Before I got the offer to try Spotify premium for 3 months for $.99 cents, I was an avid Pandora user. The occasional ad didn’t both me too much as I had the Pandora stream music through my Xbox to play music for the house. This was the biggest perk. Pandora always had good applications for the Amazon Kindles, so if were in the area of the house that couldn’t hear the tv, we could still listen to music via that. I even tried Microsoft Groove for a month with their free trial and that was a great service with the music videos playing on the Xbox. That month with Groove was great but its lack of relevant features and price tag is why we didn’t purchase more months of it at $9.99 a month.

The only current downside I have for Spotify is the lack of application on the Xbox One. It has a Playstation app but my Xbox is the main console for the household. To be able to stream music easier, I have to settle for Pandora currently. Granted, I do not pay for the premium version of Pandora so I have to hear the occasional ad but currently its benefits don’t appeal to me.

The higher quality audio doesn’t affect my family or myself because we can’t really tell the difference. My wife has a hearing problem that has required multiple surgeries so she has limited hearing in one of her ears and I probably have partially damaged hearing from the concerts I went to when I was younger. So we can’t really tell the difference in the audio streams.

The no ads during the music is a great perk. Nothing kills a music session like an advertisement. If I wanted advertisements with my music I would listen to the radio more often. This is similar to the offers to get SirusXM for my vehicle again after the free trial ended. For $15.99 a month, they were offering more radio station with ads, a value that we didn’t find worth it. Granted some of the station were better that ones we could get over FM airwaves, the cost wasn’t right. Because that price didn’t include streaming options for while we were home. The amount of time spent in the car with SirusXM didn’t make it worth it.

One alternative we have done was to purchase an iPod and an auxiliary cord to plug into our vehicles and listen to music that way. We could listen to the music that we wanted in a playlist we designed, or we could put the music on shuffle let the iPod decide what we would listen to. Over time this was the cheap option for us.

Currently the decision is still in the air about renewing Spotify when its 3-month trial comes due, but for now, it is a great service.

I am starting to use Last.Fm again, so go check out what I have been listening to.