Rhapsody Music Player

Radical New Social Music Service Gives the Listener Complete Control

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) June 22, 2011

Radical.FM, Inc. ( www.radical.fm ) announced today the invitation-only private beta launch of Radical.FM, it's new, personal internet radio service. Building and expanding on experience gained from Tomsradio.com, an early 21st century Swedish/American pioneer of internet radio, Radical combines user tailored music radio stations (like Pandora™ and Slacker™) with on-demand playlist functionality (like Rhapsody™ and Spotify™), and adds social networking and personal broadcasting capabilities. For the first time all of these functions will be available in one integrated service. Radical.FM will initially offer free personal radio services, with full Play-On-Demand functionality for a paid Premium subscription tier available at a later date. In addition, the patent pending LiveShare™ feature permits personal music streams to be shared in real-time and DeeJay™ allows a user to speak to all who are listening to their LiveShare stream. Bona fide music and technology journalists & bloggers as well as music industry professionals who have not yet received Radical's private beta invitations, should contact 'Maria(at)radical.fm'. A public beta launch for the United States will follow soon, with international expansion planned for later this year. For the public beta sign up, go to Radical.FM .

In addition, Radical Indie™, a similar service for independent artists (not signed to the Big Four), is expected to launch later this year.

Radical harnesses the Cloud to make all the world's licensed music available to anyone, anywhere. Its new Player improves on personalized radio stations like Pandora, adds on-demand playlists like Rhapsody and Spotify, incorporates advanced social media functionality, and offers personal broadcasting abilities to usurp terrestrial radio on its own terms. Radical's Player is currently web browser based only, development for mobile devices is underway.

"Before Radical.FM, personalized radio lacked the flexibility to adapt to a user's changing moods," said Radical Founder and CEO, Thomas McAlevey. "I've enjoyed services like Pandora, but it takes time to get a station just right. And when I do, I don't want to meddle with it just because I'm having a party. Using our unique Player anyone can create an ideal music mix, and then change its direction as quickly as their mood moves them too, without ever hearing an unwanted song.

MOG v. Napster v. Rdio v. Rhapsody « Auxiliary Memory

Owning music is so 20th century.

Subscription music is renting music by the month.  If you are a casual music listener subscription music isn’t for you.  If you are addicted to music, subscription music lets you listen to most of the new albums that come out each week for a very low monthly fee.  Every music friend that I’ve talked into subscribing to music has said, “This is fantastic, I wished I had discovered it sooner.”  Most music fans don’t like the concept of renting music – but that’s how they feel before they try it.  After they subscribe they worry that concept will fail and heaven forbid, they have to go back to the old way of buying music.

Imagine being given a whole music store for your birthday, and not some dinky music section like you see in Target, but a music store as big as a Macy’s, with hundreds of thousands of albums.  What songs do you play first?  That’s what it’s like to subscribe to a music streaming service.  You’ve got millions of songs, so how to you live with so many?  First, you have to pick which subscription music company you want to join.

Picking a Service

There’s at least six subscription music services now in the U.S., with more on the way.  I’ve picked four to review.  I’ve been a subscriber to Rhapsody for years, but I’ve joined MOG, Napster and Rdio to make comparisons for this review, and to consider which service I want to go with in the future.  All these services offer free trials, but the subscription rates are so cheap it doesn’t hurt to try them out for a month or two.

Check out their web pages and look at these intro videos.

Price

Here’s the thing, if you’re a music lover you’ll want to share music with your friends, and you will more than likely want to subscribe to the same subscription music service as your buds because of the social functions.  So the very first feature to consider is price – can everyone afford it.

There are two modes of listening, either at the computer, or on a mobile device.  Bizarrely, these companies charge more if you listen on a carry around device with a tinny sound rather than a big computer you can connect to stereo speakers and blast away your songs in all their sonic glory.

Most people will want the iPhone/Android option, but if you’re poor or cheap, try the computer only option to just test the waters.  And don’t think you have to listen at your computer.  You can run a wire from your laptop to your stereo system, or you can get a digital media server that bypasses the computer and acts like another component in your stereo cabinet.

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