I have over $250 in iTunes music and about $50 in Apps. If they lowered the price it would be fine, but after averaging the costs, it's about the same as buying a (new) CD of music. I'd rather buy from iTunes than buy a disc because I can never loose it. The other reason I use iTunes is because I have a Mac. iTunes on the Mac is a lot better than iTunes on the PC. Much faster too.
I never pay for music, a novelty i simply cannot afford. I support the bands in other ways, such as going to concerts and t-shirts etc Simply because if i can get it for free i will. Although iTunes is my number 1 music software, it's beautiful the latest update is what i've been wishing for, for so long! It finally looks like the iPhone music player. It has artist view etc It works flawlessly although most things do if you've got the right hardware on a decent PC (Win8 + Quadcore for me). Even though i use a Nokia Lumia and Android phones, and actually own zero apple products these days. Their music software is still the best, quicket, most productive, most good looking and aesthetically pleasing availible on the internet (in my opinion). Have been using it for 4 years now. It can also actually handly my 63,000 song music library. Which tends to make all other media players CRY. And the playlist function is actually useful and works.
I never buy music from the itunes store, but i still use it to store/play my music. I would say pirating music is bad but then again when apple released the 160 gb ipod classic did they really expect me to drop 40 grand on music?
I buy all my music in physical form for the albums I like very much. I would much rather have a real disc with artwork and a lyrics sheet. I rip my CD's as Apple lossless and store them on my computer as a backup also. Paying for spotify is stupid to me because you don't actually own any music and have to have data to stream it. And buying from iTunes is even more stupid because you get a crappy digital quality for the same price or even more than a physical CD. As for using iTunes to play music, always. I think it's the best music player for the computer because it's simple and works together with my mobile devices.
I never had much music before Spotify. If I buy what I have on spotify, it'd cost thousands and thousands of dollars. And I'm am not going to the pirate ways ever, like some people. I do wish sometimes I actually had and owned the cases and such though, that's one problem I have with it. Hardly use it. I use it only to sync my iPad/iPod Touch to keep old versions of Apps just in case and for music that's not available on Spotify (and pretty much never will be). Other than that, nah.
I still use iTunes everyday, almost as often as my use of my optical drive Most of my music is from CD's I've had since before I learned about iTunes; in fact, I was using the infamous Windows Media Player for years until last year because I didn't know of any good media players. Since then, I haven't looked back at or given a second thought to WMP. I definitely enjoy the latest update which made the UI like more iPad-like.
