Rhapsody’s iPhone app has been updated to more closely resemble their original mobile service by enabling offline listening. Music caching, originally alluded to in October, is limited to only playlists at the moment. While the service won’t truly be feature complete until album downloads are made available and Apple provides that multitasking this summer, at a lowered $10/mo, Rhapsody is quite compelling to iPhone owners these days. Especially those who own additional Rhapsody devices, like Sonos or TiVo. However, I’m lazy easy. And mostly content with the pre-programmed “stations” as found on Slacker ($4/mo). But where the heck is their offline iPhone caching?
YEAH!!! This looks fantastic. Unfortunately it doesn’t show up as an automatic update to my V1.0 Rhapsody player on the iPhone.
Rhapsody’s real weakness is the programming of their “Channels”, however the ability to play the exact song you want to hear at any time far outweighs this. I typically will find new music by looking at Entertainment Weekly’s music section and a couple of online music sources, then playing the songs in Rhapsody. If it were up to the Pandoras and Slackers of the world there are tons of great songs we’d never hear.
And some said Apple would never allow for this feature….