The Daily Times

A lot has changed since the Napster revolution of the early 2000s. In those halcyon days, the music was free but the lawsuits were expensive.

What wasn’t clear at the time that was the fact that Napster itself was less of a revolt against paying for music than it was a vote for convenience in format and delivery. Music was going digital, and, in many ways, the recording industry created its own piracy problem by trying to pretend that it could continue to sell everyone metal discs in plastic casings at something like a 70 percent markup.

A decade later, everyone’s a little wiser when it comes to digital music. And the recording industry is working hard to give people want they want. By and large, the most popular current model is something akin to Netflix for music. “Stream, don’t own” could be the wave of the future, and a few services are banking on music lovers jumping on this bandwagon.

Rdio, Mog and most recently (and perhaps most famously) Spotify are delivering various iterations of this type of service. Some people will remember Rhapsody as an early provider of streaming music on Windows computers and a few high-end stereo devices.

The new breed of services (including Rhapsody’s latest incarnation) up the ante on streaming music by providing web interfaces, apps for a variety of mobile devices and desktop apps for both Mac and Windows. The convenience is phenomenal. Having access to an essentially unlimited catalog of music, and especially being able to visit a veritable buffet of new releases every week is undeniably cool.

I’ve tried all the services. I won’t go into a full-fledged review of them here, but suffice it to say each has it’s own advantages and sticking points. They all have a free trial available (most of them have generous extended trial periods) and I suggest you take a look at each service to see which one you may like.

Here’s where it gets dicey.

All these services are great. I can see many people spending $5 to $10 a month for any one of these streaming music providers. Spotify has probably the most generous free account and I imagine a ton of people will enjoy the free service with no desire to upgrade.

But I don’t really like any of them.

Maybe I’m too old-school (or just plain old), but there’s something about the idea of streaming music that gives me a bit of a stress headache. What if I lose the network? Well, sure, I can sync some music for offline listening, but that just puts me back to managing a library of digital files ... and I don’t actually own any of those files I’m storing and managing.

The thing is, I want to own my music. I want a library of songs that I control and have access to regardless of my network connection or subscription status.

I jumped on the digital music bandwagon nearly as soon as iTunes came out. I converted my entire CD collection to digital files in preparation for an extended stay overseas in 2000 and I haven’t looked back since.

Of course maintaining a huge collection of digital music files has its own stress points. Backing up the files and maintaining hard drive space to support a large music library can be daunting. That’s why I’m so excited about a new service from iTunes called iTunes match. For $25 per year, the service offers an online backup of my entire music library availble anywhere I have access to iTunes, whether on my Mac, a Windows computer or an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad device.

For me it’s the best of all possible worlds.

I don’t have to worry about where my files are saved or backed up because I know I can re-download any file whenever I need to. Any music I purchase from iTunes is automatically included in my online backup and I don’t have to do anything to make it happen.

I’ve never been more relaxed about my music collection.

I’ve more or less achieved my ideal setup for listening to and collecting music. To check out new releases, I use NPR’s amazing online music services (check out http://nprmusic.org , or the NPR music app on your iPhone or iPod touch), along with a free Spotify account. Songs and albums that make the cut get purchased and added to my always available, always-backed up iTunes music library.

It’s an amazing time to be a music fan. There have never been more options for discovering and collecting new songs and albums, and all of them are 100 percent legal and ethical to boot.

If you’ve not acheived your perfect setup, take the time to explore these great options for streaming or owning the music you love. You’ll be glad you did.

Contact timothy hankins at (weekendcolumn@hnkns.com)

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