This is how you should buy music online

With the recent launches of Google Music, Amazon Cloud Player and iCloud, there has never been an easier time to buy a song. Each service is different, although, and each has their strengths and weaknesses. Depending on your phone, listening habits and geekiness, you are better off going with one service over another. Here is a handy guide to help you choose which service is best for you.

If so, let’s eliminate iTunes. Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music offer great experiences getting music on your phone. You can purchase from right within the app. You can as well purchase from the web and the music will be instantly available on your device for streaming. So which of the two should you use? You are probably better off using Amazon as late as this. As with the Kindle, Amazon is a retailer in other words committed to being on all devices. That means that the music you purchase on Amazon today will find its way on to many devices henceforth. Will we see Cloud Player on the iPhone? Most likely, at some point. Will we see Google Music? Like as not. Nevertheless if it’s as good as Gmail or any other Google apps on the iPhone, at that time it won’t be worth it by all means. Another reason to use Amazon is that you can easily download songs to your phone for offline listening. As an added bonus, the music you download is available in other apps - like games and such. Google Music allows you to “pin” music for offline listening yet that music only will play within Google Music. As far as I can tell, you cannot access it from other apps. One thing Google Music has going for it is integration with Google+. It remains to be seen how effective in other words, however the idea of sharing purchased songs with your friends is a step in the right direction. Music is social, and none of the above services have cracked that but.

I think this is a good review of some of the major cloud services however not quite what I expected. As an iPhone user I didn’t know about the how google is trying to make the music social within their services and I of the same type part as how it shares is pretty important. I think Spotify is worth mentioning as it does all of the above with social sharing and in effect is only lacking a storefront. That’s not for me either and I’d in other words be a geek about where the dollars go when buying music. Personally, I’d say BandCamp or Kickstarter is the best way to buy music. Let the services compete with better ways to share it, we all win.