If I had to pick one of my 5 senses to give up, hearing would be my last choice. I would give up my senses in the following order: smell, taste, touch, sight, and then finally hearing. Hopefully I’ll never have to make that choice, but if I did, hearing would go last. Why? I am a Music lover and can’t imagine a life without music. As the soundtrack to my life, the music that I love has gotten me through the most difficult of times and has brought even more joy to the best times of my life.

When I hear certain albums and songs today, I am transported instantly into the past. Before my wife and I were married, in the early stages of our blossoming relationship, Dashboard Confessional’s first album, The Swiss Army Romance, was our soundtrack. That was a number of years ago, but every time I listen to it, my mind floods with memories and emotions and I fall in love with her a little bit more, all over again. Other songs take me back to memories of college road trips, old friends, previous jobs, fun nights at dance clubs, end of relationships, and vacations of years gone by.

I don’t listen to music as background noise; I listen because music is meaningful and makes life much more enjoyable. I listen to music at home when I’m working, in the car, and when I’m relaxing. In this article I’ll tell you how I stream, purchase, and listen to the music that I love.

Where Does Music Come From?

For me personally, where my music comes from is not as important to me as simply listening to it. I also don’t concern myself too much with some of the more technical aspects of music that my hardcore audiophile friends focus on – file formats, bit rates, and terms like ‘lossless compression’. I choose my sources of music differently than some of those friends choose their own music. My primary goal is to get the music into my eardrums. Whether that music comes from a download, a streaming sources, or even a CD doesn’t matter to me.

(Note on CDs – I am a very tactile person and enjoy holding the jewel case and reading the liner notes, so CDs still appeal to me. Also, I love thrift stores and used record/ CD stores and am always looking for musical ‘treasures’. So, yes, I have to confess that I still buy CDs!. I am the digital equivalent of the ‘vinyl-philes’ who collect old vinyl records.)

My Download Platform of Choice

Since I refuse to buy an iPod, iPad, or iPhone (no matter how superior all my Apple users friends tell me they are), I’ve never bought anything from iTunes. And even though I am an Android user, I’ve never purchased music from Google Play. The truth is that I don’t buy a lot of music these days.

Whenever I do decide to buy music, it’s usually to support one of my favorite bands like Raleigh, NC’s own American Aquarium. Their latest album Wolves, which was released a couple of months ago, is being sold on multiple sites, but I chose Amazon.com’s digital music section, only because I’ve bought music there in the past (I’m a creature of habit).

The Ease and Freedom of Streaming

For me, it is hard to pay money for music when I can get it for free. Don’t worry, I’m not a digital pirate who has an extensive collection of illegally downloaded music. But when I find music that I love that is streaming from the artist’s website, Amazon Prime, Spotify, or some other site, I’ll stream it instead of forking over my hard-earned money.

With my Amazon Prime membership I can stream some of American Aquarium’s older albums for free. However, I usually don’t use Prime’s streaming services, because as a creature of habit I default to Pandora internet radio (after all if it ain’t broke, why try to fix it?). I’ve been using Pandora since its inception and have never bothered to really try anything else on a regular basis. When I am working, I frequently stream Pandora. I have a few stations that play many of my favorite groups (both old and current favorites) and let me discover new ones. And I can listen almost anytime, at home or on the go.

Old School Storage

I’m a bit ‘old school’ in the sense that when I pay money for something, I want to have that thing. So even if I can stream that music anytime that I please, I also want a download of my music to store on my phone. I have an Android equipped LG mobile phone with a Micro-SD card slot where I store my current music on a 30GB SD card. I store older music on my laptop.

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