My Sansa Rhapsody e250R music player came with a two month trial subscription to Best Buy’s Digital Music Store powered by Rhapsody. For two months, I get to download all the music I can possibly want. In addition to downloading the music to my MP3 player, I can also log in and listen to any album or song my heart desires.

With this Digital Music Store, you get access to the latest releases, yesterday’s music, comedy, children’s music, videos, playlists, and exclusives. And that’s just this one music service. I know other music services have similar deals and other exciting features. I can’t wait to start exploring them all and seeing which unlimited music downloads service is right for me and my Sansa MP3 music player!

(On this page click "See it in action" for Best Buy's flash video on this product.)

SanDisk’s Sansa Connect offers a different subscription service – with Yahoo’s Music Unlimited. While the Rhapsody system is based on your laptop computer, the Sansa Connect gets tunes directly over WiFi straight to the device.

All this talk of music subscriptions naturally had me wondering, “How worthwhile is this big change in how we buy the music?"

At first, I figured, “What the heck, at least I can check out some new music.” It’s only been a couple of weeks and I’m getting hooked , both in the good sense and (unfortunately) in the bad sense as well.

Confessions of a Cheapskate

You need to know going in that once the subscription (or trial subscription) ends, your access to any downloaded music goes away. It’s not like you can download thousands of songs and then cancel. No, no, no, the music industry would never go for that!

So when my trial subscription ended, I felt (at first) like I was paying a monthly ransom on my new, growing and now-cherished song library.

But I’m changing my attitude. The more I explore this subscription-based music model, the more I’m convinced that the days of owning hard copies of albums are numbered. It is so “last century” to me now!

I’m finding myself getting out of the habit of feeding my CD-changer discs. Instead, I simply hook up the Sansa Rhapsody to my home or car stereo and crank up the volume. The Best Buy service gives me personalized channels, and offers me new songs based on my previous preferences. There is no more buying album by album. And I download as much as I want -- by the song, by the album, or by the playlist -- all for the same price.

My home stereo now gets fed by my WiFi laptop to the home stereo – so I can hear album choices I would never have purchased on CD. Not only am I getting to hear fresh new music I like, I get it without the ear buds.

Okay, I admit it: I’m a cheapskate. The monthly fee does give me pause. Who wants another monthly bill? I already have a cell phone bill, a bill for broadband access, online DVD rentals, video on demand, and digital video recording subscriptions such as TiVo… all that new technology is bleeding me! So, is a new monthly music subscription worth it?

Doing the Math

Currently, Rhapsody’s Best Buy Digital Music Store costs about $15 per month offering unlimited downloads and “music to go” which means you can download music to your Sansa MP3 player. This subscription does not allow you to burn music to CDs so if you want a tangible, hard copy you will either need to pay additional fees or go elsewhere. Paying to burn CDs is similar to purchasing and downloading music on the internet. You pay just under a buck a song or about ten bucks an album. From there, you can burn your purchased music to CD and enjoy it in your CD player for eternity (or until you’re sick of it).

But, what I’ve realized so far is that I currently buy about a CD per month at brick-and-mortar retailers and my husband downloads a similar amount of music from an online music source. So, fuzzy math says that we are paying nearly $30 each month for just two albums. Hmmm. . . For half as much money we can get all the music we could possibly want? It’s sounding better and better.

The downside is that should we ever decide that to drop the month-to-month fees (or switch to some other provider), we won’t have anything to show for it. No towers of CDs cluttering the living room. No empty jewel cases wondering where their contents have wandered off to. Whoosh, it would just be gone.

Looking back in time also shows how the music subscriptions can make sense. When vinyl gave way to compact discs, I was fresh out of college and could barely afford anything, let alone CDs. My first CD was Tom Petty’s Southern Accents. Because of limited funds, it was the only CD I owned for months on end. Because of that, it was the only music I listened to. I still have the disc but I doubt I’ll ever listen to it again thanks to those initial months.

Back to the fuzzy math. If you’re on a budget and can only afford a single music purchase per month, one album per month equals twelve albums per year. Because these are the only albums you can afford, you have no choice but listen to them over and over until you are absolutely sick of them and swear you’ll never listen to them again. After all, you want to get your money’s worth, right? But as the years give way to decades and your music collection physically grows, the truth is many of us still listen to our newer purchases, not the older ones – because, frankly, we’re done with them.

Another advantage: You can also check out albums you normally wouldn’t spend the money on. As a teen, I had my heavy metal phase and loved Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne. Today, I’m a mom and Ozzy doesn’t do it for me. But, his new album piqued my curiosity and I got to listen without the investment.

One more example. I like the song “Fallin’” by Alicia Keys and thought I might enjoy one of her albums. I entered “Alicia Keys” into the Best Buy software's search box and was able to listen to her hit albums within seconds – I was not impressed. So I saved my money thanks to my subscription!

My personal verdict: I’m pretty much sold on music subscriptions -- despite all my early doubts.

What do you think, subscription or no?  Post your thoughts in the comments below.