When it comes to most things, I'm a pretty standard early adopter. If I think I might like it, or use it, I'll try it out. Even if I know it might be a bit wonky in some way or another, the hope is that it's stable enough for daily usage. Of course, whether it is or not really depends on the product.
But it's not always hardware. I'm old enough at this point that I was around for the transition from CDs to MP3s, where we moved away from the physical discs to a more digital domain. This is something I was all for, ready to jump in without a moment's hesitation.
I was really not a fan of carrying around CDs.
I bought a lot of music via iTunes over a long stretch of time. But I obviously also "burnt" CDs so I could just have my physical music collection stored digitally and readily available. But as I made the transition to a digital collection, and bought the majority of my music there to listen to on old iPods, I was hoping for a way to save some money.
Which is why I was all-in with a subscription music service. I kicked things off with the Zune Pass way back when, which gave us a huge collection of music at our fingertips as long as we forked over a set amount of money on a monthly basis. I didn't even hesitate back then. Sure, there'd be some months where there wouldn't be any new music I'd want to buy, but, as a whole, I knew I'd be saving money. So much more music right there, ready to be downloaded and listened to.
I've tried a lot of streaming services over the years. I loved Rdio when that was around. But I've basically just settled in with Spotify at this point. I've given Apple Music a shot, but I've just been using Spotify for so long it knows me well enough that I don't want to stop using it.
Spotify has millions of paid subscribers, but it has even more free subscribers, which means they listen to music and also listen to ads. And I know quite a few people who use Pandora, too, without forking over the monthly subscription cost to avoid those ads.
I'm not a huge fan of listening to ads, but I can live with it. One of the reasons I pay every month, though, is being able to download music and listen offline.
I've been curious lately, though. Do you use a streaming music service, and, if you do, do you pay the monthly subscription fee attached, or do you keep it free and deal with the ads? And if you aren't paying for a streaming service, what has kept you away from paying the monthly fee?