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Owning your music (downloading) vs streaming

A

appleuser15

macrumors member
Original poster
Guys, I'm just curious as to what your preferences are in regards to music on your iPhone. Do you prefer to just stream apple music whenever you feel like listening, or do you prefer to have your own copies of your music in iTunes available to listen offline.

So basically which do you prefer iTunes (your offline music) or streaming?
 
appleuser15 said:
Guys, I'm just curious as to what your preferences are in regards to music on your iPhone. Do you prefer to just stream apple music whenever you feel like listening, or do you prefer to have your own copies of your music in iTunes available to listen offline.

So basically which do you prefer iTunes (your offline music) or streaming?
Click to expand...

Own copies, offline. Every time. If there's something that I haven't checked out before, I'm not opposed to streaming to give it a listen, but if there's something that I've bought or that I want to listen to often, I wouldn't stream unless forced to.

Plus having a local copy means that I have assurances on what quality/bitrate it is.
 
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keysofanxiety said:
Own copies, offline. Every time. If there's something that I haven't checked out before, I'm not opposed to streaming to give it a listen, but if there's something that I've bought or that I want to listen to often, I wouldn't stream unless forced to.

Plus having a local copy means that I have assurances on what quality/bitrate it is.
Click to expand...
Thanks for replying

If I may ask why do you prefer that to streaming? And do you think there are any benefits to owning copies as opposed to streaming?
Keep the replies coming guys
 
I don't have an iPhone but I hope I'm allowed to respond too 😉

I have a 1 GB data plan. So that probably answers your question. Just bought a 64 GB SD card, filled it with stuff I may feel like listening to anytime soon. But at home I stream from Spotify all the time, even records I own, because Spotify pays that $0.007 per stream, and my local copy does not.

Main benefits in owning copies, to me, is that they can't suddenly disappear when the artist (example: Prince) just pulls their stuff off streaming services.
 
appleuser15 said:
Thanks for replying

If I may ask why do you prefer that to streaming? And do you think there are any benefits to owning copies as opposed to streaming?
Keep the replies coming guys
Click to expand...

It's because listening to music (which for me is very important) isn't dependant on whether or not I have an Internet connection.

No drawbacks to owning copies as far as I see, you can copy it to any device you want and you always have it. Streaming in its very nature just doesn't suit enthusiasts IMO.
 
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I bought the 128GB 6S+ so that I could keep most of my music on my phone. I don't pay for streaming and I just use iTunes Radio with the unlimited skips mod in Cydia. Any songs I like that I hear through there, I buy.
 
good subject 😀

Streaming has its benefits... take it everywhere, listen everywhere u can get online ..

Back in the day i used ti fill my my 16Gig iPhone with music, but now i have plenty of space unused, what do i fill it with when i can stream on iOS. The only thing is cost over cellular network, so i stream all my music on wi-fi only. on my Mac.

Both cases really, i have all my music offline, to avoid bandwidth caps on DSL.

at most i can easily chew up to 180Gig a month.

Still deciding at the moment weather or not to keep a streaming music service.
 
I find streaming super convenient for my Macbook with 128 GB SSD. I don't have to decide what to put on it, I have the entire Spotify library on it 😉 I have no cap for wi-fi data.
 
I like streaming. It gives me access to everything I own at all times, and in the case of Apple Music, almost anything I don't own as well.

For Apple Music, I rebuilt my personal library with their streaming catalog. Anything they don't have that I own and want available, I add it in iTunes. Anything I want that I don't currently own, I add through Apple Music. If I really love an album, I buy it, but while using Apple Music, I still use their catalog. No need for redundancy. If they pull and album I love, I just add it back in from my personal library. That hasn't happened yet though.
 
Offline. My commute is about 25% underground with no signal. And occasionally I travel by air. I want my music to be available without relying on a signal.
 
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Interesting thread. I always preferred owning/downloading - but I have gotten into Apple Music. I have a large personal iTunes Library (bit over 50,000 tracks), so the idea of having everything available on my iOS devices that would be crushed with that many tracks was nice. Also allowed me to take the music files off my wife's iMac to save space. (On mine the music is on a large external drive.) But I do make use of the ability through Apple Music/ICML to download a certain amount of music to my iPhone 6 and iPad Mini 2 for those times I don't want to eat into our monthly data allowance.
The only major issue I have with Apple Music is that they are still mis-matching a lot of stuff. My library has over 6,000 live tracks (either official live albums or bootlegs) and probably about 40% of the tracks are mis-matched when I play them on my other devices.
As far as the quality issue that was brought up - depends on where and more importantly on what you listen to your music. Most people nowadays are using iPhones/iPods and headphones or listening in the cars or on their computers. So most of these people will not notice the difference in the quality of the various file formats. Yes - if you have a high-end stereo system that you are playing the music through you might (emphasis on might) hear the difference - but for the average non-audiophile listener, probably not. Years ago I decided to digitize my entire music library (where most of those 50K tracks came from) and my friend thought I was crazy (he is an audio nut BTW). Well to tell the truth I like the convenience a lot more and even though on my iMac I have a very nice set of speakers/sub-woofer, I am very satisfied with the quality.
 
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I own a large library and I'm an :apple:Music user. I don't stream but download all my music to playlists while on WiFi. This gives me the highest quality, avoids dropouts and saves cellular bandwidth.
 
skiltrip said:
I like streaming. It gives me access to everything I own at all times, and in the case of Apple Music, almost anything I don't own as well.

For Apple Music, I rebuilt my personal library with their streaming catalog. Anything they don't have that I own and want available, I add it in iTunes. Anything I want that I don't currently own, I add through Apple Music. If I really love an album, I buy it, but while using Apple Music, I still use their catalog. No need for redundancy. If they pull and album I love, I just add it back in from my personal library. That hasn't happened yet though.
Click to expand...

This is exactly how I built my library and continue to manage it. Have had absolutely no issues since the start.

Julien said:
I own a large library and I'm an :apple:Music user. I don't stream but download all my music to playlists while on WiFi. This gives me the highest quality, avoids dropouts and saves cellular bandwidth.
Click to expand...

I do about the same thing. Have a large library and have 3 genre-related smart lists. Then I keep a few 50-100 song playlists that I d/l for offline listening when away from wifi.
 
I used to always want my own copy of my music and have it available to me from my own sources, like the Mac or the iPhone.

But over the last year or so, I've switched to Spotify Premium at home, work, and on the go. I haven't looked at my own iTunes library in months, with regards to music.

For me, I'm finding it to be less expensive to pay for the premium Spotify service, than it was when I was buying music to own from iTunes.

I now have the benefit of getting new music at any time and being able to discover new artists and albums with ease. I also don't need to worry so much about storage space either. I don't worry about data use on the go because music takes so little bandwidth and I only stream on LTE when I'm at the gym or driving on my 2 mile commute to work.
 
Both. I have a fairly extensive collection that I own, but I still subscribe to streaming services because there is nothing else like them for music discovery. And with Apple Music and Spotify it's trivial to build a collection and keep it offline.
 
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appleuser15 said:
Guys, I'm just curious as to what your preferences are in regards to music on your iPhone. Do you prefer to just stream apple music whenever you feel like listening, or do you prefer to have your own copies of your music in iTunes available to listen offline.

So basically which do you prefer iTunes (your offline music) or streaming?
Click to expand...
On my phone, and away from home, I almost always stream. At home, I will usually turn on home sharing to access my local lossless files.

I have a 128k iPhone, but if I am going to be off the grid, I just use my 160gb Classic. As a result, I don't keep very much music on my device at all.
 
Avoiding the high cost and lock in of iTunes was one of the best decisions I made years ago while building the music library I own.

Always being one to choose owning my own data / files of any type, I've maintained my own dedicated server with NAS, that's never failed me. With the big plus being easy secure backups as well. Not only that, as an avid music lover, the control over quality and never having to trust my carefully curated library to anyone else provides great peace of mind.

Streaming is the other option I embrace for several reasons. The premium Spotify service complimented by the excellent Google Play Music I've been using since their inception, round out my very robust collection of music.
 
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chiefdave said:
Can you expand on this? Do you mean you backed up your library and then deleted everything from your iTunes accounts before adding them back in individually from apple music?
Click to expand...

Sort of.

Before doing any of this, make sure you have a backup of your owned music on an external drive just in case. We should all be doing this anyway. (I should start practicing what I preach).

Turn off iCloud Music Library on your current iTunes library.

Close iTunes.

Hold down the Option key and click on iTunes to open it. It'll prompt you and ask which iTunes library you want to open. You can click on Create New Library, and call it "Apple Music" or whatever you'd like. This gives you a new empty library. Your other library exists right on your hard drive, but you're essentially isolating it. Turn on iCloud Music Library. Wait for everything to load. All your current songs will sync. View them by song, select all, delete all. Now you are back to a new clean empty library that is also now your iCloud Music Library. Start adding music from the AM catalog. For any music you want in there that is missing in AM, navigate to the music files from your main library and drag them into the iTunes window. This will make a new copy and then sync it to your iCloud Music Library.
If you take your time with this and get any mismatched art or tracks you can more easily deal with them one to one instead of trying to tackle a huge library full of issues.

Don't worry about building your entire library back up right away. Just build it as you go. I can only speak for me, but I own a ton of music that I don't really love all THAT much and slimming down my library by not adding that stuff back in makes things much tidier. I can always add it in at another time if the mood strikes me.
 
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Family Plan means I pay nothing for Apple Music. I just download Apple Music files for offline playback over wifi, then listen to them on my iPhone.

Crusoe said:
Offline. My commute is about 25% underground with no signal. And occasionally I travel by air. I want my music to be available without relying on a signal.
Click to expand...

Apple Music is offline if you want.
 
Julien said:
I own a large library and I'm an :apple:Music user. I don't stream but download all my music to playlists while on WiFi. This gives me the highest quality, avoids dropouts and saves cellular bandwidth.
Click to expand...

You prefer to pay to play offline content but still pay a subscription to access it ? I guess it's still cheaper than buying. That's what i do, but wondering that kinda defeats the whole purpose.

If i was using streaming "as well" then that'd would be different, but my main usage is music subscription, just to listen offline.
 
I own my music, use iTunes Match to stream it, and Amazon Music when buying a new CD with AuotRIP to stream it right away.
Amazon Prime Music is also great.
 
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appleuser15 said:
Do you prefer to just stream Apple music whenever you feel like listening, or do you prefer to have your own copies of your music in iTunes available to listen offline.

So basically which do you prefer iTunes (your offline music) or streaming?
Click to expand...

You do know that you can make music available to listen to offline with Apple Music?

Personally I prefer to stream. And this is coming from someone who up until Apple Music, never had a music streaming subscription.

Having tried Apple Music and Spotify (hated the UI of Spotify and missed the For You I get with Apple Music to name two reasons) I realised just how convenient a music streaming service is.

Now I always have something different to listen to. Rather than the same couple of hundred songs I had before I had a music streaming service.
 
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