Music is way too important in my life to temporarily rent it from some company that may or may not be around or even have the same content available in a few years.
In case of failure of Google I still have a decent amount of music on my phone and I do have the stuff on my phone. In the (much more) likely case of drive failure I can get my music again (I could even circumvent the download limit through a Google->phone->PC thing but that would be a pain).
I think it's important not to overestimate your personal capacity to not lose things compared to companies like Google (especially considering that I am not aware of many companies that fell off the face of the earth in less than 24 hours for you to lose all your data)
edit: google music player on android is pretty annoying though (just slightly better than the stock player from old android). The fact that you need a data connection to play a random mix of your music startles me.
It does take a bit of effort to manage my own music collection, but I feel like I am well protected against data loss by having it synced between a NAS, external server, and Crash Plan. 90% of my listening is done via the external server running Subsonic, using both the web interface and the excellent mobile app iSub. I also try to always pick up a vinyl at live shows since they are big and nice to look at (and occasionally listen to), and usually come with a free mp3 download.
There are no limits on how many times I can access my music files. I can access them any way that I please, from pretty much any device, forever. I couldn't have it any other way with my music collection.
This is a halfway solution for people who are not necessarily good at backups. And I get to listen to the music on the web interface or on my phone (which is basically all I care about). Maybe I'm an awful person, but I greatly prefer this to the USB/SD card shenanigans of yore.
>I don't want to circumvent anything in order to have access to my data.
If you're an audiophile/actually doing things with the raw files, then this is not for you, but for most people (read: 99% of people) the diff between 320kbps mp3 and flacs is not there.
> Why does it startle you? When you don't pay for something you are the product. I would be more surprised if google gave you all this great music and did not expect anything in return.
Sure, I don't care about sending my music usage stats(hell I already do it publicly with last.fm) but at least have an option when my data connection is down.
Been using Google Music ever since.
I'd be nervous buying DRM'd content from a supplier that may not be around in the future. But renting I could care less - unless I paid for years upfront - but you generally don't do that.