When I worked at a car wash during my high school years, my disposable income was primarily spent on CDs. I would spend hundreds of dollars each year to satisfy my musical sweet tooth. Now that I’m married, and hopefully more responsible, I have to weigh each purchase more carefully. During the past five years, I have widdled down my habit to around one CD a month. That is, until a few months ago.

This summer I discovered Yahoo! Music. There is an unlimited music service that allows you to download an unlimited number of tracks from the Yahoo! library onto your computer. If you pay annually, it breaks down to $6 a month. Because I have the tendency to listen to a new album incessantly for a few weeks, and then add it to my pile of CDs that only come out on occasion, I figured that an unlimited service just might be what I need. The down sides are that I can only listen to the music on a computer, and when I stop forking over the $6, then the music goes *poof*.

In response to these two arguments, I have two solutions. To the “computer-only” problem, I have added some good speakers to my computer, and then I just blast the music throughout the house. There are also times that I hook my laptop up to my stereo, and get some really kicking sound out of it. However, there is no substitute for taking the music in the car with you. In response to this, Yahoo! has created an offering called Unlimited To Go. You’ll have to give $15 a month for this privilege, but you’ll be able to put your music on a compatable MP3 player (sorry, no iPod support).

Many people get caught up by the “you don’t really own the music” argument, because you have to say bye-bye to your library if you stop paying. In response to this, I look at my growing pile of CDs I don’t listen to anymore, and wonder if it is really all that important to own an album for eternity. New music comes along, music tastes change, and new formats emerge every decade. Besides all this, I have no intentions of giving up my subscription, ever. It’s totally worth it.

The biggest downfall is the music selection. You don’t truly have access to every song ever made. While there are over 2 million songs in the library, some bands and labels have decided not to let their music be on the buffet table. In those cases you need to purchase the CD to get your fix. I find about one in every 20 albums that I want to listen to are not in the library.

Besides the unlimited access to music, Yahoo! Jukebox integrates some pretty useful features. You can listen to a variety of XM-like stations, commercial free, and even select an artist, and play their “fan radio” station. For example, right now I am listening to the “Lifehouse fan radio” station, and it is playing artists similar to Lifehouse, with about one in every ten songs being a Lifehouse hit. It’s an easy way to play a style of music I like, quickly.

I have heard that Rhapsody offers a better experience, and I’m thinking of trying that service out in the next month or so. I’ll post again when I do.