Oh wow.
Listen.com/Real released the new version of Real Rhapsody today, and boy is it awful...at least in comparison to the previous version, which will no longer work as I found out today. It kept saying there was an error connecting to the server, and real's rhapsody info. on their site is sparse and pointless, it didn't make it clear that a new version was available and this was the problem. I figured it out when I decided to uninstall and reinstall the software, and when it opened after installing, I nearly had a heart attack because the interface is now terribly screwed up and hard to navigate thru.
With the new version, instead of the music guide staying open on the right side and your personal library opening everything on the left hand side...it opens up your library on the right side, which means it won't show you the music guide itself (which shows a cd cover, ALL the tracks on the cd, other cd's from the artist to the left of center, and more.) The older view was better and easier to navigate...it was easier to find music from the same artist all in one handy area of the screen. Also, whenever you played a track before, you could hit a button that allowed you to see the album info. and all from real, but now you have to right click and click "view in music guide"- it was much quicker and easier the way it was.
The interface isn't as attractive now either. It's all blocky and it doesn't seem as sleek and new as the older version did. It feels like I'm using an older version and I need to update, but this is, in fact, the newest version of the software.
The service itself is great- over 1 million tracks online, streamed in CD quality audio, and the songs download to a cache of sorts so you can easily go thru any number of songs, switch back and forth and have the entire song all ready- which means, you can click any song and go to another you listened to earlier and not have to wait for it to redownload itself to the cache, which also means you can skip right to the middle or end of a song if you want with no waiting.
I have found nearly every artist I would want to listen to...a few have been missing from their catalog, but even not-so-famous bands you wouldn't expect to find are available.
The new version is nice in some regards. It has more info. on artists you might like if you like the one you have open at the current time. You can easily click the cd cover and go to the similar artists they list and listen to any of their music. Also, the radio (which I hardly use) mode shows you stations you might like based on what you recently listened to, which is nice, but like I said, I hardly ever use the radio function. I don't see the point other than to play the radio mode when you're busy doing something and don't want to keep changing tracks, tho you can make your own custom playlists and have it repeat them all if you wanted, which is what I would do.
Another downside to the software itself is the fact that (with the previous version at least), you can browse different genres, but it only will list 100 artists in the genre in a certain mode, and each mode is similar to the point where they overlap, which gets confusing. Plus, some of the CD's are clearly listed in the wrong genre...Star Wars soundtracks in the TV music genre?
I love the service, but I can't stand the new software overall. I want the version I was using just find this morning, with the easier navigation and layout. They need to readd the button beneath the cd cover at top for each artist that allows you to show the info. in 'music guide' view, and they need to make it all less blocky and more sleek like it was.
Better yet, they need to have an area that allows you to customize all of this- how windows open, where each piece of info opens and when it does so, what buttons are present, etc. They have the old software, so I assume they could easily integrate all this customization into it. It's not possible now tho, I checked.
In the end, of all the music services, this one seems to be the best. I've viewed screenshots of the others software, but haven't tried any of them...Rhapsody's catalog seems to be the biggest, with music from all of the 5 major labels...they seem to have an easier search process for finding a particular arist or related artists to discover new stuff, and the prices are the lowest from what I can tell. If you're going to pick a service and can't afford to test them all out, I'd recommend Rhapsody for the ease of use, the price, and the quality of the audio, size of the catalog, and the playlist/library setup which allows you to save all of your favorite artists, tracks, albums, etc.