Digital music subscription vs digital purchases

[Underseer]

Am I old-fashioned because I purchase MP3s individually? Has everyone else shifted to those monthly subscription services (Spotify, Google Play Music, etc.)?

What are the pros and cons? What are your preferences?

 

[Ford]

I use Amazon Music. It is part of my Prime subscription. Mostly I just upload my music, but I do stream some songs and albums.

The "con" that I've discovered is that a significant portion of the music on Amazon's "free" service is not the original recordings. For example, if you want to listen to "The Look of Love" from ABC on the 80's channel, you get the re-recorded version rather than the original. Or if you want to rock out to Def Leppard's "Photograph" you'll get the band's "we don't want to pay royalties" version.

I can't speak to the Google or Spotify situation, but Amazon kinda sucks.

 

[Underseer]

Eh, sometimes I run into similar problems with digital downloads.

I bought what I thought was One Winged Angel, but instead of getting the version from the FF7 Advent Children movie, I got some weird cheap knockoff from "London Music Works," whoever that is.


Instead of this:


I got this:


Bleah. Not the same.

I know it's just a stupid video game song, but it's like someone sucked the soul out of it.

 

[rousseau]

I don't think there's much to it outside of the cost-benefit ratio of each. I share a family plan on Spotify with 5 other people and it works out to 5 dollars per month to listen to basically whatever I want. The equivalent cost of buying digital downloads would get me roughly 6 albums a year.

And so yea.. you should probably subscribe to Spotify before it runs out of money.

 

[braces_for_impact]

I used to, a couple of years ago buy my music individually. I liked the idea of owning my music. The problem is, the larger my collection gets, the more unwieldy it becomes. Of course, they have some better solutions for that stuff now, like having a home entertainment server you can use with something like Plex to stream to your own devices. I was just over syncing items, moving libraries to SD cards, etc. I've tried a few different streaming services, and I like them for a few reasons, even though when I started I had my doubts. I ended up with Google Play music for a few reasons. 1) Cost vs value $9.99 a month buys me an individual subscription for unlimited use. Everything just works, whether it's on PC, Android, or Google Cast (which I use). Your playlists work across all devices, and more importantly to me, the Google Play subscription comes with YouTube Red automatically at no additional cost, so no more YouTube ads, and the ability to download videos to phone or play them in the background, which are features I find handy. 2) With Google Play you can upload your own music. Once you do it's available on all devices, and it's still owned by you. I've found I enjoy music more with the subscription because it's a lot easier to discover new music.

Finally, right now, Google is changing things up with Google Play and YouTube Red, making YouTube music. I have early access to it and so far I quite like the direction they're going with it. They've also said that Google Play isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

My two cents...

 

[Underseer]

Right now I purchase my own music and my library is still small enough to be manageable. Even if I outgrow it, I have it on Google Play Music, so I could easily access parts of it as needed without too much thought or effort.

I do admit that the extensive library of playlists Google has sounds intriguing, but I really only listen to music while driving, going on long walks for exercise, and occasionally while doing chores, so however meager my library is, it's good enough.

I'll admit, the idea of avoiding ads on YouTube does sound good. Sometimes those ads cause videos to be unplayable in Chrome and I have to either clear the cache/cookies yet again, or watch said video in another browser. Also, ads suck big sweaty donkey balls.

 

[Underseer]

OK, I finally figured out the obvious answer I should have thought of right away.

Most subscription plans are $10/month

Most digital downloads are around $1 to $1.29 per song.

So if I buy on average 8 to 9 songs per month or more, then the subscription is cost effective.

If I buy less than 8 songs per month and the resulting playlists are good enough for my needs, then purchasing songs individually is the better deal.

End of story, right?

 

[Underseer]

I used to, a couple of years ago buy my music individually. I liked the idea of owning my music. The problem is, the larger my collection gets, the more unwieldy it becomes. Of course, they have some better solutions for that stuff now, like having a home entertainment server you can use with something like Plex to stream to your own devices. [[ent]hellip[/ent]

Actually, these days you can just plug an external drive into the USB port on your router, dig around in the router's settings a bit, and you should be able to stream music to almost any device on your WiFi network.

I have that all set up, but I don't use it because I have a small enough library (3.57 GB) that I can copy the entire library to the few devices from which I'm likely to want to hear music (which is really just my phone and my desktop). The share on the router is just being used as a tertiary backup if I'm going to be honest.

 

[rousseau]

OK, I finally figured out the obvious answer I should have thought of right away.

Most subscription plans are $10/month

Most digital downloads are around $1 to $1.29 per song.

So if I buy on average 8 to 9 songs per month or more, then the subscription is cost effective.

If I buy less than 8 songs per month and the resulting playlists are good enough for my needs, then purchasing songs individually is the better deal.

End of story, right?

In addition to the fact that the subscription allows you to listen to anything, all the time.

With the way these subscription services are going, I'd enjoy them while you still can.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I generally like to buy my music on disc still (CD, Blu-ray), and rip the tracks, put it on a thumb drive and have it at home and in the car so I don't need to listen to FM or XM radio to listen to music.

However, my wife is a fitness instructor so having a huge amount of music available for classes is a must. We used to use the abomination known as Rhapsody, which was the most ridiculous software ever, but for a while it was the only service that allowed you to download music and play on a device that wasn't connected to WiFi or Cellular.

Luckily Spotify changed their thing up (though they got rid of their Roku app), and you can download and use off the grid as well. Spotify's software is roughly a zillion times better than Rhapsody, though their app can hiccup. Spotify is nice as they have a huge catalog and I can get easier access to newly released stuff to test out before buying. What I don't like about Spotify is the inability to listen to random music in a certain field of musicians.

 

[Underseer]

From what I read in the reviews, Google Play Music has a massive collection of playlists that Google paid big money to acquire.