Music Subscription Services

I'm not a fan of giving my money away, and I see the music industry as very greedy at times. Like everyone else, I enjoy music and it's an integral part of modern living. I also enjoying albums and being able to play the music I love. Lots of people I know have massive collections of music and spend a lot of money on buying new CD's or downloads of the songs they want to keep.

There are alternatives to downloading or buying music, such as subscriptions services like Spotify, Rdio.com and Deezer, each with their own drawbacks and merits. Instead of buying music and owning it, you are renting it from them until you stop paying your subscription. If you work out the cost of music, the cost of one new CD downloadable album on its day of release pays for a whole month of unlimited streaming (and offline DRM'd copies) of any album in the vast archives of music these subscriptions offer. Since I listen to music a lot at home or when I'm coding at work, I thought I'd give rdio.com a try for a week and see if I would use it. It turns out I listen to a lot of music and many different albums in the space of one day. I do listen to a lot of the same thing if I like it, but then get bored and move on. I figure if I really like an album, I'll go and buy that album regardless, but really like discovering music so will try a full rdio.com subscription for a few months.

Spotify is well advertised in the UK and there is a lot of tie ins with Facebook, but too much for my liking. My close friends love Spotify, but there's something at the back of my mind about them that I don't like, which must stem from the tight Facebook integration, something that rdio.com didn't force on me when I signed up. I also love an underdog and like a fair playing field - so we'll see how rdio.com does.