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.
Yah there's enough of you to support some niche stores, but it's great this works for you, but it doesn't matter for most consumers.
I'm not worried about that - it's not my collection, it's Spotify's. I'm merely paying for the unlimited consumption of their collection on demand, not to purchase the songs and have them for life.
It'd be a different story if I expected the songs I listen to on Spotify to be available forever, but I don't, and that's not what I'm paying for.
But I've been there.
When Grooveshark quit -- I was a paying member and had no up-front notice -- I lost my complete library. I've looked into making a back-up before and figured out some technical requirements for that (e.g. I cracked the "encrypted" cached files) but never really got around to it. A list of which songs were in my library and playlists would have been all I needed, but I had no such thing.
Spotify doesn't offer this either. Like with Grooveshark, you can find technical ways of getting around it, but they're not jumping at the opportunity to provide a JSON export that you can import into another music service.
The other side of the coin is that not all music is available. Even now on Spotify, if you enable "show unplayable songs" there are a lot that turn unavailable every month. I don't want to think of which part will not be available at a competitor's.
For all these reasons, I agree with the person you're replying to. But I made the same decision as you -- i.e. I use and pay for Spotify -- because those indie stores just don't have enough music by a long shot to make it worth the trouble. Ideally it would be that way, though.
https://developer.spotify.com/web-api/console/get-current-us...
The hard part is explaining to our mothers that their music app might become unavailable, that they should care about this, and that they should take action to mitigate the effects.
But on the other hand, consumers get locked in all the time, and civilization hasn't collapsed yet.
Only thing is that composing that playlist again would be a major hassle. I have a list of bands and artists, I guess I could spend a weekend going through discography lists by Wikipedia and other sources.
Some albums I bought recently:
* https://dbfiechter.bandcamp.com/album/scotland
* https://jonathangeer.bandcamp.com/album/owlboy-ost
* https://danielamosboots.bandcamp.com/album/neverhood-songs-d...
And you are right. Stuff often ends up on Youtube, which is great for discovery too. And again, if I like something, I'll gladly buy it (as long as it's accessible in DRM-free stores).
Nowhere.
We need to make at least one assumption: Spotify will have the music you want to listen to when it is released (not always the case - and for myself - it is never the case.)
If you spend more than $120/yr on music it could make financial sense to "rent music" from Spotify with a premium subscription instead. If you aren't particularly attached to music you listened to last year, or five years ago, or a decade ago, then it doesn't make sense to want to own the music to begin with. If there is a particular artist you're attached to, that doesn't prevent you from also purchasing that album. You can also use Spotify to check out a band you just heard about [0]. I don't even use Spotify but recognize why others would instead of purchasing music.
[0] Remember the assumption we made.
I guess so, but it's clearly not my case. I can listen to music in my collection, no matter when it was added. Otherwise it wouldn't end up there :)
This is what I do. I use Spotify as an on-demand radio. If I like an artist or album, I buy it in physical form. (Usually on record because why not? And it often comes with a download code.)
I just find it different to rent me content transparently, eg Netflix and Spotify, versus rent-by-pretending-to-sell, eg Steam.
If you sell me something, I should be able to use and transfer it at my discretion without your permission. Steam, instead, leases you something on no fixed term and presumably without any guaranteed lifetime.
I'd be inconsolable for a few days though.
* I'll have stopped gaming
* Most games need emulating because they won't run on our hardware in the future
* The games are dirt cheap to buy on GOG
* Someone will release a pirated collection most of them
So I'm not too worried about my personal Steam collection. Preservation, that's a different story...
With Netflix the backlog situation (region blocks, limited catalogue) is pretty dismal, but with Netflix at least I know that a good part of my money goes to creating content.
With Steam most of the money ends up with the developers, again supporting content creation. I do buy games if, and only if, I find the price is right for playing the game once (or for a couple of weeks, depending on the type of game). If my Steam library is still accessible in ten years time than that is an added bonus. I do admit that a lot of the games I buy come with a Steam key, but are purchased from DRM-free stores (e.g., Humble Store).
But music is a completely different beast. If I like a song or an album, then there is a good chance that I will listen to it periodically for a good deal of my life. I buy music for keeps. With Spotify my money doesn't end with the content creators themselves for the most part, and I don't get to keep the music. It just doesn't work for me.
While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that.
Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.
I just wanted to describe my point of view and as passionate music lover and collector Spotify alone wouldn't work at all for me. It's just too much music missing there, but that includes hard to find, rare stuff, vinyl-only releases and niche genres.
And digital has much lower distribution costs than CDs; you don't need to pay for physical CDs to be made, you don't need to pay for shipping, you don't need to deal with retail's huge markup. And on top of that Spotify's paying customers are paying 2-3x what average CD buyers were paying.
There might be issues with the split of revenue between artists and studios or super popular artists vs long tail artists, but the actual revenue going to music license holders seems to be very healthy.
There's still a lot of stuff you can find on Beatport that you can't find on Spotify, for example, and most of the hipsters wouldn't even call Beatport "underground"