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Comment by jonathonf | Hacker News Reader

Also advert- and DRM-free.

Can't say I've ever heard an advert on my $10/month Spotify or Apple Music plans. I've also never noticed the DRM.

But monthly fee for the service plus an internet subscription and active connection, plus interest if you pay with a cc a dont pay it off that month. Its a never ending cost.

If I was to purchase the albums of music I listen to every month, I'd be spending literally hundreds of dollars on music per month. Compared to $10 that might increase $1 or $2 every few years.

I'm going to ignore the monthly internet/mobile bill, because music streaming is a fraction of what it's used for.

Cassettes records, and the equipment used to listen to them eventually wear out, so you'll have to rebuy them at some point (or limit how often you listen to them).

Im not saying streaming is a bad deal, just that the requirements to use it make it far less portable, more temporary and removes any sense of ownership.

I don’t care about the concept of ownership, I care about being able to listen to my music.

My phone is much more portable than a cassette, record, or CD player.

> I don’t care about the concept of ownership, I care about being able to listen to my music.

Well, they're kind of related. You won't be able to if Spotify terminates your account for whatever reason (which happened to me once, due to claims on their end the payment ran into some issue, which I could never verify) or if it goes out of business.

So then you switch to Google Music or Apple Music and keep listening. Meanwhile if your CD collection is stolen or destroyed, you have to go buy all of them again.

Assuming any of these services actually have all of the music you listen to at any given time. Entire albums, songs, artists could be lost to you not because they were so forgettable but because they became lost in the sea of abundant music streaming. Your favorited artists went from something like a count of 237 to 230. What was lost? And when were you supposed to notice? This is what you lose by not owning your music. Not to mention music that simply does not exist on streaming services, which a very large amount of worthwhile music. At the end of the day, why are you giving so much control to others about what music you would have shared and preserved?

You can also rip your CDs so that the music is no longer tied to the physical media.

> If I was to purchase the albums of music I listen to every month, I'd be spending literally hundreds of dollars on music per month.

Are you counting only the things you listen to for the first time each month? Because once you buy it, you don't need to buy it again.

> Cassettes records, and the equipment used to listen to them eventually wear out, so you'll have to rebuy them at some point (or limit how often you listen to them).

Sure, though purchased music that you can (both legally and practically) make lossless digital copies of to insure against that is very much a thing. Heck, some of the platforms offering all-you-can-eat streaming arrangements with their catalog also let you sync and stream your owned-music collection, and will even sell you DRM-free, copyable music, so that you don't need to rebuy or limit listening.

Yes, I listen to enough unique music per month for it to be hundreds of dollars.

It varies from person to person. For someone who listens to a lot of different music on a regular basis, a subscription clearly makes sense. For someone who listens to music infrequently or a small number of albums, it is going to add a reoccuring expense that will quickly exceed the cost of purchasing the music.

It can be both. I buy CDs and have a streaming service subscription. The good stuff gets bought, the OK stuff just gets added to an online playlist.

Hundreds of dollars? Maybe if you’re an audiophile. Normal people buy most of their music second hand. If you are really poor, prerecorded cassettes are a quarter to 50 cents at your nearest thrift store. CDs can go up to a dollar and you can get a decent vinyl record from half a dollar to 2.

If you are willing to spend it you can buy second hand CDs or vinyls for less the 10 dollars at the record store, and they usually have a good enough selection such that you can most likely pick up that record you never found in the thrift store.

I only buy new music from newer artists (mostly from Bandcamp) and yet a CD is usually around $10-15 with vinyl maybe $5 more (+ shipping). But I take comfort that this money goes to supporting the artists, so it is worth it.

Usually I spend about $20-30 dollars on music a month (with some months spending more on expensive records). But with every new album I buy, it is added to my collection so I can listen to it again without needing to buy it again.

> Hundreds of dollars? Maybe if you’re an audiophile.

No, the math works out even if you're a less-than-average consumer or casual listener.

An album is at minimum $10. If you listen to more than one new album a month, you're coming out ahead if you use a streaming service. If Spotify shuts down, there's at least two other competitors in this space for me to go to. But none of them look like they're going anywhere.

> But with every new album I buy, it is added to my collection so I can listen to it again without needing to buy it again

Until the record wears out, or gets stolen, or breaks for a variety of reasons.

Parent specifically said hundreds of dollars per month. Hundreds of dollars per year is not a lot of money to pay for music.

Also when buying new albums it is not unreasonable to expect the artist to get some money for their work. And its quite hard to reason that they do if they have to share your $10 subscription fee every month.

Digital music you buy has been DRM free since 2008. When the iTunes music store came out in 2003, it came with the ability to burn regular CDs.

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