Last summer Rhapsody switched to offering DRM-free MP3 downloads from their online store. They also had a promotion to get a $10 credit when you created your account with them. I already had a Rhapsody 25 (free) account with them to stream up to 25 songs a month. I primarily used it to listen to a new album once before I bought it. I was able easily to associate this account to their new online store and get my $10 credit.
After some short research I decided to use my credit to purchase the new (at the time) Judas Priest album, Nostradamus. Ignoring my taste in music for a moment, I felt it was a great deal because it had 23 (!) songs.
So, I purchased it and downloaded the resulting ZIP. I then added the songs to iTunes and promptly forgot about it.
Then last week, I decided to listen to the album and noticed that I was missing 6 songs (by the way, the album is a solid “B”). A quick check revealed that they were not included in the original download from Rhapsody. I e-mailed their customer support explaining the problem. They got back to me within 12 hours and said they were not able to resolve the issue, so it was being escalated. Another 12 hours later, they said they couldn’t fix the issue so they were giving me a credit to my account so I could by the missing tracks myself!
Considering that I got this album for free to begin with, this was unexpected.
I may have to strongly consider trying Rhapsody again for my next album purchase. I wish they had better Mac integration, though…