YouTube, Apple Music and Spotify are streaming services that offer about 30 million songs for only $10 a month. With a subscription, users have the opportunity to play any music offline or make a playlists of their music choice.
Though many new music streaming services have emerged in recent years, Pandora remains the most popular, with 70 percent of people polled being familiar with Pandora and 31 percent of people polled using it regularly, according to TIME.
Pandora is the most popular, but it is not necessarily the best. Some students on Cabrini’s campus prefer one over the other when it comes to music streaming platform.
When students debate over which platform is better, cost is a consideration.
“I think people are more prone to going to music streaming platforms that are free first [and] that still give the same quality of music,” Courtney Hathaway, a sophomore criminology major, said.
For this reason, Youtube is quite popular.
“I think more people prefer to go to Youtube before any other platform because they know that they will not have to pay for it,” Mary Scafidi, a freshman business and criminology double major, said. “People do not like to spend their money on trivial things like music. They also know that they can get it for free on Youtube. It is easier for them to go there instead.”
“I think people are more prone to go to Youtube because Youtube is actually free,” Ashley Juste, a junior biology major, said.
One downside of Youtube is that artists do not make money when people stream music for free; however, the average artist only makes somewhere between $0.006 and $0.0084 per stream, so the loss from using a free service is not considered massive by some. Regardless, some fans still think free services are bad for the artists.
“I think that the artists are not able to make as much money because people are not buying their songs,” Scafidi said.
While it does hurt the artist when people are not buying songs, they are still able to make money through merchandise sales and concert tours.
“I do not think this affects the artists,” Hathaway said. “I think it actually helps them.”
Even though there are some people who prefer Youtube over the rest of streaming services because it is more cost effective, there are some people who prefer Apple Music or Spotify, regardless of the additional cost.
Spotify is great for social sharing, as it allows accounts to share tracks with friends. Apple Music does the same thing now.
Another benefit of Apple Music is that you do not have to wait for new music.
“The other people who love to use other streaming services are more prone to Apple Music, to have the music you want on demand,” Hathaway said. “I think for my generation, it has a lot to do with not having much patience to wait.”
