Rhapsody Crosses 800,000 Subscriber Milestone

Seattle, WA (Top40 Charts/ Rhapsody) Rhapsody, the leading premium, on-demand music service today announced it has crossed the 800,000 subscriber milestone and now offers more than 12 million tracks to its increasingly active membership base.

"Consumers are more enthusiastic than ever about on-demand music," said Jon Irwin, president, Rhapsody. "The fact that we have added more than 150,000 members since becoming an independent company in April, 2010-a number that we believe exceeds the lifetime total of all new U.S. competitors combined-speaks volumes about the strength of the Rhapsody service and the value it brings to our members."

Rhapsody cast the mold for the subscription music business, in 2001. Since becoming an independent company in 2010, Rhapsody embraced an ambitious mobile apps strategy that has generated off-the-charts usage and brought on-demand music to the most powerful and personal media device: the mobile phone. The Rhapsody app continues to win awards and consistently outranks all competitors in the iTunes App Store, Android Market and Amazon App Store. Nearly 40 percent of streams today are over mobile devices, a trend that is climbing steadily.

"It's clear that a premium, on-demand digital music service brings a ton of value to consumers and we have proven that a successful business can be built on this model over time," said Irwin. "We believe the freemium model is not sustainable at current content cost structures. Companies with tremendous resources have come and gone, but Rhapsody's focus on building long-term value is what has set us apart and contributed to our longevity. Consumers love the ability to listen to any song, as often as they like, in any order, anywhere on any device. The more they embrace a true on-demand experience, the more they will become aware of the shackles of free music services."