Music Streaming vs Ownership

Spotify will even remove your songs from you when the musicians change their minds about it.It's pretty annoying, but most people don't care enough about their music libaries to need to own a real copy. The convenience is real and for things like music the benefits outweigh the costs.

I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month.I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.

Buy music, don't rent it. Pay for downloadable files, or for physical media if you are into it.This is rather widely available.

You know that album you really like? Yeah it's gone now. The estate of $ARTIST doesn't want it available on $SERVICE_A now that $SERVICE_B is offering a better deal. Oh, and $SERVICE_B isn't available in $COUNTRY of course, but someone could buy the rights for it there and publish the music, someday, or never, we don't care.I don't get it either, and yet these services are massively popular to the point of alternatives going away. Meanwhile I have tons of music on my

Let this be a reminder. If you use a streaming music service, they can pull you any stupid trick. If you do not accept, well, you'd better hope there is an alternative the provides a comparable catalog.Once you own non-DRMed music, they can't take it away.

What HASN'T failed as a post-CD development, though, is the advent of all-you-can-eat streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify.The music you get under these deals is never yours, but the price is so low that it's a reasonable trade for many people, myself included -- even though I was for decades (I'm 52) a serious collector of CD and eventually vinyl.

I’m so sad that most consumers want to pay for things like this or Spotify.I only buy digital albums, almost always from Bandcamp or bespoke band-specific sites, or Amazon if there’s no other choice.Always just a straight download of mp3 or ogg formats, backed up and accessible in cloud storage.I use VLC player on all my devices, and syncing music with the VLC wifi download tool is so extremely easy and simple.I have all the music I could ever possibly want, easily accessible on all

Just let me download the mp3 and play it on whatever device I choose. First I need a iPhone $1000, then I need a Internet service with enought data to stream HQ audio $50 /month. Then I need a (Spotify or other) subscription $30 /month. Why not let me buy the songs/albums from some web page/app !?

Mine is this: I have tracks that aren't available on any streaming service. I've also been buying music on CD since 1993, and online for 10+ years and have over 120k tracks which will never "become unavailable". My playlists will never disappear. I'll never pay another cent for them this music for the rest of my life. The money you pay to rent music each month, I use to buy another 2 albums and a bunch of tracks, so my collection constantly grows in the direction I want

Same for me. I prefer buying FLACs (or actual CDs) of the music I want to have and keep it on my devices, so there's no future risk of losing it (I do have backup). Plus, streaming requires a working connection, uses more energy, etc... so as you say, it's (very) good for discovery, but has many downsides too.And actually, I think that in many cases piracy happens because it's the easiest option, not because people wouldn't be willing to pay. But this is a bit off topic ;)