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By Steve Benoff I started writing this column in September of 2016. I started the Classical Music Club (join us in the Theater on the second Thursday of the month at 7 pm) in June of 2013. You'd think I would quickly tie the two together. But if you'd thought that, you would have been wrong. (Sorry, that's an inside joke for Tom Hanks fans.) Every piece of music I own is on my phone - hundreds of hours worth. If I want to hear it in my home, I can physically connect my phone to my stereo, use AirPlay to connect wirelessly, or use my old iPod which is permanently connected to my stereo which also contains my music library. Since my phone and car are connected by Bluetooth, any music I'm listening to on my phone can also be heard in my car, but if I want to change to a different song, I have to do it on my phone. With cars that have Apple CarPlay or Android Auto, I can use the screen in my car much the same way I do on the screen of my phone. So when it comes to music on my phone, the music I have purchased over the years, I use the music app that came with my phone. However, there are lots of other choices if you don't have a large collection of your own. Thanks to the Internet, you can stream just about any music you desire. Streaming is the transmission of audio and video over the Internet to computers, devices specifically designed to receive streamed content, and mobile devices like smartphones, laptops, and tablets. You can listen to music any time you like on a radio without owning the content. Streaming is like radio over the Internet with the added bonus of an infinite variety of choices and the ability to specify exactly what you want to hear. You can stream music to your phone for "free" or for a fee. I put "free" in quotes because the free services come with strings attached. For example, Spotify, the world's largest streaming service, offers a seemingly limitless range of music for free but you have to listen to ads. If you don't want the ads, you can pay a monthly fee. I use Spotify to stream music to my phone which I can hear in my car. Spotify lets you create playlists to which you can add specific tunes or choose from a never-ending list of suggested additions you can accept or decline. When you open the Spotify app on your phone you can choose one of your playlists or playlists created by the app. The one thing you can't do with the free version is download your playlists to your phone for offline playing. For that you have to pay the monthly fee. There are many alternatives to Spotify, but they all follow pretty much the same format. Free with ads or paid with no ads plus downloads. Pandora Music follows this model. So do SoundCloud and Slacker Radio. There are other apps that follow a slightly different model. Apple Music offers you the entire library of iTunes, but it's only available as a paid service. Amazon Music is free if you're already a Prime member. This allows ad-free streaming of a catalog of over two million songs. For a monthly fee, you can choose from a much larger catalog, and you can download as well. Google Play Music also has free and paid plans. YouTube is in a somewhat different category. Like the others, it's free with ads and ad free when paid. However, YouTube has fabulous videos along with the music. This won't do you much good in the car or listening through ear buds connected to your phone. If you listen and watch through an audio/video system, as we do in The Lodge Theater at our monthly Classical Music Club meetings, you'll be exposed to an entirely different, and in many cases, fabulous experience. One last point about using your phone's music app in your car. Even if you pay for premium service, it's less than Sirius XM and a lot more comprehensive. I mention Sirius XM because it's the music and traffic information programmed into many cars. Sirius XM is usually free for a limited time with a new car. Explore your options before signing up for the paid service. If you use an app you'd like to share with others, let me know at steve.benoff@verizon.net. 16 FOUR SEASONS BREEZE | JULY 2019 THERE'S AN APP FOR THAT! MUSIC APPS *Not Steve Benoff (most likely)