Why Rdio.com Is Better than the iTunes Music Store

When Apple‘s iTunes was introduced back in 2001, it rekindled my interest and purchasing of music. I was so excited by the program that I immediately started converting all my rather large collection of CDs into MP3 tracks. I then sold off my CDs and remaining vinyl albums, and used the money for additional iTunes purchases. iTunes made managing and listening music a wholly different experience. But in the last few years, iTunes has taken a back seat to streaming music services, which I find a cheaper and better way to listen to music. If you don’t know about sites like Rdio.com, read on and find out why you should consider using a streaming music service over iTunes.

What Is Streaming Music?

In case you don’t know, streaming music over the Internet simply means listening to music via a website like Rdio.com, Pandora.com, Last.fm, Maestro.fm. These sites have huge libraries of music, and provide unlimited access to their music catalogue to registered members. As long as you have an internet connection and a membership to one of these sites, you will have access to an abundance of music on your computer and mobile phone.

No File Downloads

When you purchase and download music tracks from iTunes, they end up using space on your computer hard drive or external drives. Your purchased tracks are yours to keep, but the larger your iTunes library grows, the more memory space you will need to maintain it. You will also need to back up those files, because if you ever experience hard drive failure you could possibly lose your investment in all the music tracks you purchased. My current iTunes library contains over a 130 gigabytes of music and media files. It would probably be twice that much if I were still purchasing music from the iTunes Music Store.

With Rdio.com and other streaming music sites, the music you listen to is stored on a server beyond your computer. This means you don’t have to download music to your computer or back up your music to another hard drive.

Larger Collection of Music

With iTunes, you are limited to only listening to music you purchase. Albums typically run between $10 and $15. The collection of music on iTunes is huge, but it becomes very costly to download and access it.