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Comment by EvanAnderson | Hacker News Reader

As the opportunity to purchase physical or non-streaming versions of content dry up consumers will be forced into subscription services. There won't be a non-recurring-payment option for consumers who don't necessarily want new media. I don't know what the size of that market segment is, but the subscription-based streaming-only future isn't a "win" for them.

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Speak for yourself.

I could subscribe to 3 or 4 premium streaming services and be spending less than I was on CDs 20 years ago.

Don't have to spend hours ripping them all, either.

...except unlike those CDs, the moment you unsubscribe, you'll lose access to everything.

And then you'll sign up for the competing service that has for all intents and purposes the same catalog, and get access to everything once again.

If you're, I guess, weird, you can just buy CDs the way we did in 1998. They're all still available! The bands would really like you to buy them! I'm genuinely not sure what the complaint is here. It seems to be that super-cheap, super-convenient music is available in addition to the CDs we were buying instead?

I think it's weird to be excited about being beholden to some big, faceless company that charges you a monthly fee AND sells personal data about you AND which you know your favorite artists secretly despise. Also kind of weird to be music-less when not connected to the internet or if you don't have a specific app installed. But you do you, man.

The excitement comes from not having to manage "stuff". Don't need to store/manage/catalogue/find anything physical. Don't need to store/manage/backup/catalogue anything digital either, just search for what you want in the app and play.

If collecting is part of the fun for you then go for it, but there's a whole lot of people for whom the collecting stuff isn't fun it's just unnecessary work.

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 laptop, desktop, and HTPC, and can play it as long as there isn't a power outage.

Streaming is great for things I know I want to watch once (e.g. TV series) and don't care if I can't rewatch it tomorrow. For music? Nope.

Or you can usually buy it in digital form DRM-free though I usually prefer to buy the CD and rip it myself if the price difference is minimal.

In general, the situation with music is much better than video in general. There are exclusives and gaps (especially for some oddball stuff) but, for the most part, all the major services have most of the music people typically listen too.

I have a big library but I augment it with streaming and (mostly) don't buy a lot of new music.

You don't own anything, though. I listen to CDs I bought 20+ years ago and then ripped all the time, in my home, at work and in cars. If you cancel your streaming service today what will you listen to tomorrow?

I can probably find it on youtube

and download it with youtube-dl...

wait a minute -

The market for people who actually want to own it is vanishingly small. I for instance literally do not care if I own it or not. All I really want is to be able to listen to it when I want to and I have that. I don't see a realistic future where I won't be able to listen to it.

All in all I'm with tptacek here. For all but the most niche consumer this is unambiguously better than we had before.

Nice to know you've completely lost touch with the rest of the world in terms of being able to watch significant chunks of recurring revenue fly out the door, along with realigning incentives away from getting any ambitious or different music that isn't "investment grade".

>"Screw you, got mine," does not tend to score points with the youth of today, and it doesn't score points with me. Not that what I think matters one lick. All of my music has either been consumed via radio, adopted via possession through being the family backup media, or public domain/OST, typically from ye olde CD store.

Furthering the arts my arse. Furthering the exploitation and monetization of the Arts as business model through aggressive litigation is more like it.

I like that I have a large music library--some of which is at least a bit oddball and, I'm guessing, not available streaming. But that's in no small part because I ripped a large CD collection (and pulled other songs off Napster, mostly to replace songs I only had on old vinyl).

That said, I'm not at all sure that I'd try to build a library from scratch if I were starting today. Maybe I'd buy the odd album here and there but probably not wholesale.

As for video, the vast vast majority people of people don't buy a lot of DVDs any longer. Heck, I've certainly had people express surprise that I even own a DVD player.

Ownership is some sense is useful b/c you can pass your records / cds / mp3s on to your kids. I guess what you would pass down would be playlists.

Playlist, MP3, CD, or LP: your kids won't want them regardless.

I enjoyed discovering my Dad’s LPs.

I'm just saying that in the large, lovingly handed down collections of popular music are not really a thing.

I am not talking about popular music.

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