Paying for Music

Friendly recently re-introduced me to Pandora, and I really like it so far. I've never been good at organizing my music very well, and I'm rather fond of the simplicity in the interface: I just enter a song or two, and rate songs as they play. However, I've run into some problems. The site tells me there is a 40 hour a month limit on listening to music (I expect to hit this before Monday or Tuesday) and a limit of 12 skips per day. Both are resolved by subscribing for 36 USD a year, roughly 3 a month. Certainly cheaper than buying everything off of iTunes, and probably hours less of work too, but if I'm going to spend money on Music, I'm going to do my research.

I tried Googling around a bit, but I did not find much recent information regarding Pandora, Last.fm (a name I've seen thrown around a lot), or any alternatives. Hoping to get some input from SouthPerry.

First off, is Pandora One worth it? So far, I love it, but that's based off of a day or two of listening. The common complaint I heard was that the music selection is rather limited, where as Last.fm will play a lot of music. Another big one was how it's limited to only streaming to the US, but that won't be a problem for me in the foreseeable future.

What about Last.fm? It looks more complicated, but that kind of complexity usually comes with more control and more power. I believe it cost 3 dollars a month as well, so there isn't a cost difference.

Are there alternatives? iTunes gets expensive rather quickly. I'm trying to find something that will play music for me. "Oh, you like this song? Maybe you'll like these" type of system. Low maintenance. Not a way to get specific songs. (I have YouTube for that.)

What do you guys use for your Music?

I'm cheap and will listen to songs on YouTube until I feel like it would be worth my money to own the song and contribute to the artist. I only own about 50 songs on iTunes, but it's all music that I love, so I don't feel bad about it. Plus iTunes Gift Cards are great gifts to get at Christmas/Birthdays/Easter/Kwanzaa.

A GREAT option is Grooveshark, th sign up is free for all I know and it lets you keep your playlist anywhere you have internet access.

Grooveshark is the best online music streaming service around right now. If you're looking for the ability to buy songs, I believe Zune Pass is good. You pay so much a month and get a few downloads that you keep and unlimited downloads as long are you remain part of the service. That was last time I checked though.

My parents have Rhapsody. It is like an itunes that you dont have to pay per song. i dont know the price per month but its fairly low. Its got like everything. your able to pay another small fee and have any music you want on phones and stuff. I can also have it on my iTouch and i can download songs and play them even when offline anywhere.

It's near the end of the month, so your 40 hours of free Pandora will get renewed soon. Stick with Pandora for a month or two and see if you like it enough to pay to get rid of the 40 hour limit. I've started using Pandora recently. I'm getting quite a few repeats after ~8-12 hours of listening to a station based on Scott Brown and Basshunter, but I'm still getting some new songs. There's probably more of a selection if you listen to more mainstream genres.

I haven't really tried last.fm radio much, but Pandora seems to use a much more sophisticated technique of suggesting songs you might like.

Spotify. Enough said.

I use iTunes and Youtube. Bought 2 albums and ~10 songs so far.

Going to answer that one question in your post, OP.

I "download" a large majority of my music. Especially music that obviously can't be bought in the United States. If I do have enough money one day, I'll probably purchase the CDs though. A lot of bands I like are mostly foreign music. I also use last.fm to keep track of what I listen to the most, etc etc etc.

I've been using last.fm for about 2 1/2 years now. Though I primarily use it to keep track of how much I listen to music, I have found quite a lot of artists and songs that I likely wouldn't have found on my own.

There isn't a limit to skipping tracks, and as far as I know nor is there a limit to how much you can listen to.

I use Grooveshark. I get to choose what it plays and what it doesn't. The iOS(Jailbroken) app for it is pretty great too.