Rhapsody Brings Online Music Discovery to a New Level

Previous: Searching for Music Online

On Rhapsody, you can search by artist, track, album title, or composer: type in search words, choose a search type from a pull-down menu. Results show albums, artists and track titles, with material available on-demand highlighted in blue. Click on any data, and the browser takes you to a either an artist summary page, or a specific album detail page, depending on context.

On an artist page, you will find a complete listing of the artist’s albums, a link to find “stations” on Rhapsody (continuous play-list programming in many genres) that play the artist, listings and links to similar artists, and links to relevant content around the Web. On an album page, you will find the cover art, and a complete track listing, with links to either “listen now” or “add” the individual tracks or the complete album to a personal play list maintained by the Rhapsody software.

While you are listening to music, either on-demand or via one of the pre-programmed channels, artist and album data loads into the browser so that you can dig further when the music catches your interest.

Rhapsody’s search and browse interface is elegant, logical and provides useful results quickly. It also integrates track data with additional background info and the music itself, in an intuitive way that takes the experience of searching for music online to a new level.

Next: A closer look at RealOne Music (MusicNet)

Also:

AudioWorld’s Full Review of Rhapsody (Feb.19 2002)

AudioWorld’s Full Review of RealOne Music (Feb.19 2002)

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