete, let's launch Rhapsody. Either allow
the program to launch on its own after the installation (if you opted to), or
open it yourself by going to its installed location. No the program fires up,
and first you'll have to select the type of audio files you'd like for Rhapsody
to associate with. You can always come back to this feature (I will explain in
detail below), so for now uncheck all of them and we will come back to this.
Following that, Rhapsody will give you a few options to choose from; you can
import your entire library into the program now by hitting 'Search for Music
Files', or do that later and begin searching Rhapsody.
Searching
Let's not delay the fun and search Rhapsody first. What you should know is that
as I'm guiding you through this, I'm also guiding myself. Admittedly, Rhapsody
is the first time I've ever used a subscription-based music service, and I have
to say how impressed I am with its functionality. Searching couldn't be easier.
You simply enter what you want into the search field at the top of the program,
and select if it’s an artist name, song/track name, album name, composer, or
keyword. So if you'd like to listen to Kany West, search him as an artist and
you'll get your results. You can either listen to his top tracks or click on
which album you'd like to listen to from the left. To demonstrate the
flexibility of Rhapsody's wide array, I also searched for a very popular Turkish
artist, Serdar Ortac. Rhapsody instantly returned the results for me, and as the
service grows, there will be even more of his work to choose from very shortly.
Playing & Adding Music
You can play the entire selected album by pressing the large Play button, or add
the songs to your library by pressing the large Plus button. If, instead, you'd
like to add song-by-song, just choose which songs you want individually by
pressing their respective Play or Plus buttons. Furthermore, if you'd like to
keep the songs, transfer them onto a portable MP3 player, or burn them to a
mix-CD, you can buy each individual song for .89-cents, or the entire album for
$8.99 - and that's actually cheaper than what the other services cost.
Additionally, if you have a Rhapsody compatible MP3 player, you can sign up for
Rhapsody To Go and transfer an unlimited amount of music onto your portable
device. Rhapsody To Go is compatible with a large amount of devices, with the
exclusion of the iPod. Visit the Rhapsody To Go website so see which MP3 players
are compatible.
Music Guide
So now that we've got the music searching and buying down, let's move on to the
music guide. If you don't know what to search for, simply hit the "Music Guide"
tab at the top of the page and you'll be taken to a screen similar to that
picture below. The layout here is pretty simple: the main splash will display a
highlighted artist, to the right side are three top-10 charts broken down by
artist, album, and track listing. The charts will be a great way to assemble a
quick mix of music for those who are frequent radio listeners.
If you'd like to do some exploring, look to your left and you'll find music selections broken down by genres, as well as New Releases, Staff Picks, and Exclusives. The Just Added option is different than new releases, as the section covers material that Rhapsody has secured to share and sell, and not new album/music releases. So keep checking the Just Added section to see if your favorite bands have finally landed on Rhapsody.
Playlists
Okay, so
hopefully, by now you've assembled a music playlist in the player to the left.
If not...well, get to it! To save your mix and turn it into a playlist, click
the Save button near the left-bottom of the screen, just below the player, title
it and hit "Ok". Now when you switch to the Playlists tab (located above the
tracklisting), you'll see your recently made Playlist listed as a selection.
Click on it, and you'll see all of its songs are now displayed, allowing you to
listen to them anytime you wish. If you wish to create a new blank playlist, go
to File and select "New Playlist", from the top of the screen.
