Nowadays, barely anyone listens to music purchased off of itunes, google play music, or any other music-purchasing service. People are always using music streaming services like Spotify, Apple Music, and Soundcloud; what’re the benefits and disadvantages of both?

When you purchase music through iTunes or some other service, that song or album is permanently linked to your account and you can download it anywhere with no restrictions. This is obviously a big benefit as it will always be in your music library to choose from for a playlist or just to be selected for play.

A disadvantage to this though is the fact that you have to purchase the songs. If you’re a big music fan, you probably don’t want to keep buying new albums and singles of you favorite artists, just to listen to them all in one place.

The alternative to this problem is music streaming services. Companies like Spotify and Soundcloud offer a free way to listen to music: being able to stream and add any song to your playlists at your leisure, despite having to listen to some ads in between. These ads don’t come up very often, and Spotify even offers thirty-minute ad-free segments.

Sophomore John Santoro uses spotify and “loves it” due to the availability it brings along with the non-existent cost.

Senior Christian Menjivar says “Why pay for music when you can use soundcloud?” when asked whether or not these apps are useful compared to paying for songs.

You can bypass the advertisements on these streaming services by paying a monthly fee for each of these companies premium services. These payments aren’t too much either compared to how much you’d have to pay for the songs individually. Spotify Premium and Soundcloud Go+ come in at only ten dollars a month.

As opposed to having an optional payment option, Apple has their iTunes store and Apple Music as their response to music streaming. Apple music allows for a customer to pay either ten dollars a month for themselves or fifteen dollars a month for a family plan of up to six members.

The fact that the company leading in music purchases has made their own music streaming service, albeit not free, goes to show how the new trend of streaming music has really taken over traditionally buying the music.