I haven't looked at Rhapsody but I had a look at the new Yahoo service
- apparently you need Windows Media Player and / or some Yahoo
frontend on top of that.
From what I understand, it's the Windows Media API that is required, to allow the Yahoo player ("Yahoo Music Engine") to play .wma files, decode the DRM on the music files, etc. There's no need to use Windows Media Player, the application.
The Yahoo player is reasonably light-weight, and pretty nicely designed. I'm playing around with using it as a replacement for iTunes/Windows Media Player/Winamp at the moment. I like that it gives you a personalized audio stream based on:
-songs by artists you like (you plug this info in), -other songs by artists in the same genre, and -songs by artists rated highly by people that like the same bands you do
You can then rate the song, artist, and album as each songs plays.
You mention having to pay for bandwidth...most folks I know here in the states don't have quotas on how much they can download in a billing period.
I really can't imagine they'd let you saturate your DSL or cable line for long. For comparision, my line's a dedicated ADSL 256/1024 with 30 GB / month traffic limit and costs $140 / month.
It definitely depends on your provider. I have 6.0 Mbps down/768 kbps up ADSL from Speakeasy.net for $100/month, with no bandwidth caps (or restrictions on running servers). They also permit you to share your connection with your roommates/neighbors using WiFi, and provide the account/billing infrastructure for you to defray your costs by charging the "freeloaders" a nominal fee:
http://www.speakeasy.net/netshare/
I can't say enough good things about Speakeasy.
Nick
-- Nick Silberstein Senior Developer Flying Machine Development, Inc.
-- ---------------------[ Ciphire Signature ]---------------------- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] signed email body (1495 characters) Date: on 12 May 2005 at 23:16:16 UTC To: discuss@lists.slimdevices.com ---------------------------------------------------------------- : Ciphire has secured this email against identity theft. : Free download at www.ciphire.com. The garbled lines : below are the sender's verifiable digital signature. ---------------------------------------------------------------- 00fAAAAAEAAADA44NC1wUAAMEDAAIAAgACACBRCuDHfCdm7ojbWrVhWB44/cegOe DWtrFRCXrR09PKXAEAGuut/XGiY4yti+yDQ84APzXWLkDhVdPVVl1QhSpeVH0ixh 09p40JAnqVCGb7pe9HKWTqPc749uU4UzT3zSvPkw== ------------------[ End Ciphire Signed Message ]----------------
_______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list Discuss@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/lists/listinfo/discuss
