I noticed a mention-in-passing of the "new Rhapsody 3.0" over on the Rhapsody Radish.

I thought, "huh? Why didn't I know about it? I'm a subscriber who actually gives them money, after all." So I hit Help->Check For Updates, and it was true.

The interface is completely different. This will take some getting used to (but that's good, I thought their old interface blew chunks).

There are two massive improvements that I can see. First, you can now incorporate the music you have on your hard drive (i.e., MP3s you've legally ripped from your own private collection) and the stuff you have access to via Rhapsody. The player plays all types of files, and the integration seems pretty seamless. That is, I've got a playlist of both Rhapsody subscription-based content and my own local MP3s playing on random.

The second improvement has to do with transferring content to portable devices. This is now supported. The basic support (I think) is to enable this for your own media, but there is an additional subscription level that allows subscription-based content to be transferred to portable players. Watch out, though, the list of players that support adding subscription-based content is small. Chances are if you have a player it probably won't work with Rhapsody. But I'd read this support was being added, so I've held off on purchasing a portable MP3 player. Now that I have a target, I'll consider it a little more.

Enjoy!