Fifteen years ago Napster silently changed everything for music heads across the world. Suddenly almost everything was available for free, and faster than running to your local music shop. 

Before the year 2000, everyone was mainly relegated to purchasing physical copies of music, whether they were cassettes, CDs, vinyl, or whatever.

The music industry was caught with its pants down during Napster's initial popularization of peer-to-peer file sharing, and it has been violently trying to pull them back up ever since.

After a diesel crackdown, an apparently infinite amount of absurd law suits against children('s parents), and a big shaming campaign, most people were primed for some type of new music consumption paradigm.

But the turning of the tide on distribution of physical copies was to be irreversible. The new paradigm had to be digital and convenient; no problem, right?

The problem is that in order to please everyone, it must also be legal and ideally compensate the artist fairly while remaining inexpensive and hopefully including some fun features. 

Of course Apple's iTunes filled that void and basically conquered the market in conjunction with the iPod. Other pay sites/programs existed, but none could stand up to what appeared to be the mighty iTunes...for a while.

 Now we're flush with sites, platforms, apps and premium services all attempting to hit the nail on the head when it comes to selling music. 

They all like to think they've "got it right," as if there is one "right" answer to the question: "How will we consume music in the future?" 

So we're laying out some of the pros and cons of the top music selling/sharing/streaming options we're faced with here and now in 2015. Listed in alphabetical order, we're not trying to say any one option is better than another. Some are clearly more suited towards certain audiences/artists.

How do you consume your music? We'd like to know. What do you think is the best route for the future?

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1. Apple Music/iTunes

We're all used to iTunes by now. But Apple Music is the new kid on the block in the Apple world, and it appears to be doing pretty well. With Nine Inch Nails mastermind Trent Reznor contributing to the direction of the app throughout development, many were correct in expecting some unique features.

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The resulting features are mainly aimed to put artists in closer touch with their fans, especially the artist-curated "radio" stations. The idea was to add a streaming/playlist/discovery service (people would actually use) to the already widely used iTunes Store. It seems to have worked.

For unlimited streaming, Apple Music costs $9.99/month, or $14.99/month for the family package that gets you access to the app on up to six devices. Not bad, considering it costs the same as Spotify.

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2. Bandcamp

Bandcamp is pretty simple. It's best for streaming and purchasing directly from the artist. Bandcamp is the popular choice for up-and-coming artists and it has a good reputation. 

It's not the best discovery platform, though there is a social aspect; new and popular recordings are posted on the front page so users don't have to go anywhere to find (some) cool stuff.

But mainly Bandcamp is used as a respected distribution method for select artists, whether they're newbies or established and just looking to get an album out without red tape. 

The famous "name your price" feature is maybe the best thing about Bandcamp. Many artists feel as though selling music is a thing of the past, and that fans should have the option to pay what they think the music is worth-- or nothing at all --so they opt for "name your price."

Especially for artists with young careers, this is a fantastic method of getting their work out into the public realm with as few obstacles as possible.

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3. Pandora

Pandora didn't invent music streaming, but it sure feels like they did. Remember when we were all amazed at how well an algorithm could recommend songs and curate a playlist? Good times.

The extreme simplicity of the thumbs up/thumbs down feature helps the algorithm recommend music more appropriate to the user's taste while also relying on the encyclopedia of attributes programmers built into the system to identify similarities between tracks.

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But now Pandora has kind of been left in the dust. Since one can't build playlists on Pandora, there's an entire set of people turned off to Pandora's inoperability, however that's exactly the attribute that draws a ton of people to using the service. 

So the main drawback is also the main positive quality: one can stream for free forever without having to necessarily do anything except listen to commercials every so often. 

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4. Soundcloud

Soundcloud is just as good, or probably better than Bandcamp. What pushes it over the top? Well, artists have the option of allowing fans to directly download tracks and albums for free. 

The type of content one's most likely to find on Soundcloud are remixes, underground stuff, and new artists. Some well-established artists have Soundcloud accounts just to show their fans what they're listening to by utilizing the popular social media aspect on the site.

One can favorite tracks, share them, and comment at specific times along the track-- all of which can be tracked by one's SC followers and helps to establish more of a community than most platforms can offer.

Perhaps the only major issue that's plagued Soundcloud is the fact that some amateur producers use others' intellectual property and unlicensed samples, necessitating a close watch on content by SC, and the removal of lots of tracks that violate the US Copyright Act. 

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5. Spotify

See, here's the thing: Spotify has 75 million active users, 20 million paying subscribers, with 1.5 billion user-generated playlists. 

There's a social column on the right side of the app showing the user which social media associates are currently listening to what tracks. One can send others tracks and messages as well as follow people's playlists; it's all very social.

Users can also select a percentage of their libraries for offline access, and that's pretty nifty for a streaming service. The app is free, but they also offer Spotify Premium which is commercial-free. 

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The downsides are that the Spotify library has always had gaps in it, like Led Zeppelin, but they're always being filled. Sometimes, things that were available yesterday won't be available today and the other way around.

Not to mention, Spotify has gotten in hot water with many users and music lovers alike due to their notorious low compensation for artists, which begs a question that needs to be answered: "How much should streaming cost?"

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6. Tidal

Famously owned by a crew of top artists including Jay Z, Jack White, Beyonce, and Madonna, Tidal made a big splash on the scene when it was released. But it doesn't seem to have landed the huge user base they appeared to be expecting given the fan fare.

One problem is that it was (inevitably) a little buggy; not everything worked right at first and still doesn't, exactly.

But the main positive aspects of Tidal are that they claim to compensate artists better than any other services, and that they're among the only service to offer lossless audio, which means the sound quality is top notch.

However, that hi-def quality costs $19.99/month while it's $9.99/month for the average/a little above average sound quality of 320kbps mp3.

The two-tiered system is good because it offers the highest quality knowing that not everyone wants or needs that. It doesn't leave audiophiles in the dark (silence?) who want the best quality and aren't afraid to pay for it, while also not demanding everyone pay for top quality.

Time is yet to tell how Tidal will fare in today's market, but at least it's got a jump start with rich parents...

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7. Torrents

Used by NASA and major companies for sharing large amounts of dense information quickly, torrents are super efficient. They remain a paramount technology at the top of the "free exchange of information over the internet" scene.

Basically one user downloads a "torrent magnet" file, which is then opened in a torrent client app like BitTorrent and then downloads bit by bit from people all across the world; the more people providing (seeding) the data and the less people downloading (leeching), the faster the download goes.

Torrents are notoriously free. Torrent lists are often the first place leaked material ends up. There are scores of torrent sites dedicated to specific types of music and others for every sort of data.

The issue is that the data on torrent pages aren't usually there with the artist's consent and this basically amounts to piracy.

However, torrent sites are often based overseas where there are no intellectual property laws and very limited regulation of the internet, thus making the exchange of information basically legal, kind of legal, semi-legal...

Though these days many extremely popular artists release torrent bundles as a way of just getting the music out there. Run the Jewels, Griz, and Gramatik are prime examples. They're not worried about compensation from copies of their music; they'd rather you buy a ticket to a show and experience it.

What's really the difference between a "pay what you choose" release via Bandcamp, a free download on Soundcloud, and a torrent bundle?

Well, with Bandcamp, there's at least a payment option. Soundcloud is good because it's less work to download, and torrent bundles are more of a shout out to the techie community, the consumers of discographies rather than singles.

Sound quality varies from torrent to torrent, though mainly they're 320 kbps or FLAC (high quality lossles audio).

Check out 8 Amazing Restaurants That Play Live Music While You Eat.

[Feature Image Courtesy of Instagram]