Rhapsody Web Services

Simple.js: A Javascript Interface for Playing Music

I'm happy to share with you a new API for playing music on your site.  We call it simple.js, because that's where you find it:  http://www.rhapsody.com/simple.js.  This API lets your web pages trigger music playback without requiring your visitors to leave your site.  In places where you can include javascript, simple.js will start a track or album playing in the web popup player window without navigating off your page.  Much like a RhapLink, it will re-use an existing web popup player window if it's already open, or open a new one if needed.  Plugin detection/install and login are all handled for you.  As the name implies, a goal of simple.js is to be as simple to use as possible.  Consider this example:

<script src="http://www.rhapsody.com/simple.js" />
<a href="javascript:RhapsodyPlayer.playTrack(2899985);"> Listen to Cake's "Stickshifts and Safetybelts" on Rhapsody.com</a>

Which renders as:

    Listen to Cake's "Stickshifts and Safetybelts" on Rhapsody.com

Pretty straightforward, eh?  The only tricky part is finding the RCID value of the track, in this case 2899985.  We've been working hard to remove obscure database IDs from the site, and they're almost completely gone fom the URLs.  But you can find them in the RSS feeds.  In this case, open http://feeds.rhapsody.com/cake/fashionnugget/tracks.rss and look at the <guid> field -- that's the RCID value you need to pass to simple.js.  We've got some other ways to find RCIDs in the works that you'll hear about soon.

As always, feedback on the API is most welcome.

-Leo Parker Dirac

New RhapLink and codes tool

We've got a new tool for generating RhapLinks.  It also generates HTML codes for inserting into web pages, blog templates or social networking profile pages.  It's not launched yet, but we'd love to get your feedback anyway.  Check it  out at http://www.rhapsody.com/rhaplinkTool  and let us know what you think.

-LPD

Bring on the RSS feeds!

Want to keep track of who are the top artists in Rhapsody?  Subscribe to the Top Artists RSS feed: http://feeds.rhapsody.com/artist-chart.rss.  We've also got feeds for the Top Albums or Top Tracks.

Want to know about all the new music that's being added to Rhapsody?  Subscribe to the Just Added RSS feed: http://feeds.rhapsody.com/just-added.rss.  Or maybe you just want to know about new Trip Hop albums.  We've got a feed for that too: http://feeds.rhapsody.com/electronicadance/downtempo/triphop/just-added.rss.  We've also got feeds for Staff Jazz Picks or Most Popular Electropop Tracks or Top Hip Hop Artists.

Speaking of Hip Hop, want to know whenever Eminem releases a new album?  Subscribe to the Eminem Discography RSS feed: http://feeds.rhapsody.com/eminem/discography.rss and we'll update it as soon as a new album comes out.  Or want to be notified whenever a new track shows up in Pink Floyd's The Wall?  Subscribe to the track feed:  http://feeds.rhapsody.com/pinkfloyd/thewall/tracks.rss and you'll be the first to know about that hot new bonus track!

Okay, that last one is a bit far-fetched, but hey, it just might happen.  Even if the feed never changes, I know some of you will still find it useful.  Since all the items point to RhapLinks, you can start music playing by opening any of the items in your feed reader.  Then your feed reader (or My Yahoo page, or personalized Google/Live homepage) becomes a quick way to access your favorite music.  Throw in a few of your friends' Listening History Feeds, a staff picks feed, and some new releases feeds and you've built a collaborative music discovery space.

So now you're probably wondering how I found all these feeds.  (Or rather, how I would have found them if I didn't sit down the hall from the folks who wrote them.)  After all, there aren't any orange [XML] buttons on the site.  Sure, if you look at the URLs they're pretty easy to construct.  But if you want a complete list, add /rss.html onto most any URL on the site and you'll see a list of feeds that are relevant to that page.  For example:

• General feeds: http://www.rhapsody.com/rss.html
• Genre-related feeds: http://www.rhapsody.com/alternativepunk/electropop/rss.html
• Artist-related feeds: http://www.rhapsody.com/eminem/rss.html
• Album-related feeds: http://www.rhapsody.com/pinkfloyd/thewall/rss.html

Stay tuned.  Orange [XML] buttons are coming soon...

-Leo Parker Dirac

New Friendly URLs for Albums

We started with friendly URLs for artists like http://www.rhapsody.com/theymightbegiants, and you asked us to do albums too.  We heard you, and now it's ready.  All the URLs on Rhapsody.com that point to albums now take the form rhapsody.com/(artist-name)/(album-name).  Except for things like compilations and soundtracks where there is no primary artist, but we do our best in those cases.

These URLs also work for RhapLinks.  So if you want to hear a particular album, just go to any browser and type http://play.rhapsody.com/(artist-name)/(album-name), i.e. http://play.rhapsody.com/underworld/beaucoupfish and the album will just start playing.  Or IM the link to your friends so they can listen too.  These URLs make it super easy to share music with your friends, and now with anonymous login, it's even easier for them to listen to it.

Look around the site -- all the URLs have changed.  The urls in the Rhapsody Listening History Feeds have been updated with the new format too -- look at the links in my history on the left.  If you have links on your site to the old /album?albumId=123456789 format, don't worry.  We'll redirect you to the new URL.  We see URLs as an API and are committed to maintaining backwards compatibility.

-Leo Parker Dirac

Login simplified: Free Music without Registration

We just made it easier to listen to free music on Rhapsody.com.  Now anybody can listen to Rhapsody music without having to create an account.  We've also changed how login credentials are cached so those of us with accounts will find ourselves having to log in far less often.  But the important change is that new users don't have to create an account to be able to hear free music.  Consider this example:

Say you listen to an album you love and haven't thought of for a while, and want to share it with your friends.  So you send your friends a RhapLink like http://play.rhapsody.com/soulcoughing/rubyvroom or maybe you post it to your blog.  Later one of your friends clicks the link and sees the Rhapsody album page and the player window pops up.  If your friend has previously signed in to Rhapsody.com, their credentials will be cached and the album will just start playing.  If they're new to Rhapsody, we'll automatically create an anonymous Rhapsody 25 account for them in the background.  This account gives them access to 25 free songs each month, which is plenty to hear this album.  If the Rhapsody Player Engine is already installed (say because they got it with the Real Player) then the music will just start playing with almost no further interaction.  If they don't have the plugin, they'll need to install it, but since it's less than a meg, that's not a big deal.  There are those pesky pop-up blockers that most browsers have these days, but we know how to get around them.

So next time you want to share some music with your friends you have several choices.  You can deal with the hassle of ripping/stealing and e-mailing/uploading big mp3 files.  Or you can send them links to any of a number of websites that have 30-second samples.  Or you can just type the name of the artist and album into a RhapLink URL and invite them to enjoy full-length high-quality legally-licensed free streaming music through Rhapsody.  I know what I think seems easiest.

Enjoy the new features!

-Leo Parker Dirac

TechCrunch calls Rhapsody "the best service available"

TechCrunch just finished a round-up of music subscription services.  They compared Rhapsody against AOL, Napster, Virgin Digital and Yahoo and concluded "Rhapsody has the slickest software and the most intuitive user interface".  Thanks for the props!  We agree!

The article did seem to miss a few points about Rhapsody.com though.  It notes that we offer service on Macs, but doesn't mention that Rhapsody.com also supports Linux systems.  Also, the feature summary table says that Rhapsody is client-based as opposed to web-based.  Even though you do have to download a plugin to listen to music, we consider Rhapsody.com a web-based experience complimenting the client-based Rhapsody jukebox experience.  Sure the web site doesn't have all the features of the client (at least not yet), but we're getting better all the time!

-Leo Parker Dirac

Rhapsody Listening History feeds update

Great news!  We're ready to tell everybody how to access their Rhapsody Listening History feeds.  Unfortunately, those of you who have already been using these feeds I mentioned recently might have noticed error messages today.  Sorry for not warning you about this.  We're getting close to launching them publicly, and decided to add some privacy features before we do.  Rhapsody Listening History Feeds are all set to "Private" by default which means that other people can't see your feed until you set them to "Public."  But since they aren't completely switched on yet, there's no link to the page to enable them.

To make your Rhapsody Listening History feeds public, go to http://www.rhapsody.com/myrhapsody/rss.html and follow the link labelled "click here to make it public."  For everybody else who hasn't tried sharing their listening history feeds yet, that page gives you the URLs to the RSS feeds and some background on how to use them.  Here's mine -- enjoy!

-Leo Parker Dirac