Only in certain jurisdictions. In others copying recordings from the public library for personal use is perfectly legal, and in yet others it is permitted under the library’s licence fee contract with the recording industry.
Thanks psychonaut for the link.
In your face beowulf! Guess you don’t know everything as your (haughty) reply implies.
I have been using Rhapsody for two years+. I pay $10 a month for unlimited and while the selection is pretty good, the interface is HORRENDOUS. Sometimes I can log in with no problem, other times I can’t log in for a couple days. It’s odd because if I log out, I can search super fast, find what I want. If I want to search while logged in, it’s like it’s throttled. I should cancel, but it’s still a good deal and fits what I want.
I’m amazed that my kids, who can find anything they want for free, still pay 99c for their “tunage” using iTunes. Turns out they like the convenience, and they love the “easypeasy” software.
Wasn’t my anti-piracy screed, after all… ::sigh::
I use Zune subscription got a year’s worth for getting a Windows phone. It is streaming and subscription but you get 10 credits every month to use as you please, although I think they phased that out. I got grandfathered in.
Speaking as someone who makes his living through music, I’d like to say ‘Thank you’ to the OP for seeking to download your music in such a way as to make sure the artists are paid for their work. I really appreciate that.
I’m a big fan of emusic.com, but if you want both streaming and file download options, check out http://www.rdio.com.
Not any more, at least not in the U.S. The Big Four labels (Sony, Warner, Universal, EMI) are all on Emusic, but many major indie labels have left. (Matador and Merge were the two I cared about the most in this group).
Who the hell lives in Canada?
+1 To all you people who still pay artists for their work.
This topic has a good idea, but I’m sorry for the “legal issue of it”! 
Personally, I blame the unwillingness of companies to sell products to customers as being the primary force behind the creation of piracy, to begin with. If you compare when Amazon launched with “give us your credit card information via a website” (1995) and the creation of Napster (1999), there was basically a four year gap where the music industry could have tried opening up shop, but instead decided to wait until 2003 (the iTunes Store) before allowing people to buy music from musicians.
I used to be a big iTunes customer, but I’ve moved on to Google Music. I have a subscription to their All Access service now.
If your library gives you access to Freegal, that’s an option.
Youtube. With firefox, I can use the download helper app to get any of their videos, then I use VLC to convert them to mp3’s.
I’m fairly confident that stripping copyrighted music from YouTube doesn’t really count as “legit”.
Then I leave them in video form for academic purposes.
Depends on the licence. There are plenty of Creative Commons-licensed videos on YouTube, and ripping the audio tracks from these for your own personal use is expressly permitted.
I think this gives a good insight into which services people actually use to get to their music: Fixed internet applications: share of aggregate traffic 2016 | Statista
Personally I quite enjoy streaming because it saves me the trouble of having to organize (and store) files on my computer, it’s available everywhere and I can download lists that I want to listen to offline. For me it makes buying music obsolete.