Kent

I've been using Rhapsody for a few months a absolutely love it. Much of the music I like isn't in any of the music stores (MSN, iTunes, etc), so I was pleased as punch to get results on nearly every search I did in Rhapsody. Up to three computers can be "authorized", and most songs can be downloaded as DRMed WMAs. This gives me access to nearly 1.2m songs for just over eight bucks a month on my work, home and media center computers.

Typical usage for me:
- Listen to one of the many, many "radio stations".
- Hear a song I like. (This is surprising because they actually play good music in the genres I listen to, unlike most of the competition.)
- Click the album link and listen to listen to the whole thing.

I haven't used any of the others, but only because this does exactly what I want and does it well. No need to shop around.

As for devices, I'm not sure. Haven't tried it. I assume that the WMA DRM and Media Connect (or whatever) magic should make it work.

I started with Rhapsody over a year ago. Two years ago, maybe? In any case, Rhapsody was the best for listening at the computer for a long time. When Napster came around with its support for Janus (the subscription part of PlaysForSure) I bought it. But, not having a device at the time, the at-computer experience was poor compared to Rhapsody.

But my wife wanted a replacement portable player and we got her a Creative Zen Micro. The Napster-to-go service did work, mostly, but it was frustrating because it would often hang her machine or drop downloads or just be slow.

When Yahoo! Music Unlimited came out, we jumped on that and have been very happy: it's reliable, it works with the PlaysForSure subscription service, and has a good streaming experience for playing from a broadband-connected computer (that's my main way of using it).

The song selection doesn't seem much different between Yahoo! and Napster, although I think that Rhapsody probably does a bit better than both of those. But I'm not sure how its subscription service works for portable devices. It isn't WMA-based: Rhapsody is based on Real Media's platform.

One other word of advice: I don't think any of these services are available in Canada. It's definitely something you should look into before you sign up.

I haven't comparison shopped, but subscribed to MusicMatch OnDemand last September. I'd give it about a B. I love access to a huge library of music, cuing up eclectic mixes, but I suppose that all the services provide the same general kid-in-a-candy-shop experience.

I'm fairly used to being disappointed when searching for not-really-very-obscure bands: the Pogues, Mission of Burma. MusicMatch doesn't even have all of the tracks on the new Beck CD "Guero."

FYI: Rhapsody does in fact allow most songs to be downloaded as protected WMA files.

You can make MP3 tracks from all of these services without hassling with DRM by using a cool program called Replay Music.

Replay Music records songs at the highest quality, makes individual tracks, and tags the MP3 files with the artist, album, song title and genre info.

It works with all the above mentioned services. Highly recommended.

http://www.replay-music.com