Yes, I intentionally made the title sounded like some sort of research/report from the likes of Gartner. Well, it was 5 years ago last time I wrote a related post. The buzzword "cloud" wasn't as big back then and the industry still refered to streaming services like Rhapsody and Napster as "subscription" Lots have changed though between these 5 years besides of the name. I'm still a user of such service (back to Rhapsody after Yahoo Music Unlimited was shutdown in 2008) but haven't paid much attention to the health of this business until today. I've found:
1) Rhapsody was spun off by Real Network (and partner MTV Network) as an independent company (Real still owns some stakes) in 2010
2) Rhapsody celebrated its 10th anniversary, reached one million subscribers and on track to become profitable last year according to this. The growth was credited to popularities of competitors like Spotify and support on portable devices like iOS and Android tablet/phones.
3) Among the providers I mentioned in my 2007 post, only 2 remained: Rhapsody bought Napster from BestBuy last year. MTV's Urge merged with Rhapsody in 2007. Microsoft's Zune Pass will become Xbox Music soon. And I already mentioned Yahoo shutdown its service in 2008.
Lots of techie disliked Real Network because of its practices (Real Player installations related) in the early dot-com days so I guess not longer associating with it is a good thing for Rhapsody to some potential customers. It seemed quite amazing to me that a business could survive for 10 years while struggling with profitability. It is also surprising that the appearance of a heavily hyped upstart like Spotify actually revitalize the whole sector ("grown the cake" if you will) and benefited "old timers" in the sector like Rhapsody. Hey, anything that's associated with "the cloud" is cool, especially after Apple created iCloud, isn't it? I guess it showed that Rhapsody was way ahead (9+ years) of its time. I certainly would not blame its lack of success on its technology. Not sure how many people knew and remembered the whole saga of Harmony DRM back in 2004 (BTW, finally a class action lawsuit was filed against Apple recently). Rhapsody created Harmony so that their tracks (purchased by user only, not the subscription ones) could play on iPod. Of course, Apple being Apple wouldn't allow this to happen and patched this "loophole" during the next release of firmware. At that point I thought Rhapsody could make a great move by releasing its own iPod firmware that works with both purchased and subscription tracks! (They don't even have to do it officially. Just leak it and claimed it's a hack by the user community!) Well, things come full circle when Apple finally approved Rhapsody's iOS app years later, which works for both types of tracks. IIn fact, the app was another boost to Rhapsody's growth. Looks like this industry is in good shape and we could all go back to enjoying great music.
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