Rhapsody is one of the most underrated music services available today. Not only does it offer a range of music streaming and purchase options, it's available on a wide variety of mobile phones. Rhapsody appears on both Verizon's feature phones and on AT&T's iPhone and now we have Rhapsody for Android, which works just as well as the iPhone version.

For this review, I tested the Rhapsody for Android beta app on the Motorola Droid, Google Nexus One, and T-Mobile G1 using Wi-Fi, although the service also works over 3G. Rhapsody for Android can be downloaded for free at www.rhapsody.com/android/download. Real Networks said the app should be available in the Android Market in the next few weeks. The service costs $14.99/month, although there's a seven-day free trial.

Interface, Library, and Genres
Rhapsody's interface is flexible, powerful, and relatively easy to use. The Rhapsody for Android home screen offers seven options: Search, Genres, New this week, Charts, Playlists, Rhapsody Radio, and My Library.

A gray bar at the bottom of the screen is used for playing, pausing, and skipping forward and backward in your queue. If you drag the control bar to the top of the display, the Now Playing screen is revealed. A thumbnail of the album that is playing sits just under the control bar and a progress bar. Under the album art and song info is your queue of songs. To remove a song from the queue, hold down on the song title and select "Remove from queue" from the pop-up menu.

In Rhapsody's desktop app, you can assign artists, albums, and songs to your personal library, which you can also access on your phone. You can listen to any song you previously put in your library, can add new songs and albums, and delete songs, artists, and albums as needed. Artists are automatically added to the library whenever you add a song or album.

Rhapsody for Android also lets you search through a comprehensive list of genres. When you select a genre, it usually pulls up sub-genres and key artists, albums, and tracks.

Radio and Sound Quality
Rhapsody straddles the line between an on-demand music service and a Pandora-like radio experience thanks to its Radio tab. You can choose from more than 100 pre-programmed stations, or generate new artist-based stations on the fly (much like Pandora or Slacker). One way these stations are better than Pandora or Slacker is that you can skip through songs as much as you want. Pandora for Android or Slacker for Android only let you skip six times an hour.

Music on Rhapsody for Android streams at 64 kbps AAC+ (which is better than 64 kbps MP3), which isn't up to audiophile standards but will probably be acceptable to most people. Comparatively, Rhapsody's Web site streams at 128 kbps AAC+ and Pandora and Slacker on Android play between 64 kbps and 128 kbps, depending on connection strength.

Conclusions
Rhapsody for Android is both more powerful and much more expensive than any other Android music app. It offers flexibility you can't get with Pandora, Slacker, or the Amazon MP3 store, but then again, it costs $14.99/month. Casual music fans can probably get by with Pandora and Slacker, while music lovers would be better served by Rhapsody's endless choices.

The service, however, does suffer from the two flaws common to all streaming apps: it zaps your battery, and it requires a good network connection. There is no offline mode, so you can't save songs for playback later (although such a mode may come soon.)

Even so, Rhapsody is the best streaming music service for Android so far—provided you're willing to pay. If you're interested in both finding new music and listening to your favorite songs, it may be worth the price.

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