iPhone App is Not Rhapsody’s Panacea
By Ed Oswald | Thursday, October 29, 2009 at 11:15 pm
If you measure Rhaspody for iPhone’s success by the downloads it has accumulated — over a half million — it would be a hit. But looking at Real’s quarterly results, which reported subscriber numbers for the service, a different story is told. Rhapsody is still steadily losing subscribers, definitely not good news for the company.
Around 700,000 or so are paying accounts, down from about 750,000 in the previous quarter, and 800,000 the quarter before that. Obviously, from the steady decline, Rhapsody for iPhone has had little effect if any on Real’s bottom line.
In fact, in the results conference call, CEO Rob Glaser admitted that it was not seeing “a significant number” of new signups as a result of its iPhone venture.
The results show that a large majority of those who downloaded the application (myself included) did so just to check it out, obviously with no intention to sign up. What does this mean overall for Rhapsody? Hard to tell exactly, but I’d venture to guess consumers are finding other means to get their music fix, whether it be legal or illegal.
Let’s not call it an abject failure just yet and give Real the benefit of the doubt and another quarter. Either way, these early results are not promising.
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October 30th, 2009 at 3:47 am
The app and service are great, but the pricing is 2002. Premium Pandora and Slacker accounts are only a few bucks a month, as is the Rhapsody-similar Napster.
October 30th, 2009 at 12:18 pm
Rhapsody 1.0 for iPhone is horrible. They need to be able to store downloads locally for those with a Rhapsody to Go account and then things will pick up. I use it at home with a Sonos system and it’s amazing.
October 30th, 2009 at 1:14 pm
It is better than I expected, but it needs a lot of work. The streaming is pretty hit and miss, despite having full bars and 3G. The program freezes occasionally too, or plays a song but displays the info for another. And the price point is not in-line with it’s competition, so a lot of people don’t see the value. I love it, but I also was a fan of rhapsody before the iphone app, so I am willing to live with the hiccups and hope 2.0 solves a lot of the bugginess. I wish it would add the ability to search playlists as well.
November 1st, 2009 at 11:57 pm
I have the Rhapsody Unlimited so you could imagine my surprise when I found out this account was decidedly “limited” when it came to Rhapsody on the iPhone. Oh, that requires, “To-Go”. You’d think for $100+ a year “Unlimited” would be just that…. Ugh! It’s great on my Sonos, but I never even bothered to enable the test on the iPhone.
November 5th, 2009 at 11:10 am
The Rhapsody app for the iPhone is HORRIBLE. They suckered me in with it. I’ve been using Rhapsody for about a month and I love it at home. But the app is the worst app I’ve ever used. Constantly crashing! They’ve promised an update but it’s taking forever!!! They should refund me the To-Go charges until they get the app fixed.
January 8th, 2010 at 9:21 am
It is better than I thought, but it still needs improvement. The streaming is kind of slow. The application freezes from time to time. And the most ridiculous thing is that it displays the info for another song from time to time. Peter the portable gps systems and gps accessories specialist.