Best way to buy music (and download to phone)

[colbygatte]

So, I've been an iPhone user for a few years. I loved my iPhone, but I finally got too bored and wanted to switch.

Now, my question is, what is the best iTunes-like alternative?
I am trying to use Google Play, but from what I've seen it's mainly for streaming your music. It doesn't automatically download. And, when I download something, I can't access it from anywhere else in my phone. I tried setting something I had bought as an alarm, and after a frustrating hour I gave up. It didn't show up anywhere on my phone (I made sure it was downloaded by clicking that arrow thing)
Am I missing something here, or is that right? You can only access music from the Google Play app?

And if that's the case, what's the best alternative? Amazon's MP3 store?

 

[garublador]

IIRC, with Google Play you can "pin" songs to your internal memory to play without streaming.

You can keep iTunes and use iSyncr or DoubleTwist to sync the music to your phone. Or you can just import it all into DoubleTwist, WinAmp and use that as your main music manager. I'd suggest using something that allows you to import songs from other sources. That way you can buy the songs in whatever way makes the most sense and then keep them all in the same place. I'm sure Google Play lets you do that but it has the limitations of having to use internal memory. I don't know if that's possible in Amazon MP3 or not. I'm sure it's possible with iTunes, DoubleTwist and WinAmp.

FWIW, I use iTunes on my PC (it's shared with my wife who uses an iPhone) and then synch using iSyncr. It lets me synch to my SD card automatically (using Tasker) or manually over WiFi or USB and it will backwards sync songs I buy on my phone on Amazon back to iTunes. If I wasn't tied to iTunes like that I'd consider DoubleTwist, but seeing as I haven't done that I'm not sure just how well it works. I've seen many good reviews and lots of recommendations for it so that's why I'd start there.

 

[Golfdriver97]

So, I've been an iPhone user for a few years. I loved my iPhone, but I finally got too bored and wanted to switch.

Now, my question is, what is the best iTunes-like alternative?
I am trying to use Google Play, but from what I've seen it's mainly for streaming your music. It doesn't automatically download. And, when I download something, I can't access it from anywhere else in my phone. I tried setting something I had bought as an alarm, and after a frustrating hour I gave up. It didn't show up anywhere on my phone (I made sure it was downloaded by clicking that arrow thing)
Am I missing something here, or is that right? You can only access music from the Google Play app?

And if that's the case, what's the best alternative? Amazon's MP3 store?

Welcome to the forums and Android!

Another way to do this (not sure if this will work on an Apple PC) but you can download the Music Manager from Play. When you purchase a song, you can then open up the Manager program, and download everything to your PC, store it in your music files there and then load to your SD card.

 

[colbygatte]

Thanks for the replies! I think I'm going to look into DoubleTwist or iSyncr