In the old golden day, music came on cassettes and compact disks (CDs).
With the evolution of better, faster, stable internet with Gigahertz processing power for computers, better/stable computer applications came along. With the invention of gesture-based high-tech mobile devices like the iPhone, modern, always accessible pocket-friendly apps emerged.
With faster 4G and 5G internet mobile data, internet-ready cloud-enabled apps came with better interactions. Moreover, even if mobile devices got more than 64/128/256/500 GB and 1 TB of internal storage, people will never have to come to desktop/laptop computers to back up and free up storage.
Apple first introduced Apple iTunes with a CD Ripping facility to convert already bought music cd collections to mp3 for easy listening on Mac computers and then a range of iPods. iPods didn’t have to have internet in the early days then. They were internet ready after a few years, the video on iPods and then an iPhone introduction.
Apple iTunes used to have an Apple iTunes store for purchasing digital music in mp3 aac format for better sound quality.
With my almost INR 20,000/- CDs collection, then iTunes music purchases of nearly INR 5,000/- of mp3s, I was locked into iTunes forever as I couldn’t convert my music purchases or transfer them to different music services like Spotify / Amazon Music. As I will lose my purchased music, I never moved to Apple Music Streaming service as I don’t want to pay a monthly or yearly fee to listen to my favourite choice of music that I already own.
I must admit Apple iTunes’ massive collection of all Indian (Marathi/Hindi/Tamil/Kannada/Bengali and more), English, French/Pakistani/African artists that you may not find elsewhere.
One issue with Subscription-based Music Service providers is that you don’t own music forever. You have to renew your account at specific intervals. So it is more costly than a one-time purchase. Then music is streamed through the internet, so you don’t have it always on your device in an always-ready format. Suppose you are inside a village or in remote mountains where the internet is unavailable. In that case, you can’t even play the music you choose, or a music player may ask you for your sign-in as it can’t verify your account validity over the internet.
So having Music Streaming Service without stable internet is a missed opportunity.
Choose wisely if you want to own music forever in MP3 format or rent it with a monthly/yearly subscription.
Thanks & Regards
Mandar Apte
