The cheapest way to listen to music

Goodbye Spotify, hello Sky Songs? John Fitzsimons investigates the cheapest way to listen to music on your PC and mobile phone.

This week, Sky has entered the fight for music downloads and music streaming, declaring war on iTunes - the biggest download site - and Spotify - the king of music streaming - with a one stop shop alternative: Sky Songs.

But is it any good?

How does Sky Songs work?

Sky Songs boasts a music library of more than four million songs, and there are two subscription models available. For £6.49 a month, you can download either an album (so long as it's priced at £6.49) or ten songs a month, and receive unlimited access to stream from its music library.

Alternatively, you can get a more expensive album, 15 songs, and the same access to the streaming library for £7.99 a month.

You can then download additional songs or albums from 65p or £6.49 respectively. Scanning the top ten singles, for example, the majority are available for 65p, but a notable few (including the current number 1, Bad Boys by Alexandra Burke) are priced at 99p.

It's a similar situation with the top ten albums - most are at £6.49, though a couple are priced at £7.99.

Is this better than iTunes and Spotify?

The thing to bear in mind with Sky Songs is that it is essentially offering the individual services of iTunes and Spotify, but in one single place.

With Spotify, you can stream music for free with adverts, or on a subscription basis, ad-free.

If you go for the subscription option, a single day pass sets you back 99p, while a monthly subscription comes to £9.99. And if you aren't already registered with Spotify, you'll have to rely on someone with a subscription inviting you to join - a right pain.

Not that long ago, you couldn't download from Spotify. However, in the last week or so they have integrated the 7Digital mp3 store into the program, allowing users to download tracks discovered on the Spotify system, typically costing around 79p. They can then be moved over to your iPod.

And if you have an iPhone, you can now download the Spotify application, giving you the ability to listen to your music on the go. The application is free, but you have to have a premium subscription.

Which brings me onto iTunes. From iTunes, you can't stream music, but you can download it for portable mp3 players. Songs can be purchased from as little as 59p, though the vast majority will set you back 79p.

A scan of the top selling albums on iTunes reveals a fair range of prices for albums - some will set you back only a couple of pounds, while others are £9.99 and above.

So price and convenience-wise, Sky Songs certainly seems to hold its own against the two biggest players. But there are a load of other places you can get your fix of downloadable music!

The usual suspects

Play.com and Amazon are always top of my list when shopping for CDs, but they also offer a decent service if you are only after downloadable tracks.

Amazon in particular offer a good range, with some absolute bargains - some tracks are even completely free, while other current chart tracks are as little as 29p!

You can also download the latest chart hits from HMV.com, with the odd track costing as little as 49p, while eMusic.com has long been a favourite of lovemoney.com readers, as it offers a far more eclectic and non-mainstream selection of tracks than its rivals.

However, remember that with eMusic you will be working on a subscription basis, rather than paying by the track, so make sure it really ticks your boxes before signing up. Subscriptions start at £9.99 a month, for which you get 24 tracks.

The mobile phone option

Another alternative, which I think is excellent, is the Nokia Comes with Music service, which is run alongside Orange.

The service works like a normal mobile phone tariff - for example, the cheapest deal for the Nokia 5800 phone with Comes with Music costs a shade under £20 a month, and you get 300 texts and 200 free minutes.

But the brilliant thing is that you then have unlimited downloads as part of the deal. So you can fill your mobile with as many of the six million tracks available at the Nokia Music Store as you like (or that you can fit on the phone!), without shelling out an extra penny!

The obvious catch is that the tracks are DRM protected, so you won't be able to move them over to another mp3 player, but if you are happy to combine your mobile with your mp3 player, then this is an unbelievable offer.

How they compare

I've put together the table below to outline the various services I've mentioned, and how they compare.

Sky Songs - any good?

I like the Sky Songs model, but in all honesty I won't be signing up to it.

One of the big downsides, I think, is that unless you take out a subscription you cannot even download single tracks. The reason Sky has made this decision is to encourage users to commit completely to using its service, rather than dibbing in and out, which makes sense but I'm not convinced it won't scare off occasional users.

The other isssue is that, with Sky Songs, there may be a month when you don't want any of the tracks available, but you will still have to fork out that £6.49.

Of course, you will still get an ad-free music stream for that price, and it's cheaper than the £9.99 you'd have to pay Spotify for a monthly subscription to an ad-free music stream. So if you currently subscribe to Spotify, then you stand to make an annual saving of £42 by switching to Sky songs, plus you'll get the added bonus of 10 free music tracks to download every month.

But then again, why pay for a service that you can get for free?  I don't mind listening to ads on the free version of Spotify if it means I don't have to pay for streaming music, and if I want to fill up my iPod, I prefer to do so at my own pace, and shop around for the outlet selling the track or album cheapest.

After all, if you can get an invitation to the free version of Spotify, you could listen to all the music you wanted to for free, and download 10 tracks for Amazon, every month - and it would only cost you £2.40. Compared to the subscription service from Sky songs, that's an annual saving of £49.08.

So, for now, I can't see a reason to switch from using the free version of Spotify for my streaming needs, and searching the various outlets for the cheapest price for any songs I want to download. But if you are definitely going to download at least ten songs a month, and can't cope with the adverts on Spotify (or get hold of an invitation to the free service), then Sky Songs might just be for you!

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