One of the benefits of my job is that I can listen to music as I plug away at the keyboard. At first I listened to my CDs and MP3 CDs. Then more than a couple of coworkers started talking about RealNetworks Rhapsody, an online music service. I thought that for $10 a month, it might be a real worthwhile investment. But then I thought about the fact that you can't make MP3's and it lost its charm. However, I figured, you can burn songs for 79c a piece and it would give me a great opportunity to download (then rip) select songs that wanted copies of during my free 7 day trial period.

Internally, I also made a list of what I would require to actually pay for the service. If it had these artists, if I could burn most of the songs on there, and so on.

While I set the requirements intentionally lofty to dissuade myself from parting with my money, it not only met and exceeded those requirements - it's changed the way that I listen to music. When MP3s came along a few years ago, it made CDs redundent. The second I bought a CD the first thing I would do is download it and listen to it on my computer (and burn it as I choose). Rhapsody almost makes MP3s redundant. Whether or not I'll burn the songs I'm not sure, but I'm certainly not inclined to.

The basic gyst of the service is that you can listen to streaming audio. You can install the program anywhere, so I can listen to these songs both at work and at home. The songs canned be burned to CD for 79c a pop and you can download "tethered" copies of the songs, meaning that they will stop working if you cancel your service. They have various radio stations and you can also make your own playlists and most of the things you would expect.

But what really impressed me was the depth of the music available. They have everything from Matchbox Twenty to Robert Earl Keene to Bruce Springsteen to Tom Waite to Uncle Tupelo to Frank Black. They even have stand-up acts such as Bill Hicks and the Jerky Boyz. Outside of Texas Country (and even there they have Roger Creager) I can honestly say that I've found 95% of what I've looked for - and since I signed up six weeks ago, 100,000 tracks have been added. 95% of what they have can be burned.

This is at once a thousand radio stations, a music sampling service, and a CD collection with over 800,000 songs.

I'll write more at another time, but while I'm gone if you have high-speed Internet I strongly recomment you give it a try.