One other free alternative to buying a subscription is online radio or on-demand radio. I really like Yahoo Launchcast Radio. It is free and lets you listen to as much music as you what with ads. You can even skip tracks if you want to.

First off there are certainly advantages and disadvantages to both types of services and ultimatly depends on what you prefer and what meets your needs.

Lets first take a look at Google888’s reasons:
#1 “Having to Pay the Man”, ” Disk space, etc.”
Giving money to “The Man” is no new concept and it’s a concept that has been tested and works very well. Just think of all the things people “Subscribe” to by paying the man. “Renting an apartment, DVDs, Parking Spaces, Leasing a Car, Bank Loans, etc etc.”

Why is “paying the man” worse for music than for say renting an apartment? You rent for as long as you need it then you move on, with music I rent it as long as I need it (the length of time before I get sick of a song) and then either I buy it cause I know I really like it, or I have found something new and better (a new song that just came out).

Frankly, I rarely listen to any given song more than one or two years, I’m guess most people listen to a song over and over for the first 2-3 months then it quickly fades out of memory. We are humans, we get tired of the same thing over and over.

The nice thing about subscription is that if you do cancel it or forget to pay, your music is still there on your computer, sure it takes up space but either way it would take up space whether I owned it or not. When I want to pay for the service again I pay it, it syncs my music and I’m ready to go. Piece of cake.

Or lets say my music HD crashed, crap just lost 80 gigs of songs, oh sweet I can just sign-in and go find the artists again and hit download, sure it might take some time. But how many times does apple allow you to “recover” your music? Once or Twice I believe? That would suck to lose 90 gigs of owned songs.

#2″Traveling”
I personally do not travel a lot so this doesn’t affect me to much, but your average person doesn’t travel that much either. Zune Marketplace lets me go for at least 2 weeks before needing to update again. I know very few people who take more than 2 week vacations. And those people I do know who take a lot of business trips or vactions always take at least a laptop along, in which case you can download the free Zune market place software and update. No problem.

Secondly, your on vacation, why would you want to sit behind your headphones all day on vacation, go out and talk to people, interact with the locals. What a boring vaction just listening to music all day.

Ohh and you mentioned having to pay the hotel for music, guess what, you are paying the hotel to RENT/SUBSCRIBE from them a room. ha

#3 Piracy and Viruses
I have never ever gotten a virus from music I downloaded. If this idea of Rhapsody and Napster getting all their music stripped from DRM and stuff is true (which I’m sure it is) then people who buy music from iTunes could just as easily download a drm free song with a virus because they saw that it was free on some smucks site and bam they have it to. In my opinon this “Reason” isn’t specific to subscription or pay per song.

#4 Ipods
Just because Apple won’t support WM drm doesn’t mean that subscription service is bad, maybe indeed it means Ipod is bad cause they are FORCING you into a specific format and provider (now that is scary)

HAHAHA, I laughed so hard when I read that Ipods are sleek and cool looking and other “UGLY” players puts people in an awkward position to get the “Cool” ipod. I’m sorry but if people are shallow enough to think that a device makes them cool or not, then they have other issues. I want to use something that works, works well, meets my needs and is durable. Looks are a nice perk. Plus ther are plenty of other mp3 players that are sleek and elegant and are actually somewhat aligned with each person’s own indivduals taste in color for instance.

#5 Availablity
I think this is pretty weak to, there are plenty of services that you can get music from. Is ituens supported everywhere in the world? I really do not know, but I doubt it.

Now let me explain why I use subscription over pay per song.
I pay something like $15/month for Zune marketplace, this gives me access to 3 Million + songs that I can listen to. Which is about half of iTunes (but iTunes has been around far longer than ZMP). Each song on iTunes is 99 cents.

Lets say that you own 5,000 songs from iTunes, which is approximatly $5,000 you spent on songs, YIKES. Lets say you bought those songs over a 5 year period which would average $1,000 per year. YIKES.

Now ,lets say I have 100,000 songs, which I have collected over 28 years of “paying the man” and I pay $15/month. That means I spent $5,040 in 28 years for 100,000 songs, compared to you paying $5,000 for your measly 5,000 songs over just 5 years.

Let me say that again. I can “Pay the Man” for 28 YEARS off what you pay for just 5,000 songs in 5 years. Why in the world would you want to actually Own a song, it makes no sense.

Of those 5,000 songs you downloaded, I would guess you listen to maybe 500 of them on a regular basis after 5 years, and more than half of them you never listen to again.

Where I can listen to old stuff, new stuff, pop, rock, classical, punk, etc and try any kind of music I choose to listen to on an particular day for just $15/month

That is why I subscribe to my music.

Musicians really worth their salt, who about their work, want to share it with the rest of the world and enjoy others adding their material to their collection.

It’s not really about the money after they’ve made it, they just want to be able to see we originally wrote and produced this.

As you might know NIN released their new album via their website. It was a 2 disk instumental LP. It came in a variety of prices. from a 300 dollar model, or the 5 dollar MP3 only model. I choosed the 12 dollar mp3/ and cd to-be-mailed- model of buying the music.

Along with the mp3s you were able to DL off of Nine Inch Nails website they included a folder of about 20 to 25 wallpapers to put on your computer, aswell as liner notes and the booklet.

Iv noticed in the last few weeks of having the record, i have looked at the artwork on my computer way more times then i have looked at their last cd’s artwork that came out over a year ago! Its availible, its right here on my computer in perfect picture format.

I do 90 percent of my listening on the computer, so it makes sense to have it at my disposle.

Since buying the Nine Inch Nails record, i have taken an interest in digital media. I have bought 2 e-books even!

So bringing back to your prescription service of tunes. The biggest wonder is, how are there artists going to get paid the same amount of money they are now? Its very concerning to me that all this great music we listen to might not beable to produce because of not getting properly payed. Then again if its all digital on Itunes through prescription, it still cuts out the psyical cd pressing aswell as distribution.

I was also thinking about the affects of itunes not having some of the underground artists music on their service. See almost all smaller bands have myspaces, which gives you 6 songs to listen to. That should definitly be enough to support their cause. Buy the smaller bands albums off of their website, give them the direct support. If the prescription service is only 15-20 dollars for unlimted access to almost every artist that you know of, paying a few extra dollars to support the bands directly that really needs it is not such a bad idea!

I dont like the rhapsody idea, for just not being able to load the tunes unto my iPod. I do use P2P services, aswell as music blogs. If there was a way for me to LEGALLY obtain the music i want via the internet with artwork and lyrics while still being able to load it unto my iPod while saving a few dollars at the same time i am totally for it.

love your site, hopefully i wasnt to long winded! i just needed to vent haha.

It would have been better to talk about purchasing vs. renting in general, rather than calling out certain products and comparing them against iTunes. This way, the reader could think about it in whichever context they favor, be it iTunes, AmazonMP3, or even eMusic. As it stands, Googler comes across simply as an Apple apologist.

Full Disclosure: I have an iPod Nano (Gen3 8GB), and use it and iTunes every day.