Amazon Prime music downloads

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May 29, 2018
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let's get this out of the way up front -- I'm old....not 'tech ignorant' but no Steve Jobs either. My question: is there a music streaming service that provides the ability to keep downloaded tracks even after I've cancelled my subscription? I'm Amazon Prime now, which wife and I use regularly, but I understand that should we drop that at some point, I'll have no access to the hundreds of songs I've downloaded over the years. How can I avoid that? Also looking at adding Music Unlimited as there are many tracks not available on regular Prime Music.
 
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When you subscribe to a streaming service, you are not licensed to keep a copy of the song/movie being played. You are only licensed to stream it while your account is current and paid. The moment you cancel your account, you lose rights to access the material you previously had access to.

You need to compare streaming vs buying on a cost per song basis.

  • ■If you're going to buy 1000 songs at $1.29 each, that's $1290. If a streaming service costs $10/mo, that means it'll take ($1290)/($10/mo) = 129 months = 10 years 9 months for the streaming service to cost more than outright purchasing 1000 songs.
    ■If you don't listen to music much and would only buy a couple hundred songs, then obviously it's cheaper to buy those songs.
    ■If...
When you subscribe to a streaming service, you are not licensed to keep a copy of the song/movie being played. You are only licensed to stream it while your account is current and paid. The moment you cancel your account, you lose rights to access the material you previously had access to.

You need to compare streaming vs buying on a cost per song basis.

  • ■If you're going to buy 1000 songs at $1.29 each, that's $1290. If a streaming service costs $10/mo, that means it'll take ($1290)/($10/mo) = 129 months = 10 years 9 months for the streaming service to cost more than outright purchasing 1000 songs.
    ■If you don't listen to music much and would only buy a couple hundred songs, then obviously it's cheaper to buy those songs.
    ■If you listen to music a lot and would have to buy 10,000 songs to duplicate the library you stream, then obviously you're not going to live for 108 more years, so the streaming service ends up being cheaper.
Amazon Prime is a bit more complex since you get other benefits for the subscription, but the overall comparison is still the same. I would suggest turning off one-click shopping. When you buy from Amazon "the long way", during checkout you'll be offered a bunch of shipping options. Frequently, one of those choices is slower shipping (a week or two) in exchange for $1 in digital credits (they seem to change the type of credit every few weeks). Since you have Prime, you don't pay for shipping. So if you have a big list of things to buy from Amazon, don't buy them all at once. Buy them one at a time so you can build up those $1 digital credits. I put everything I want to buy in the "save for later" list, then move them into my cart for checkout one at a time when these digital credits are available.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000811661

Then you can use those digital credits to buy digital downloads of movies and songs. These are purchases, so will remain available to you even if you cancel Prime (you'll only lose them if you lose access to your Amazon account). Start with the songs/albums you simply must own, then slowly start buying up the songs you want to keep after you cancel Prime. Or if you intend to keep Prime like I do, use the credits to buy songs which aren't available with Prime Music, instead of paying extra for their Music Unlimited service.
 
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