It’s been a month since Spotify, the Stockholm-based company founded by Daniel Ek, had its much-heralded launch in the states. For me, that means it has also been a month since I’ve double-clicked the iTunes icon on my desktop.

Imagine waking up and realizing you don’t love the person you’ve been sleeping with for the last five years – that’s how I felt when Spotify entered my life. That person was iTunes. The thought of living with iTunes and only iTunes suddenly made me feel constricted, and after years of spending my time purchasing tracks, storing files and maintaining playlists on iTunes, I was suddenly – and definitively – done with it when Spotify launched.

Will you have that same experience if and when you install Spotify on your desktop?

Here are three reasons that you might:

1. The Stream

Because it lets you access its giant cloud of 15 million tracks, users can constantly find new gems to keep their playlists from getting stale. While iTunes users are limited to 30-90 second previews and listening only to the tracks they’ve ponied up for, Spotify lets subscribers feast on anything in their vast library, and because of that the hits keep on coming, the new music keeps getting discovered and the related euphoria that comes with listening to something that makes your soul smile keeps happening.

2. The Value

Spotify is free for new users for six months with no playback limitations. When the six months are up, users will either face limitations or have to pay a small monthly subscription fee. But when you do the comparison, Spotify still stacks up pretty nicely against iTunes. Ten dollars will get you unlimited streaming and offline playback on Spotify. The same will get you about seven tracks on iTunes per month.

3. The Collective Experience

Spotify has seamless integration with Facebook and Twitter, and it allows you to share playlists with your friends. It’s a fantastic resource to use for those moments where you just have no idea what to listen to or when you’re having trouble of breaking outside your comfort zone. Just cue up some of your friend’s playlists and expose yourself to more new music.

This is precisely why I’ve gravitated to Spotify: It allows for a more organic process of music selection and is virtually limitless. iTunes is great when you know what you want and have the budget to purchase it, but Spotify is better when you just want to let your hair down and let your emotions be your guide.

In my one month in Spotify, I’ve derived more pleasure from discovering and listening to music than I have in several years with iTunes.

I’m ready for iTunes to reinvent the wheel even better than Spotify has in the coming months or years, but for now, Spotify’s stream is more than enough to keep me happy.

What do you think of Spotify vs iTunes?