The Concept of a Digital Toolbox – Part 3
When it comes to digital technology, you have to be careful because you might be missing out on the best inventions since “sliced bread”. What could using digital music make happen for you?
Your tools should support your life, your business.
I am always looking for ways that my tools support my life, my home, my business. It’s easy to discredit an app or tool because of how someone else uses it. Don’t be tempted to use them like others. I remember all the chatter that was going around with the Spotify music app. Based on the noise, I thought I needed to change platforms and then it dawned on me that Spotify may not accomplish what I’m looking for in a digital music tool. The first step to assess a tool is to determine if it meets your needs. Anything beyond it meeting your needs is icing on the cake. Secondly, you have to make sure you know what you need so that you get the tool that will work best for you, your life, your business.
Now for the three tools (you’ve been waiting for) that support our digital music needs.
- Amazon Music. Amazon music had been our favorite music app (tool) for many years. The simple truth why we chose Amazon is three-fold:
- Amazon Music allowed us to store our saved music collection online in the cloud. For a small fee we could purchase enough storage and even more storage if needed.
- Amazon Music provided less expensive fees for music purchasing. They’re cheaper than purchased music from Apple.
- Amazon Music worked easily for us to share music as a family.
I use Amazon Music daily when I “plug in” to write. It has a great streaming service for select music as a benefit of being an Amazon Prime member. Today as a family, we no longer use Amazon music as much, other than to purchase songs and albums from time to time.
- Google Play Music. This came as a result of our family at one time being all Android users, Samsung Galaxy to be more specific. Google Play took what we needed as a family up another step. It allowed for better family sharing. We shifted to Google Play because Google offered enough storage space for our music collections and it’s free with our gmail accounts. So we made the transition from Amazon Music storing our collection to Google Play Music. It has served us well for our shared playlists and music sharing. Each year Pamela creates a worship playlist for our daily morning prep-time. She used Google Play Music for this. This playlist for the year is one we use every single day of our lives in our home, our business.
- Itunes/Apple Music. As time changes everything, we’re slowly migrating back to using Apple Music. We all have Apple devices and it’s creating a few benefits to have Apple Music. This year is our first trial to using Apple Music for our daily prep-time worship playlist. Please don’t hear what I’m not saying, we are not abandoning Google Play Music. We use each tool for our different needs. In this case, we’ve begun testing out a few of Apple’s Home accessories and it works best of course with Apple Music.
Remember the purpose for this web-post is not to sell you on a particular music app, but rather to help you evaluate the tools that can improve, shape, and support your life, your home, your business.
Before we end this web-post, we have a few bonus apps for you to check out and consider.
- Pandora Music. Pandora is a cool music app that allows its users to create “radio” stations. What’s great about these custom radio station is that you get to help improve the selections that are played by liking or disliking what’s played.
- YouTube. I know most consider YouTube a video streaming service, but it has both music and music videos, but why am I mentioning it here? There are times when you remember a song or phrase from a song, but that’s all. I use YouTube to find those songs. For me it’s usually a song from the good-ole-days that I wish to share with family or friends. I use YouTube in this way, to travel down memory-lane.
- Spotify. Spotify provides me with similar benefits that Pandora does. The difference I’ve found in the two is this:
- Pandora does the music selecting for you similar to how radio DJ’s make music genre selections.
- Spotify on the other hand, lets you become the DJ and you get to make the selections.
There are more tools available of course, but there’s the one or more tools that can transform your life, your home, your business.
Today is Friday!
I understand you may not be looking for a digital music tool, but as a friend I’d like you to consider the ones we’ve shared. They have been very helpful in how we do life and I want the same for your. Your life is your business… What digital music tool will you add to your digital toolbox?
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