I have to admit that, during the Napster craze, I was downloading just like everyone else. I didn't know better, and the availability of free music was too great to resist. CDs that I thought were impossible to find were suddenly right there on my desktop, just waiting to be downloaded. It seemed like the perfect subscription music service. You could get anything you wanted for free anytime you wanted. All you needed was a computer and a high-speed connection.
Of course, since the fall of Napster, there have been other peer-to-peer networking services. None of them, however, have had the same hold on the market. You see, the recording industry is getting nervous and pressuring lawmakers to crack down on illegal file downloading sites. Subscription music services seem like a solution. You see, with a the subscription music service, you can download the music you want without having to buy the CDs. You still have to pay money, but it is usually much less. Best of all, if you want to just get a couple songs instead of the whole album, you have that option. You can download hits, albums, or collections. The choice is yours.
Once you look into it, however, subscription music services aren't all they're cracked up to be. It really depends on what kind of music consumer you are, but for me they seem like a bad choice. You see, there are enough free download sites out there still that it doesn't make sense to subscribe to one that requires you to pay. My favorite free music subscription service is Pandora. With Pandora, you put in the name of an artist or song you like, and it will play free music with a similar sound for you. Although it doesn't let you download songs like subscription music services do, you can use it whenever you want for free.
Internet radio makes a lot of sense as well. It is more like Pandora than it is like the subscription music services. Usually, you can not download specific songs, but you can listen to live streaming broadcasts. If you have very specific things that you want, it might make sense for you to get into subscription music services. On the other hand, if you are like me and only care that you get to listen to a specific type of music, you might as well do it for free. There are a lot of Internet radio sites out there, so you can probably find what you are looking for.
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