Well I know this isn’t a tech blog, but I just had to write about my new purchase, the Sonos music system. I had been for some time looking for a solutions that would allow my several gigs of music to be played in my living room. I had an iPod stand that plugged into the TV, but that limited me to just the music I could fit on my iPod. So I began looking for other options, and at first fell in love with the Apple TV. Yet, in the process I discovered that the old downfall of Apple (proprietary software) had reared its ugly, ugly head. The Apple TV only works with iTunes and with songs imported into iTunes or purchased from the iTunes store. Moreover it was more designed for streaming movies, which while a cool technology is not practical yet.

Last weekend though I dropped into the local audio-video store and was browsing the TVs and home theater systems, when I happened across a little white box, the Sonos. Basically it allows me to play music throughout my house with two different zones (bedroom and living room). Each Zone can be operated independently with different music or you can link the zones together. You can have as many as 32 zones, but that would get pretty expensive. All of the zones are controlled through a remote which allows you to pause, skip tracks, browse your music collection, etc. All-in-all a great product, which I promptly purchased and installed in my home, only to discover that Apple’s evil nature was two-fold. Apparently, Apple will not release their DRM (Digital Rights Management) codec to people so all of the music I purchased on iTunes can’t be played through my Sonos system. This basically allows Apple to use their leverage in the online music purchase market to extend their brand through hardware, a practice that Apple lovers the world over used to complain about when Micro$oft did it.

I had not noticed a tab in my new Sonos controller, but in playing with it saw that it had something called “Rhapsody” installed. Rhapsody is an online music store like iTunes, except that for a $10/month fee you have access to the entire 2.5 million song catalog. I immediately fired it up and began browsing, and realized that I had basically purchased a 2.5 million song jukebox. The only songs I couldn’t find were Led Zeppelin and the Beatles (because the owner of the rights to the Beatles and Led Zeppelin have chosen not to sell their music online anywhere).
In short, Sonos + Rhapsody has revolutionized my music listening experience. I will never buy another track from iTunes, why would I when I have all I need on Rhapsody.