Let’s be honest. How many of you remember the days of mix tapes or mix CDs? We sure do. You’d wait all day by the stereo, awaiting the moment when your favorite station would play your jam. Or, you’d run down to the Record store—hands up if you remember National Record Mart—only to discover they were sold out of your favorite song. It was so hard to get music back then.
Today it’s the opposite. Everything is just available. That includes music. A few years back, streaming services popped up. This meant that, for a few bucks a month, you could listen to anything you wanted. Any song at all, at anytime.
Here in The Nerd Garden, Steph is known for her addiction to music. Not just any kind either, but new music. Steph was rocking out to “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons almost a full year before anyone around her even knew the band. Which is why we’ve been hooked on streaming services, almost since the beginning.
How Do Music Streaming Services Work?
Streaming services are essentially a way of listening to music you don’t physically own. If the service has all of their ducks in a row, they’ve licensed the content for streaming. Which means, the customers of that service can then play the music through an app or browser. Unlike purchasing the music, however, you never see a copy of the music file. It’s played directly off of the services’ servers.
Most companies separate their users into two groups:
- Free: The free user gets to listen to music in the streaming library, but they often can’t skip songs they dislike or listen to a song twice. They are also subjected to commercials.
- Paid: Paid users normally receive the freedom to listen to any song they want, as many times as they want. They also don’t have to put up with annoying ads. The paid option for many of these solutions can run anywhere from $4.99 (the student rate) and up to $15.99 (families). That translates from $59.88 for a student to $191.88 for an entire family per year.
What sold us on a streaming services? Before they came out, Steph would spend $40 per month easy on music. That far exceeds the expense for any service.
What’s Out There?
As part of Steph’s music fixation, we’ve become very familiar with many of these services. We thought we’d take some time to run through each and share our opinions. Here’s a short list of the services we’ll be covering. There are others our there, but we’d rather share our own experiences about services we’eve tried.
- Amazon Prime
- Apple Music
- Deezer
- Google Play Music
- Pandora
- Spotify
2 thoughts on “Stream It Like You Mean It!”
I use Google Play Music and Pandora. Without streaming I’d be lost.
Awesome! We are so right there with you. Bring on the tunes! Thanks for stopping by, Carl.
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