Rhapsody music has me waxing rhapsodic

Recently I wrote a screed about the end of the age of ownership.Today, I'm enjoying the fruits of a company whose business is based on the new model, pay to play.

This service is Rhapsody, an online digital music service. Instead of selling me songs, Rhapsody allows me, for a monthly subscription of $12.99, to access and play any tune from its collection of millions of songs. The only band I've found to date that isn't included is the Beatles, not surprisingly. At the moment I'm dipping into the past for a listen to Tommy by The Who.

The caveat here is that the music is streamed to my PC, and therefore depends on my being connected, with fat bandwidth, to the Internet. If your connection is lean or inconsistent, Rhapsody wouldn't be a good choice.

Luckily, I have 24/7 connectivity. Therefore, although I own a couple of hundred LPs, a box of cassettes, and hundreds of CDs, I'm done with maintaining parallel technologies and forking over bucks to buy new music that I will soon tire of.