If you
know me, you know that music is something very near and dear to my heart. But
if you know me, you also know I like to save money wherever I can. The fact
that I can listen to music without paying a dime really provokes me, and I must
say, I got away with it for quite a long time. I started off downloading music
onto my very first iPod in elementary school, using torrent websites. However,
that was super time consuming, and I eventually evolved to music apps instead.
Apps like Playtube, iTube, (whatever kind of tube you can think of, really) will allow
you to cache songs using the internet, and then play them without internet, wherever you go. This was my ideal way of listening to music for years, up
until about 3 months ago.
I was completely fine using these apps, until I realized
that you can run into a few problems. One being the most obvious reason –
legality. Not only is it just illegal to download most music, but you are also
stealing from the artist. Honestly, that part never bothered me too much
(possibly just because I’m envious of their success and fortune), but there are
definitely singers/songwriters that I respect enough to feel guilty about not
paying for their music.
Another issue I had was legitimately saving these songs. You
may have them on your phone at your disposal now, but who’s to say the app
won’t crash and lose everything? What if you need a new phone? What if a
shit-disturber friend thinks it would be funny to delete the app? Not to
mention that most of these apps get found out about and basically shut down for
copyright. Music occupies about 20GB of my phone space; it just wasn’t a
dependable option for me. So, without doing much research or even asking people
who have experience with it, I subscribed for Apple Music.
Apple Music is $9.99 a month standard, but there are plans
for families and students as well. The student rate is $4.99 a month, which could
help me a lot in the long run, but I just couldn’t be bothered to try and prove
to Apple that I actually am a
student. Ten dollars a month is not a lot of money in retrospect, considering I
used to buy the occasional full album on iTunes if I enjoyed majority of it.
Why spend ten dollars on one album, when I can pay that for an unlimited amount
of music?
Apple Music would not have been an option for me if it
required internet and couldn’t actually download the music to your device (ain’t
nobody got data for that). On the other hand, this means a lot of storage may
be needed. I think my favourite aspect of all is iCloud. Bless the Cloud!!!
This means all my downloaded music is saved in thin air and will follow me
through the depths of time hopping from device to device so I may always conveniently
be able to break out the Hoedown Throwdown when necessary.
My only complaint would be that it isn’t YouTube. Apple
Music does not have every
song/artist/album out there. There’s a decent amount, but being the masters of
innovation, I’m sure they could give us a little bit more than what we got. That
being said, it’s still easy to use, reliable, and gets the job done.
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