Rhapsody Web Services

Lucas Gonze Comments on MusicMobs + Rhapsody

As part of MusicMob's Rhapsody integration, the company made available a resolver, which converts open standard playlist files called XSPFs so the songs can be played back in Rhapsody.  This is very exciting as it allows for an excellent bridge between silent playlists of data and Rhapsody playback.  See Toby Padilla's blog entry on the subject for more background.

Lucas Gonze, Webjay creator and XSPF chieftain, penned a nice explanation of MusicMob's integration.  Lucas writes:

An important part of the XSPF design is the idea that a playlist entry is not so much an exact locator for a song as it is a collection of metadata that a kind of software called a content resolver can use to locate an instance of the song.  For example, you might have a track listing containing nothing but a song title, and the resolver would look up that song title in the MP3s on your hard drive to see if you had it available....

Musicmobs long ago shipped software that allowed you to do this relative to the iTunes store; what they have done here is allow you to use Rhapsody's catalog.

MusicMobs' work is an excellent example of creating a consumer-focused product, but also having an eye on making an impact in the echosystem.  Users of competing services such as Last.fm, which enable sharing playback preferences and playlists, will now be able to use MusicMobs to not only share the data of the songs, but the actual songs--played in full length and full quality with Rhapsody.  It's an example of how developing in an open manner on open standards will strengthen your business, not diminish your differentiation.  The availability of this tool will no doubt serve MusicMobs well in marketing to the technoaudiophiles who may not have been aware of their service. 

--Dave Hanley

MusicMobs Launches with Rhapsody Playback

The playlist sharing community MusicMobs just launched their site with Rhapsody playback of all their playlists.  There are thousands of playlists that you can peruse and play.  The site matches that playlist with Rhapsody via the Data.xml API and plays back all available songs in the Rhapsody Web Player.  Toby had this to say about Rhapsody:

"Lately we’ve been pretty excited about Rhapsody. We’ve always wanted to provide a way to open playlists into a music subscription service but until now, no APIs were mature enough. The new Rhapsody Web Services API offered a great way to link into their service and play the majority of the songs in any playlist on the web." (MusicMobs Blog)

To play songs, simply pick a play list, then find the play button with the Rhapsody logo.

That's where the magic really happens. 

At that point a new browser window will open and an a little animation with entertain you while MusicMobs matches the songs in the play list with the Rhapsody Content IDs.  The application first looks to see what matches are available in its data cache, then it starts hitting Data.xml, the Rhapsody REST API, to fill in the gaps  (Example Data.xml: Album, Artist).  The application seems to match about half of the songs right now, but that will surely improve over time.

    
Once the songs are matched, playback starts in the same window.

I know MusicMobs has even more plans for Rhapsody integration in his site, so we'll watch for that.  In the meantime, enjoy this great site and find some new music.

--Dave Hanley

 

Contest Winners Announced

We are proud to announce the two winners in the first round of the Rhapsody Web Services Contest. We thank all of you who entered the contest and look forward to seeing how your sites and applications continue to grow and change. Both winners will receive a SanDisk Sansa e260 mp3 player with a six-month Rhapsody subscription. 

Without further adieu, here are the winners:

Ron Gatewood submitted an Internet Explorer plugin that links text on any web page to Rhapsody.com. Simply highlight any artist or album text on any webpage, right-click and select ‘Search Rhapsody.com’ from the context-menu. The application uses the Rhapsody Search API to find the right match and takes the user to the appropriate page. We’ve been playing around with this and found it a great way to quickly get from a blog posting or album review to playing the content. The more you use it the more useful it seems to be. Congrats Ron.

Brian Greenbaum showed us his Pitchforkmedia+Rhapsody Mashup, which matches the excellent reviews on Pitchfork with Rhapsody Playback and Discovery. You can hear content from the latest reviews, or go back and peruse over 2,000 past reviews. Brian's site scrubs Pitchfork for new reviews, uses Data.xml to determine if the album and artist are available in Rhapsody, then posts the artist, album, and play links on his site. This is a great way to discover new music. Congrats Brian.

A number of you have shown me your works in progress, and there are some truly great web services integrations and mashups going on. So look for more prize announcements next month. Congratulations to these two winners. Enjoy your swag.

--The Rhapsody Web Services Team

The importance of being open

I'm struck this morning by the simultaneous moves to open up and close off data and services to developers.  The last few weeks we have seen MySpace's security concerns lead them to shut down outbound links from flash widgets, seriously curtailing the business of third party developers and decreasing the functionality of their ecosystem.  One must assume that MySpace has learned the ills of erecting walls around one's garden from the likes of AOL, so hopefully these restrictions will be short lived.  I'm guessing them will rectify the situation shortly.

Kudos this week go to Facebook, which in my opinion was the most closed of all of the social network sites until most recently.  In fact, being insular was their initial point of differentiation--providing access to profiles only to classmates and their friends.  Last week Facebook announced a developers program, which should provide an interesting platform for college projects and even for-profit businesses.  I can picture that one lurpy guy with the too-high pants developing the newest fashionable way to hook up using Facebook.  We'll see. 

The APIs allow access to a fair amount of data, but the social network site is obviously doing its best to protect its data from being siphoned off and used outside of its system.  This challenge is faced by all holders of proprietary information.  We see the benefit of distributing the information widely in order to reinforce our networks and to create greater value to our customers as they utilize the information in ways they choose.  But there is fear that the data will simply slip away into nefarious hands, or that the value of the data to the service will dissipate as it becomes broadly available on the web. 

So it is up to the content rights holder to make the decision whether or not to be open, or how to structure their openness as they walk this line.  We have had several debates on the Rhapsody team about this subject, weighing the power of the incredible editorial content cultivated over years of work and the desire to support of developers.  So far we have decided to err on the side of being open, and I believe that will continue.  While there will be some small bits that we will have to hold back due to licensing issues or copyright concerns, but we're working on getting in your hands all the tools that will make your applications better. 

So in that spirit, tell us what you want, and we'll try to oblige.

--Dave Hanley