I was with Rhapsody too and it did work under Windows 7. But Windows 10, as linked above, introduced a new protection scheme, which player software must incorporate in order to access the tracks. Media Center doesn't do that, and last I heard not even Windows Media Player in Windows 10 does it, or at least not yet. I left Rhapsody before it became Napster, but I would imagine Napster might not include the older protection Windows 7 uses? I switched to Google Play months ago, which also doesn't work with Windows 10 and Media Center. There is a workaround, there are several programs for purchase and/or subscription that can strip the protection from music as it's played via Google Play, enabling it to be downloaded on a PC. Once downloaded Media Center can be directed to auto-import those folders and merge your subscription music with your owned music folders. So you could seamlessly listen to Band X's tracks from both sources and make playlists mixing them. On one hand, so long as you are paying Google or someone to stream music, it sounds ethical, not legal, to strip protection for your local use to be able to play back in the player of your choice so long as you pay your monthly fee. But ethically, doing that means that playing your favorite artist's track a huncred times is only counted the first time you stream it, and the other 99 times the artist doesn't get the pay per play payout by Google et al. So it hurts the very artists we like, whose streaming revenues are already low. In short, it seems we have to choose to listen to purchased music with MC and streamed music in the inferior player of your streaming company, and never the twain shall meet. Not the pleasant experience I'd like when listening to music.
Of course there is another way. Google Play and most other streaming software will read our purchased libraries into their streaming libraries, so we can have an integrated listening experience using the inferior player, but that's what we MC people don't want to have to do. I still think this is an important area for MC to master to stay relevant going forward. Unless the streaming model becomes totally unprofitable for the streaming companies, I don't see this mode of listening to music going away.
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Topic: What's the situation with MC, Windows 10, and streaming music services? (Read 18132 times)