For streaming music on demand, Rhapsody reigned supreme for a long time.  That time, I believe, is now over.  For one thing, Rhapsody has no downloadable client for Mac.  You must stream from their site.  But the biggest letdown is the cash money it costs.  Sure, it is a richer experience with artist bios and reviews and navigating from tune to tune, but why pay when you don’t have to.

Enter:

• Just Hear It
• GrooveShark
• SeeqPod
• Songza
• Last.fm
• Pandora
• Lala

I haven’t done extensive testing on any of the newer services, but the more established Last.fm and Pandora while not exactly set up like Rhapsody still offer free tunes.

Last.fm is geared more toward a social experience with the ability to play some music.

Pandora takes a different approach — more like a radio.  Choose an artist, song, album or genre and a custom station is created related to this choice.

It looks as if seeqpod and songza may scrape for music that already resides on various websites.  Just Hear It, GrooveShark and Lala implement a more polished interface for searching and playback.

One of the most download free applications for the iPhone is a photo sharer called SmugMug.  But I guess I missed the part where it says the service is trial only and now my trial ends in seven days.  Here’s the email they sent:

Dear dippold,

Many thanks for giving SmugMug a try!

We hope you’ve fallen in love with SmugMug, because we pour our hearts into it and our biggest thrill is seeing people love it.

It’s simple to become smug about your photos and continue before your trial expires in 7 days. Just click this link:

https://secure.smugmug.com/endtrial.mg (You may have to log in.)

If SmugMug didn’t grab you, we’d love to know why so we can get it right.  Just reply to this email and tell it to us like it is.  No worries, we won’t send a pushy reply back unless you ask us to (and if you ask we promise not to annoy).  We read every email every day because they’re like gold to us.

All the best for you and your photos,
Chris & Don MacAskill
Photographers, owners, and regular guys

So how much will it set you back?  Their cheapest rate or “Standard rate” costs $39.95 a year with the first year costing $19.98.  There is no need to even mention the price of their “Power” and “Professional” rates because I’ll never use any of them.  I’m not saying this is a bad service, but I really didn’t have enough time to try it out for a proper review.

I’m not a serious taker of photos on my iPhone, so I’ll probably just stick with something like Exposure that uploads shots to your free Flikr account.