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Comment by maus42 | Hacker News Reader

I'm fine with buying a service for conveniently listening to music by a list of artists I like. If Spotify goes bust, it's not like that music disappears: it will be available on other services (and in theory as traditional records, too).

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.

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Yeah, it's is highly unlikely there will be no one that you can buy a similar service from in future, if Spotify goes away.

Point is, you'll have to pay again. I prefer to pay once, and then have it in my collection.

Yeah fair enough, I think even if I didn't value their discovery the way I listen to music now it would cost too much to buy it all individually. I would probably just end up having to use youtube to sample things, the way I do with Spotify currently.

Many albums on Bandcamp are available fully (or at least partially), so you can easily sample and discover them. If I like something, I buy it.

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).

If I have a digital collection I'll be paying storage costs on an ongoing basis for backups so it seems like a wash compared to Spotify and similar services.

Storage is cheap today and it will only get cheaper.

Where can you pay a low one-time fee for such a vast amount of mainstream / popular music that you get to keep forever?

Nowhere.

But what you pay for, you can't keep. So you are back to square one. And who said you are supposed to pay scraps for good music?

This is a non-issue to most people though. I don't care if I keep it. I'm renting it and that's fine for me because it's a lot cheaper to rent music than to buy it one album or song at a time. If Spotify kicks the bucket, oh well I'll switch to Google, Apple, Amazon, etc. Music.

Why should I rent digital goods? It's quite nonsensical, because copying doesn't cost anything. I prefer to keep what I paid for.

They aren't saying you should. They're saying most people (incl. themselves) don't care to own the product. They'd rather pay to rent access to Spotify's collection than to be required to buy all the music they wish to listen to.

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.

> 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.

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 :)

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