Talk Nerdy To Me: The Best Music Service Model?

In our weekly reviews department meeting this past Monday, a debate broke out. This is nothing new: in past meetings, our department has debated everything from global warming to why I am wearing this stupid-looking hat.

But this week, senior editor Melissa J. Perenson, senior associate editor Danny Allen, staff editor Ginny Mies, senior performance analyst Elliott Kirschling, and I were debating the merits of various online music services. We'd just finished testing Apple's new iPod Nano and iPod Touch, and were wondering whether to boost those players' lab scores because they supports iTunes. That alone gives the players streamlined access to more than 8 million songs and close to 40,000 chunks of video content--and in the case of the iPod Touch, thousands of available apps.

Now, any time you bring up iTunes in a room full of opinionated people, you're going to have a heated debate on your hands. Some of those in the room called iTunes the best music service out there due to the sheer number of offerings, its nearly flawless integration with the market-leading iPod, and the fact that the App Store makes it much more than just a music service. Others in the rooms noted that it's a closed ecosystem that has a large footprint, no subscription service, offers mostly DRM-protected songs in the AAC format only, and only works seamlessly with a handful of players other than the iPod.

Long story short, we left the meeting agreeing to disagree. And some of us were limping.

There are simply too many variables to consider when it came to dubbing a music service "better" than another. A lot of those variables have to do with things other than the service itself: all factoring in equally are the formats you want your music to be in, the style of the service, the files and services supported by your portable player, and your preferred types of non-music content (podcasts, audio books, TV shows, and what have you). Over the past few days, it's been serious food for thought.

For now, we'd love to get your input on the music-service model you use and like the best. There are a lot of good music services out there, and they do things a whole lot differently:

• Free streaming services, such as Pandora and Slacker. These services let you listen to as much music as you want for free, but you have less control over what you're listening to; you build personal "radio stations" based on artists you like, and these services play those artists and similar artists at random. Pandora has its own app for the iPhone and iPod Touch, while Slacker's service works with its own player (we're currently testing the second-gen player) and on the BlackBerry.
• Subscribe-to-own services, such as eMusic. eMusic is unique in that you pay a subscription fee that lets you download a certain number of tracks per month, but you get to keep those tracks forever. eMusic is a great source for music on independent and smaller labels, and its song library is now 4 million deep.
• Hybrid subscription/pay-per-download services, such as Rhapsody and Napster. These let you "rent" as much music as you want for a monthly fee. You can also buy and download individual tracks to "own" permanently, just like in the iTunes Music Store. However, your monthly rentals disappear once your monthly membership is discontinued.
• Pay-per-download services, such as iTunes and Amazon.com Music. These are straightforward: you buy tracks, download them, and own them. In some cases, you may be limited in terms of the number of computers or devices to which you can transfer these tracks.

So in a perfect world, in which all services worked with all players, and all of these music-service models had the same selection of tunes, which model would you choose? Vote in our poll and let us know about your favorite (or least-favorite) services in the Comments section below.