These days, music fans have more ways to buy music than ever before. Many services even offer music streaming at no charge—a stunning accomplishment considering the relentless litigation by the record industry. Other services shine once you sign up for a monthly subscription or purchase individual tracks. While iTunes remains the dominant player, its ability to utterly control the flow of music has come under siege—the music retailing giant was recently forced to bow to the reality of the DRM-free MP3s. As other services polish up their offerings and Apple makes its own operation a bit more like everyone else's, this is a great time to ask, what's the best way to get your music?

Should you listen to free streaming music? Rent unlimited tracks? Buy by the track? Some sites offer a combination of the schemes I've mentioned. Others exist mainly as extensions or enhancements to your main music collection. In the end, to maintain constant access to as much music as possible, most listeners should combine two or more approaches—say, iTunes 8 for their imported CDs and online purchases, Slacker for Internet radio, and iLike's Sidebar for music discovery.

The upshot is this: Now you have more good choices than ever. That doesn't mean it's easy to decide which ones to sign up for, though.

Here are six key points to consider when choosing a music service:

1. Do you need a local application?
Dedicated apps like iTunes 8 and Windows Media Player 11 help manage your music collections on your computer, instead of in the "cloud" as with Lala or the various streaming services. Local apps let you create smart playlists, share libraries across your network, and synchronize music with portable devices. You can add to your collection either by importing physical CDs, downloading free MP3s from independent artists, or purchasing indie and major-label content from online stores. While these apps give basic access to streaming Internet radio channels, that's not their main focus.

2. Care to subscribe?
Subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster let you rent unlimited melodies for a monthly fee in lieu of buying individual tracks. The music stops when you terminate your subscription. In a variation on the theme, each month eMusic gives you a set number of tracks that you can keep even after canceling your subscription. Most of these services offer ways to buy individual tracks as well, but those purchases are always over and above the required monthly fee.

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3. Will Internet radio kill the video star?
Many folks view Internet radio as the heir apparent to corporate-controlled terrestrial radio. Sites such as Pandora and Slacker offer unlimited listening for which you pay nothing, but in exchange, you must watch and listen to ads. Their frequency, though, pales next to the commercial blizzard whipping through the FM airwaves. Internet stations offer another advantage, too: plenty of social networking and customization options. Not only can listeners create personal stations just by keying in one or more favorite artists, they can discover fans with similar tastes. Most of the time, you can't choose exactly what tracks you want to listen to with these stations—the same as with terrestrial radio.

4. What about DRM and copy protection?
For years, online store purchases were saddled with copy protection, referred to by the doublespeak moniker digital rights management (DRM). This ill-conceived arrangement prevented fans who had paid for music from legally listening to it in their cars, on certain MP3 players, and even on upgraded computers. With the advent of DRM-free MP3 stores—led by pioneers eMusic for independent artists and Amazon MP3 for major label content—that problem is finally disappearing. The iTunes Store and Lala also now sell tracks without copy protection. That means you can move them from one computer to another, transfer them to any portable device, or listen to them in the car without restriction.

Subscription services like Rhapsody and Napster still rely on DRM, though, in order to protect all of the music you rent for a monthly fee. You get to listen to more music this way, but you have less flexibility—and lose it all once you terminate your subscription.

5. But how does it sound?
Audiophiles should head straight for iTunes 8 or Windows Media Player 11, and then import CDs in a lossless format that doesn't degrade sound quality one bit. The 256-kilobit-per-second, DRM-free AAC and MP3 tracks bought from the iTunes Store and Amazon MP3 aren't perfect, but they're easily good enough for listening on a home stereo or in the car in most cases. Internet radio sites fall lower on the sound quality spectrum, since they're compressing the audio stream more heavily in order to optimize bandwidth.

6. Can you take it with you?
Portable MP3 players like the iPod and the Zune have let music fans take thousands of tracks with them when on the go for years. Newer, dedicated gadgets like the Slacker G2 and the Haier Ibiza Rhapsody let users of those services listen when out and about as well. Mobile apps like Pandora and Slacker Mobile accomplish the same thing for owners of various kinds of cell phones, including the popular iPhone and the BlackBerry OS–powered smartphones. Some services—Zune Marketplace and the iTunes Store, in particular—even let Zune and iPhone owners buy music tracks over the air, without having to synchronize with a PC first.

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