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April 29, 2006
MindCamp2.0 Notes -- Rhapsody Web Services SDK
This is my notes from the Music Mashup session. For the first time, the Rhapsody Web Services SDK is being announced at MindCamp2.0. It looks like there is a nice REST interface and RSS feeds. See their Web Services SDK documentation page for details.
Question for the session - "How do you LEGALLY share music on your web site?"
http://www.rhapsody.com/lesliebraly/songsfromshannon
Hey, it works on the Mac. It is supposed to work on Linux as well. Having a REST interface wins again. You use a simple RegEx to determine the name of the artist that will appear in the URL.
They have their own DRM that is tied to the ActiveX control and they uniquely identify machines. An account is limited to 25 plays per month. If you have downloaded the Real Player recently, you might already have the Rhapsody player. When you max your 25 free plays, you'll be prompted to pay for an account.
To use this on your web page, include a simple.js and include a call in your HTML. You have to look up the database ID number.
Flash does not have DRM, so they can't do a Flash-based player? You can script the ActiveX from Flash though. That works. The lower level calls will be exposed later. They need a Flash example. Phone interface is on the horizon.
There is an XML listing of an album as well. Data.xml following the artist/album.
http://www.rhapsody.com/lesliebraly/songsfromshannon/data.xml
The list of RSS feeds for an artist is available at artist/rss.html
http://www.rhapsody.com/lesliebraly/rss.html
Their goal is to make it dead easy to add music to your site. In the future, they will add tiers of development.
Why are you doing this? to paraphrase: Sign-ups is not the goal. We want to become the music authority on the Internet. If everyone plays through Rhapsody, we'll make money.
If someone signs up for the service through your site, you get US$20.
The most burning question of the day -- What does it look like on MySpace.com? Use an iframe on the page. You can skin the player with your own CSS. You have to leave the Rhapsody logo on there.
What else would you like to see?
Music videos.Bill back to the site instead of the account holder.
Technorati Tags: mindcamp2.0
Posted by michael at April 29, 2006 03:47 PM