I get that, but I think that convenience comes with a price: Missin gout on great music. Now or in the future.
While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that.
Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.
I used to care about this, but I've come to believe music is somewhat fungible for many people. If you're really into music you probably disagree, but in the 5 years I've paid for Spotify, the fact that some artists/albums have been missing hasn't really been a big deal for me. The fact that lots of people listen(ed) to the radio is further evidence of this.
Sure, I understand that. Spotify is an excellent and criminally cheap solution for most people. I don't think it's good for artists, but that's another discussion.
I just wanted to describe my point of view and as passionate music lover and collector Spotify alone wouldn't work at all for me. It's just too much music missing there, but that includes hard to find, rare stuff, vinyl-only releases and niche genres.
And digital has much lower distribution costs than CDs; you don't need to pay for physical CDs to be made, you don't need to pay for shipping, you don't need to deal with retail's huge markup. And on top of that Spotify's paying customers are paying 2-3x what average CD buyers were paying.
There might be issues with the split of revenue between artists and studios or super popular artists vs long tail artists, but the actual revenue going to music license holders seems to be very healthy.
While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that.
Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.