The problem is music streaming is so overwhelming better than managing music files that there’s no way 99.9% of the population is going back. I used to be a music library guy, those files have been gathering dust on an old HDD for years now.
I pretty much grew up streaming music on YouTube, Pandora, and Spotify. About 4 years ago I decided to drop Spotify cold turkey, and have been building a music collection since. I have already spent less on music than I would have in the same period on a Spotify subscription on a collection of music I love enough to have specifically purchased. I will also never have this music taken away from me, unlike music on Spotify which may be removed against my will.
So the decision for me is not between “stream” or “have a personal collection”, it’s “stream” or “don’t have as much music in my life”. I suspect this calculation is similar for most
"Pay us rent to hear the songs on our library, but only what the labels allow us to show in your country, which can and will change frequently. Also don't look for anything slightly exotic because it isn't there. Oh, don't be sad... here, have tons of covers by unknown and mediocre artists we used to pad out collection with."
My physical music library is neatly organized and carefully picked. Meanwhile my streaming “library” is a mess. It’s made up from random bits and pieces of music that I liked at some point and absentmindedly clicked to add. It feels like we’ve optimized this problem to a point where it’s no longer really fun.
I actually dont think people enjoyed it a bunch back then. We just had more time to fill (without constant distractions of computers in our pockets) and we grew up conditioned to consume that way. Even though I stream now, I can’t stand shuffle modes. I like to listen to albums. It’s just how I was raised I guess. I don’t think it’s as prevalent amongst younger people theses days and I am only in my 40s! But I’m also at a point in life where my physical hoarding stopped 20 years ago my digital hoarding about 7-8 years ago.
I’m using Apple Music, in my case.
But weird, bizarre, interesting and novel stuff is all over YouTube, stuff with less than 50 views, stuff that isn't on Spotify. The same is true of SoundCloud and Bandcamp, and you even have the occasional mp3 shared on Discord by musicmakers that didn't bother to put it on any type of service. So she's all about the music library, because there is no way to know when that truly unique and meaningful stuff will disappear.
I'm desperately trying to get her to understand what she is doing is wrong, and I hope to succeed in setting her on the right path someday. Because there are plenty of legal avenues now, and an artist or company pulling their tracks from a service without warning is simply something we should all live with.
I don't bother with listening to music on my phone because it doesn't have a 4.4mm headphone jack on it and it doesn't have a headphone jack on it and while it does support my USB DAC it's kind of cumbersome...
Plus I set up a old laptop from 2008 that runs Windows XP and unofficial service pack 4 and a lightweight shell replacement with foobar. It's got my DAC amp hooked up to it and it can play DSD Or FLAC (I tested up too 192khz 24bit) straight over ASIO.
I can't stand streaming services for music it doesn't make any sense. I tried to make it work so many times. I got a really nice expensive Bluetooth headset that supports all the lossless crap and it's still doesn't feel right.
Sitting down knowing that my music is all there in two different places locally on that not network connected laptop and locally on my network attached storage so any computer on my network can get to it including my phone using a file browser app over SMB to transfer to the drive of my phone if I really need to play it on the go.
The only thing that makes some of my music gather dust is that it's so hard to justify in modern times being okay with sitting down in a room doing nothing except for indulging yourself with wonderful music. That might just be me and I might need to work on that but... "Managing" The library isn't the issue at least for me.
I'll also add that I guess for me music listening is about intentionality. I'm not a big fan of just having ambient music on with no intention behind it, no focus towards it. If I'm working on something and I want music on then yeah I load up my dedicated music machine and pipe that into my headphones while I'm working. But most of the time I like a focused approach to listening to an album. I'm going to sit down I want to hear this album right now and I'm not going to do anything else at the same time.
Yeah, I never understood the appeal of streaming services like Spotify. Usually when I want background music playing for working, I want to play things I already know very well so they don't distract me. For this, Spotify isn't great and has big gaps in its library - it doesn't even have all studio albums available of my favorite bands (with live catalog being hopelessly incomplete), and I'm talking about "huge superstar 80s rock bands" rather than "some unknown indie stuff". Also, I can't really put it on where network connection is spotty, like on a train.
And when it comes to listening to new stuff, I still have physical CDs waiting to be unpacked, ripped and properly listened to. Of course, some of them you won't find on Spotify either.
Maybe if you had a habit of listening to music on actual radio stations then Spotify may seem appealing. I never did, I started with portable MP3 players when I was a child. These days, when having hundreds of gigabytes of lossless music on my phone is just a matter of putting a cheap SD card into it and synchronizing between devices is a matter of single rsync call, I don't see why would I attach myself to some network service when all my music is literally here with me in my pocket.
I was a latecomer to Spotify and now I can't go back. I've discovered more great music via it than I would ever have imagined. No it's not perfect, but still beats the old way of doing it manually.
This is where the *arrs come in. Specifically Lidarr [0].
EDIT: it's not the exact same experience, but it's better than manual management.
As others mentioned, Lidarr helps with this.
I do have some songs I'd like to ensure perpetual availability, but they're few in number enough that I may go buy them separately, but still use Spotify as my main consumption medium.
I've also found that I'm able to both discover and listen to songs in some genres via Spotify that I've historically found difficult to acquire anywhere else.