There's never been a better time to be a music lover in South Africa, with more streaming and download options than ever before.

It's a far cry since our last music guide, which saw just a handful of websites and services making the cut. So, we thought it would be a great idea to visit the topic again.

iTunes

Apple's iTunes is a pioneer for digital music, being one of the first serious attempts to offer a comprehensive and legal storefront.

Now, almost a decade after its initial US release, the service has been rolled out to 50 more countries, including South Africa.

With individual tracks starting at R6.99 and increasing to R8.99, the Store offers good value for money.

Additionally, iTunes boasts about 20 million tracks, all being DRM-free to boot.

Unfortunately, the service has no streaming option, so those looking to get their stream on will need to look towards our next option.

However, there is iTunes Match, available for R199 a year, which provides you with higher quality versions of tracks you already own. Additionally, any tracks not in the iTunes catalogue are stored in the cloud for streaming across all your devices.

The iTunes application is available for Windows, Mac and iOS devices, with most smartphones able to play back the music.

Simfy Africa

Launched with much fanfare in August, Simfy Africa is a streaming service brought to you by the Simfy company, based in Germany.

Users cough up R60 a month for an all-you-can-eat streaming service, making it one of the more innovative and cost-effective options on the list.

In a smart move, the service also lets users download music for offline listening, with storage space being the only limiting factor. So what this means is that you can create dozens of playlists, featuring hundreds and hundreds of songs, all being playable without an internet connection.

Unfortunately, if you really love a song, you can't buy it outright, so you'll need to resort to another music store in that case. 

Simfy Africa is available on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and BlackBerry, with over 20 million tracks available.

Nokia Music

The first big music service to debut locally, Nokia's Music Store offers a variety of DRM-free tracks and albums to purchase.

Starting at R6 a track, Nokia's service is competitively priced, especially when compared to Apple's iTunes.

Nokia Music also features MixRadio, a free streaming service for their Lumia range of Windows Phones. It's simple to use, with listeners entering their favourite artists, and the service starting a playlist, featuring similar artists too. Alternatively, you can choose from a variety of preset playlists as well.

The Nokia Music Store features about 6 million tracks at last count, according to the website, with all major record labels signed on. The store's DRM-free MP3s also mean that tracks are compatible with practically any device these days.

Unfortunately for streaming music fans, you have to buy a Lumia Windows Phone to take advantage of the free MixRadio service.

7Digital

One of the more established offerings, 7Digital offers a well-stocked music store, featuring over 22 million tracks from around the world. 

The service is platform-agnostic too, being available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Windows Phone. Additionally, the service stores your music in a "cloud locker", letting you stream it from anywhere.

In saying so, 7Digital doesn't offer a dedicated streaming music service, so you'll need to check out MixRadio or Simfy Africa.

In spite of the large catalogue, we found that many popular acts were missing, such as Rihanna and the like. Still, at $0.99 a track, it seems like a reasonable deal. 

Grooveshark

One of our favourite websites, Grooveshark lets you upload your entire music library to the service, much like Google Music.

However, it's also possible to listen to tracks uploaded by other users - a great feature if you're on the hunt for rare and unique material.

Looking to keep your tracks? Well, then aside from questionable browser extensions, you're out of luck. However, Grooveshark is available in an ad-supported free streaming service, so you've got nothing to lose.

Grooveshark is available on jailbroken iOS devices, Android and via your desktop web browser.

Jango

Another long-time favourite, Jango is an internet radio service of sorts, with users simply entering their favourite artists to play a station.

The neat thing about Jango is that the station also features similar artists, making for a fantastic way to discover new music. Additionally, the site features an initiative for up and coming artists, which sees their music being played on your station too if it's deemed to fit your tastes. 

Jango doesn't have any offline functionality or the ability to purchase tracks, but for a free service, who cares?

Jango is available via a desktop browser as well as on iOS and Android devices.