Whenever I am at the torch I always listen to my iPod (remember when we called them ‘walkmans’?) But now that I am torching upwards of 10-15 hours a week, or more, I am quickly growing tired of listening to my same playlist over and over.

Recently I found out my local library offers audiobook downloads for free, I just needed to get a compatible player. So I purchased a cheap, little portable device called a Sansa mp3 player. It clips onto your shirt, just like my iPod shuffle, but can play all my mp3’s as well as the audiobooks.

When I looked through the inserts that came with my new Sansa player, I noticed an advertisement for Rhapsody.com. It offered a free 30 day trial so I signed up to try it.

Much to my surprise this service was a lot more than just another iTunes! You pay a monthly subscription fee and download as much music as you want as often as you want. You can either just rent the music, or choose to pay for the songs if you want to keep them forever (.99 cents each). I get sick of music so quickly, I can’t see myself buying music too much anymore.

However, if you still like buying music, not only is Rhapsody less expensive per song than iTunes, BUT as a subscriber you can listen to the entire length of every song before purchasing it. I know I’ve bought a lot of ‘duds’ because the 30 second clip sounded great, but the rest of the song…not so much!

Because I’m just renting the music I know I will change out songs often and will be able to listen to so much more music than I would if I had to purchase each individual song (especially with iTunes raising the prices of most their songs to $1.29 each!) I wouldn’t ordinarily let myself buy as much music as I would really like to listen to just to keep my playlist ‘fresh’.

Rhapsody charges $12.99 a month for downloading the rented music on up to 3 computers. If you want the ability to also download the music to a portable device, it’s an extra $2 a month.

I guess if I ever got to the point where I didn’t want to buy as much music to justify spending the $14.99 a month then it wouldn’t be worth it. But because I’m listening to my iPod for up to 20 hours a week, this type of service is great for me!

Oh! Rhapsody also has a feature where you can upload their preselected music ‘channels’ (grouped by genre, artist or your own custom choices) to your compatible portable device, and everytime you connect to their website this playlist of music refreshes with new content. How awesome is that?!

Between using Rhapsody and the free audiobooks from my library, I’ll never get bored listening to the same songs over and over again while torching – woo hoo!

CC