The world where you fully owned a thing after buying it is over. Whether we like it or not, all businesses are working on deploying this new model.
However, I have kept all of my ripped/bought/downloaded music as well, and I have a very clear exit plan for how to keep "my" Spotify library in case the company goes belly-up or decides to cripple its offerings somehow. It will take me a couple of weeks to recreate the library locally, but I'm OK with that.
For now, I'll enjoy the recommendations and easy access to music that is new and exciting to me.
I looked at your playlist format specs, why do you use floats? I'm currently coding on a GO audioserver and save time intervals as Nanoseconds (time.Duration). This makes more sense to me, as floats may behave badly in some contexts.
I wonder if floats are going to be a significant problem, hmm.
- Third party clients are a thing, to the point where I really feel like I'm being sold a streaming service and not a tiny window through which I can occasionally listen to music. My normal media player is a python script that talks to an API. This is amazingly useful.
- When using Spotify-provided apps, there's the ability to save things for later offline listening. I haven't yet hit a limit on how many things I've been able to save.
- There's no limit on the number of devices I can use with the service, although I can only stream concurrently on one -- multiple offline devices have worked great though
- There isn't a time limit that certain content is available (this is much easier to feasibly achieve with audio compared to high-definition video, and a major difference between Spotify and services like Netflix).
This is sufficient usability, freedom, and value for money for me to subscribe with the knowledge that what I'm paying for is access to a library that Spotify has created and maintained. I used to rip/buy music on a regular basis and no longer really feel the need to do so. I think it's probably useful to consider what the differences are between services and specifically what makes them anti-consumer.
The limit is 3,333 tracks, last I checked. Should be plenty for most people, I think.
> - There's no limit on the number of devices I can use with the service, although I can only stream concurrently on one -- multiple offline devices have worked great though
I also like that if you start Spotify on another device while music is already playing, you'll get the option to either control playback on the currently playing device, or switch playback to the new device, seamlessly.
I also consider it a subscription to a library, and I'm fully onboard with the fact that if I cancel my subscription, I lose access. I know people think of streaming services as something new, but it's basically the same as any subscription service that people already used before.
No wonder it is impossible to find dvd & vhs recorder combination units. Hard to find a dvd recorder too.
You never fully owned that CD, you owned the physical object, but not the content, you only had permission to play it under certain conditions.