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How do you download/listen to music now?

L

.Logan

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 7, 2010
110
42
Calgary, AB
What service do you use to download or stream music? I've resisted for awhile, but I'm finally interested in getting a subscription to one of the many available services to download music. What do you like about the one you use and why?

I miss the days of easy downloading of free music, but it seems like that is much harder now so I'm going to bite the bullet. Personally I'm more interested in a service that I can download the individual MP3s to put on any device I want not sure if that's possible. It seems like a lot of the "music download services" require you to use their apps to play the music.
 
Well, I am irredeemably old school on such matters. This means that I still buy CDs, and rip them via my MBA's iTunes to my iPod classic, a splendid device I still use more or less every day.

Indeed, now that I find myself at home for more than a few weeks, I shall make a point of looking into buying a new turntable for my rather extensive (but unfortunately, unplayable at then moment) collection of vinyl records…….

 
I buy from iTunes one song at a time.

Why do I want yet ANOTHER monthly bill for a subscription on top of all the other crap out there sucking people dry $10-$60 at a time like Netflix, Hulu, Sirius, data plans for everything, and whatever else that was nonexistent 10-15 years ago? Just another needless monthly bill to make millenials go broke IMO. Seems like everyone has their hands in your pocket for subscription this, subscription that these days.
 
I only purchase from iTunes or artists directly, but ripped my CDs some time back, around 1200 or so.

I use Spotify (free) on my other computer while I'm working from home sometimes. Been meaning to check out the iTunes Radio to see how it is.
 
I don't pay for anything.

I use Spotify if I have a specific album/artist/playlist in mind, but like now at work, I don't want to be actively managing a playlist, so I use Pandora.

Streaming has really stopped me from downloading music. I don't remember the last time I've downloaded any songs or albums.
 
I use iTunes Radio because the price is right. Spending ~$30 a year on a service that you use sparingly is forgivable vs something that's going to be pulling $8 to $10 out of your bank account every month.

You already have a music library, you don't need a subscription for a service that replicates it.
 
I collect CDs. Kinda oldschool but I like using a CD Player to listen to my albums. For listening to new stuff before purchase, Spotify is the best for me.
 
Mostly, Demonoid; I sample music before I buy it, otherwise I don't buy it. If it's an album I like I then go buy it cheap secondhand on Amazon. Individual songs I'll either buy on iTunes, if it's available, or Amazon MP3, but I really don't like Amazon with the way they've been lately.

For good albums it's worth it having full quality to go with my good headphones because I can hear the difference in format.
 
I've been streaming my music from an app called Rdio. Its only 5 dollars a month for college students and it has almost every song i can think of without ads, and I'm able to download them to my phone.
 
If i like an album enough i'll buy it on iTunes. if not, I don't buy it. streaming services are not permanent, music can be taken down at any time. not gonna deal with that
 
I still by CD's but I also buy songs on iTunes.

I rip everything in a lossless format and then have it on NAS box at home. I use streamtome to stream my music to iPhone while I am at work or on the road.

At home I use my AppleTV or Sonos system to play my stored music. I also have pandora and slacker setup on my Sonos system, so I will use that occasionally.

I have over 1200 cd's and counting.
 
CD's which I rip in iTunes and the occasional song that I buy from iTunes. All put on my iPod Classic for listening. I guess I am a bit old school as well, I still throw on the occasional vinyl once in awhile. Hate to see them just sit in the milk crates and go to waste.
 
Since I pay for amazon prime, I just use their streaming service. It's actually pretty decent. Still buy a cd from time to time.
 
I listen to iTunes radio and when I hear a song I like, I but in iTunes.

I've also gone back to buying vinyl and will be doing a lot of catching up to get copies of a lot of music I bought digitally through iTunes.
 
i think the last time i bought a cd i was still in high school.. and Its been 8 years since i graduated
 
I buy all my music through iTunes and use iTunes Match on my phone. I tried spotify and beats but I like purchasing my music and backing it is up to a external hard drive for safe keeping.
 
Happybunny said:
I download using a thing called a computer, via the internet.:p


I listen with my ears.:p
Click to expand...

Well, today I bought a CD - the latest (and supposedly last ever album to be released) release by the legendary Pink Floyd called 'The Endless River'.

Despite indifferent and wildly varying reviews (some loved it and others felt it was lazy, uninspiring and quite derivative)- including from posters kind enough to post detailed and thoughtful reviews in other fora here, I still wished to lay hands on it, preferably through the medium of a bricks-and-mortar store (salt limited in what it offers, alas) on the High Street.

However, I did fall to musing about the rapidly decreasing and essentially contracting lifespan of each form of audio entertainment, as each one succeeds one another.

I grew up with vinyl, and remember the proud moment everyone had (and it was proof a signor of amazing wealth, or, at the very least, an excellent summer job) when they bought their own - as opposed to the family - stereo record player. I remember the mono versus stereo debates and the production of records which could avail of this technology - (wow, two speakers, which in turn, in a mad borderline macho arms race of audio technology, became ever bigger, bolder, and and steadily blacker in appearance). In turn, my parents had grown up with shellac records - vinyl's ancestor, strangely heavy, fairly easily breakable, rapidly turning records (remember 78 rpm?), which the invention of vinyl - in the 50s, superseded.

And then, I remember the excitement that attended the introduction of CDs in the late 1980s, their extraordinary expense - they were a real money earner for the music companies, the fact that you had to get brand new devices (CD players) in order to be able to play them, the big debates on whether one would transfer (i.e. replace, or supplement) one's vinyl collection, or buy 'only' CDs.

And now, thanks to the development of iTunes (and the recently discarded and deceased iPod) along with a new model - downloading - for the consumption (and storage) of music (which broke the old record companies) all of this can be considered by some to be a kind of quaint relic of some distant and unknowable past, sort of like an ant stuck forever in a piece of Baltic amber, preserved from some antique shoreline.
 
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