5 Modern Ways to Listen to Music

While record players and the car radio are definite favorites, there are new (and often convenient) ways to listen to music.

There are virtually hundreds of apps, websites, and systems that offer music streaming services, so we’ve broken it down to our top 5 recommendations.

#1 YouTube

It’s no doubt that YouTube is the place to go to watch clips from The Tonight Show and cute cat videos. But YouTube is most famous for – you probably guessed it – music videos.

You can search any song you like, and chances are there will be some kind of video accompanying it. It could be a full-on music video, a lyric video, or a live concert video.

If you’re more of a visual person, YouTube is the place to go to enjoy the music you love.

#2 Spotify

Before music streaming services, we used to pay a certain dollar amount to download a song. You may remember purchasing a song off of iTunes or perhaps Amazon for 99 cents — and you still can — but now, the majority of listeners opt for a streaming service.

Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services. You can listen to any song you want, and you don’t have to pay for it. The way they get around this is by making you listen to ads every couple of songs.

You can always opt for the premium subscription, which costs about $10/month to skip the ads.

But there are also a lot of cool features that Spotify has. One is that you can listen to podcasts on this platform. Some of our favorites are 99% Invisible and Criminal.

Another is that there are virtually thousands upon thousands of pre-made playlists. You can choose a playlist based off of the “mood” you’re in – are you trying to study? Are you wanting to relax? do you need a confidence boost? – and this is a really cool way to experience music you’ve never heard before.

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#3 SiriusXM

If you’ve bought a car with a screen in the last few years, you’ve probably been introduced to SiriusXM. This is commercial-free satellite radio that has over 150 channels of music, sports, talk, comedy, entertainment, news, and pretty much anything else you can think of.

This is a paid monthly subscription that starts at around $11/month. If you commute a lot and are a talk-radio lover, SiriusXM is a really cool option.

Here’s just a sampling of some popular channels and shows:

• The Beatles Channel
• NFL Radio
• Music stations by decade –50’s, 60’s, 70’s, etc.
• Howard Stern Show
• Joel Osteen Radio
• FOX News Headlines 24/7
• The Dr. Laura Program on Stars

It’s worth noting that you can also listen online or in your home – you don’t necessarily have to be in your car.

#4 Alexa

Alexa is Amazon’s robot – the one that can answer questions about the weather and whatnot. One of the more useful things Alexa can do is play music and podcasts.

All you have to do is say something like: “Alexa, play The Beatles.”

Alexa will think about it for a second and then start playing some of their popular songs.

You can ask her to play a specific song by a specific artist, or you can just say something like, “Alexa, play some good music.”

The nice thing about Alexa is that you can connect your other music services. For example, you can connect Spotify, iHeartRadio, or Pandora.

#5 Pandora

Finally, we have Pandora, which is similar to Spotify in that it’s an online music streaming service.

Pandora is the company who coined the Music Genome Project where musicologists listened to music across all genres and decades and collected musical details about each track. They studied 450 musical attributes. Why?

They wanted to know which songs you’d like the most based on what you already like.

So, if you say you want to listen to Elvis, they have a whole slew of related songs that will play in that station. In other words, Pandora responds to your musical tastes by tailoring radio stations for you.

The ad-supported version is free, or you can upgrade to a paid version for about $5/month.

Other articles you might like:

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• 20 Subscription Services You May Not Know Existed!
• Retiring Soon? 8 Practical Ways to Increase Your Retirement Income

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