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Apple Music isn't the best streaming music service — it's just the least annoying
(www.androidpolice.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I listen to music and podcasts all day, like minimum of 4-5 hours a day. No way I could afford to do that if I was paying per item and not for the service.
My podcasts are free RSS feeds. As for music - you not only pay, but are restricted in what you can do with your music, not to mention stuff from your collection can just disappear. So as I said, if I was dead set on paying, I would rather pay for one album at a time and pirate the rest, maybe pay for what I have downloaded later.
But what can you do with your music that I cant? I can listen to ten albums tomorrow but I can't buy ten.
The point is Spotify may remove your favourite album and then you can access it. It's a stupid point though because if their hard drive breaks or they otherwise lose access to the file they have to return to whoever they bought the music from and hope they can still download it.
It's like how people point out that when you buy games from steam you don't actually own the game. Well, yeah no shit, if steam shuts down I can't download the game anymore, steam is about convenience not ownership.
There is nothing wrong with talking about the benefits of possessing digital files that cannot be taken away from you, it's just completely irrelevant to a conversation about streaming services. They are two separate products with their own advantages and disadvantages.
Proper backups are your responsibility anyway.
Also I do use streaming - for discovery of new tracks. I was talking about a) paying for this service only to be restricted more than if you didn't; and b) people who have their WHOLE collection depend on a streaming service.
I can use whatever player I want, I can use whatever device I want (like an mp3 player, now I drag a smartphone around until I find a replacement one and it's super inconvenient, can't imagine doing it all the time), I can not depend on an Internet connection for any amount of time, I can not worry about the service retroactively removing features/adding ads/etc, I can still have my music if I end up unable to pay for streaming (not like I am paying right now)...
For a price of a subscription, I could buy an album a month, for example, and download the rest. And maybe pay for some of the downloaded ones later. Same money, more worth out of it.