June 1, 2005
Rhapsody’s Incredible Shrinking Catalog
So I was quite pleased to see that Rhapsody had added M.I.A’s Arular
recently released by Universal. They had previously released the
version available from Beggar’s Banquet, but the tracklistings are a
little different. I had been listening to the album for a few
weeks, when, today, I noticed that I can no longer play “URAQT”
off the Universal release, and that the single version is only
available for sale and not for streaming. Same goes for “Bucky
Done Gone”, though I can play it off the Beggar’s Banquet
release. What gives?
This is not entirely uncommon in Rhapsody. For instance, The Streets’ A Grand Don’t Come for Free was previously available for streaming as was Garbage’s new Bleed Like Me. Both are now for sale only.
It’s bad enough that the catalog lacks many albums that I
want. It’s bad enough when particular tracks on albums
cannot be streamed. It’s far worse to pull those
songs once I’ve already become accustomed to having access.
Rhapsody says I get access to over one million songs and growing, but
apparently they can’t even guarantee me that the catalog won’t shrink
in the future.
Filed by Derek Slater at 6:06 pm under General news
2 Comments
I’ve noticed the same thing, and blogged about it last summer. I suspected strategic behavior on the part of the licensing record companies. I no longer suspect strategic behavior on anyone’s part, and suspect that it annoys the subscription services even more than it annoys us.
My initial post:
http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2004/07/09/the-danger-of-subscription-music-services/
Rhapsody spokesman Matt Graves’ response:
http://www.joegratz.net/archives/2004/07/09/real-responds/
By the way… are you in SF yet? We should hang out.
It has nothing to do with Rhapsody, and sometimes doesn’t have anything to do with the labels. Frequently it is the artists who request “takedown” of their materials. Other times, the labels think they may have the rights to something, give a service the go-ahead, and then find out they do not have the rights.
On any given week, some percentage of the catalog for every service (Rhapsody, MSN, iTunes, Wal-Mart, etc.) gets “turned off”. Sometimes it comes back, sometimes it doesn’t. Yes, it is VERY frustrating, but it is the nature of the business for now.