The past year or so has been a huge one for music on mobile devices. We’ve seen things like Spotify, Google Music, and various other music services hit the market with a boom. We’re entering an age of data in the cloud, where people store their various media in internet services. Local storage has hit the back burner, and the amount of data on our phones doesn’t appear to be getting larger.

The music distribution industry has been an ever-changing one, essentially changing its path of distribution every ten years or so. iTunes launched in 2001, changing the way people purchase music. It went on to become the largest music and media distribution service in existence. Now, 11 years later, and we’re finding that streaming services like Rdio and Netflix are the way to get our tunes and movies.

Over the past few weeks I’ve been asking people about their choice of music service. As it turns out, many Android users are fans of Google Music. They like the ability to both stream their music and keep it on the device. My Facebook account also reveals that many people are beginning to use services like Spotify, as it’s an easy way to stream all their music. Then, as expected, the majority still keep their libraries locally on their MP3 player of choice.

So far, it’s been very mixed, but I have decided my solution. About 5 months ago, I began to look into streaming music services. After taking both Spotify and Rdio for a spin, I took the path of the latter. Bitting the bullet, I began my subscription to the streaming music service. Now, many months later, I can confidently say that I will not be leaving Rdio anytime soon.

There’s a few reasons that I’ve found streaming music the most convenient option for my lifestyle. Synchronization across all devices is a huge one. Whether I’m on my phone, Nexus 7, or MacBook, I can listen to the playlists I’m in the mood for. If I feel the urge to listen to a random song, I can just look it up and listen to it, versus the old way of purchasing then downloading the song. The only caveat to this would be the heavy reliance on data. If there’s not a connection, then I’m out of luck. Data caps are not a problem, as I have never gotten near my 2GB data cap.

The biggest factor to my use of Rdio is the convenience. I always have every song I could ever want to listen to with me, and when my friends want to listen to a song, it’s there for them too. Some feel like $10 a month isn’t worth it for music that is not even owned, but that $10 is truly to pay for the convenience that comes with it.

Now, I want to hear what you like. Are you a fan of streaming music? Will you forever keep your music on your phone?