One common complaint about legal music sites is how difficult it is to transfer music to CD or other portable devices. Rhapsody doesn't make it easy to transfer music. Some of their songs you can burn, some of them you can't -- but you're allowed to play all of them.
So, transfer them in real-time to MD or an Archos Jukebox Recorder or your sound card, right? Yes, that's one option -- but there is another way. Using TotalRecorder, you can save the streams from Rhapsody as .WAV files to your hard drive at 4x speed, then transfer them to your portable using your method of choice! TotalRecorder is especially useful, because it saves the streams directly, bypassing your soundcard. You may have problems with this method if you are using a cracked copy of Total Recorder. The program only costs $12. Just buy the damn thing and stop asking me why the program you didn't pay for doesn't work right.
N.B. - 1 May 05 - I've received an e-mail saying that high-speed recording no longer works with the Rhapsody v3.0 client that's now out. I no longer subscribe to Rhapsody, so I can't verify this myself, but it makes sense -- the new version of Rhapsody is said to be more tightly-integrated with the RealPlayer store, and I've never been able to record at faster-than-realtime from RealPlayer. I'm leaving this page up, though, as a how-to, since this does work with, for example Audible audiobook downloads.
Step one: load your playlist. Drag the album or songs you want to play to the playlist window in the Rhapsody client.
Step two: Set up TotalRecorder. Click on "Recording Source and Parameters" in Total Recorder and set it up as shown in the image below. Set it to 4x speed ("Max" will make it lock up) and the recording level to your liking -- I choose 95% just to stay safe.
Step three: Record it! Hit the record button and watch it record as fast as the Rhapsody client can stream it!
Step four: Transfer! You now have your music as a .WAV file. You can edit the file in TotalRecorder, splitting it up into as many files as you want, then you can then convert the tracks to MP3 using your MP3 creator program of choice, you can send them to your NetMD player using RealOne or OpenMG Jukebox, or you can just burn an audio CD.
Have fun! :)