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You must have always wanted to play your favorite music on the iPhone sans an internet connection, which until today wasn’t possible. However, now subscription-based music service Rhapsody has released a new version of its iPhone app – Rhapsody 2.0 that allows you to play playlists even when you don't have an Internet connection.This advanced feature of offline playback has puts Rhapsody in a unique position, until someone else catches up. As of now, Spotify has an iPhone app with offline playback; however, that is available in Europe only. Similarly, Thumbplay who has a quite popular offline playback feature is available only for the BlackBerry.
Rhapsody 2.0 app for iPhone is free for download from the iTunes App Store. However, you'll need a subscription, which costs $9.99 a month/one device (for 9 million songs) or $14.99 a month for up to three devices.
How it works…..
After creating one or more Rhapsody playlists, you can download all tracks of your favorite artists, albums from the catalog for offline listening, besides streaming more than 9 million songs via them to your phone over a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. Moreover, you’ll be able to play them anywhere once they are downloaded on your phone.
The Rhapsody 2.0 version also runs on the iPod Touch and iPad -- caches playlists on the devices. This facilitates customers to listen to music without an active connection to the Internet via WiFi or a 3G data network.
Limitations
The only limitation of Rhapsody 2.0 app as detected of now is that it works only with playlists, and not individual songs or albums. Therefore, if you want to listen to your favorite album offline, you have to save your album by converting it into a playlist first. Apart from that, you cannot stream or even play music in the background while using another application.
Sources reveal that Rhapsody has plans to add offline playback to its Android app, and to introduce a BlackBerry app, later this year.