How are you Listening to Your Music?

 Pat Boody – Contributing Writer

iTunes or Spotify, which is the more efficient platform for music listening? Millions listen to countless hours of music at any given time of day; whether attempting to make it through their tedious desk jobs, during an intense workout or just relaxing in the comfort of their home. iTunes has been around since the turn of the century, but a newer program, Spotify, is rapidly acquiring a strong fan base.
For a small monthly fee, you can borrow the copyrights to as many artists as you please on Spotify. The program is accessible through just about any device with internet capabilities. As far as selection goes, Spotify has just about every artist with millions of songs for anyone to enjoy. (To use Spotify, you just search for the band or artist and you’re able to hear what they have to offer.) Many perks are included with this platform. A radio function, which is similar to Pandora, may be found to be suitable for those seeking variety. Another benefit is its capability to link up with LastFM. The website is used primarily to stream music, but also to build a profile that shows what artists the listener is into. According to which musicians the user listens to most often, Spotify will take these artists and add them to your LastFM library. An additional feature is the ability to create playlists. The user can create a vast library of their own carefully selected music and only for the price of five dollars a month.
iTunes was one of the first media players with the ability to store and play music, movies, TV shows and podcasts. Anyone with an iPod will most likely use iTunes to store and download their music along with countless other forms of media. The ability to have all sorts of files in one place makes iTunes that much more user friendly. A limitless amount of music and other files can be stored on iTunes. What really distinguishes iTunes from Spotify is the fact that each individual piece of music can be sold by itself and when purchased, the user actually owns the song. As far as artists receiving profits from sales of their product on either Spotify or iTunes, an artist actually makes more per stream on Spotify than a purchase on  iTunes. Although making more profit than Spotify, ITunes may actually give the artist more recognition if they are up and coming simply because it is the more popular program.
Both programs are great ways to listen to music and each have their advantages. iTunes is definitely the prefered form of listening to music. Although, what can be viewed as an incentive to try out Spotify, at least for those who truly support their favorite artists popularity, is the fact that it pays the artists more for their music than iTunes does. However, many who are still loyal to iTunes and prefer to actually own the music will not make the switch to Spotify, it is still a reputable website. If you’re a person who loves listening to music and supporting your favorite musicians, then either program will get the job done just fine.