Music has been deeply important to me since childhood. I used to jam out equally to the radio stations my parents would choose, as well as the plunky tunes coming out of our early videogames. I also got started as a musician by poking at our first keyboard, even recording some of it by positioning a casette player near the speakers. Through various iterations of music listening and creation, I have never really stopped being a music lover. There were times where I did more of one thing than the other. Sometimes more composing digitally by clicking around in a program, sometimes more playing acoustic guitar and writing down notes and lyrics in a journal. Sometimes buying CDs from the dollar section just because they looked interesting, sometimes going to whatever random show a friend invited me to. I never had a huge collection, nor was I ever a "full-time" musician. There were dry spells for sure, but I always come back.
The modern consumer's perspective on music has changed in line with so many other aspects of life. Or, more accurately, the product being sold to us has changed. The thing that is most aggressively advertized. Unfortunately, whatever companies push tends to successfully enter our communal psyche. They spend enough money to make sure it does. They also prey on our ability to jump onto convenient bandwagons. We are monkey. Thing easy, we do.
Streaming easy. We do. Before individualized streaming, we had radio, but that's a whole different ballgame since you don't get to choose what is played except on the occasional time that your request goes through. In order to listen to specific music, you had to acquire it yourself. You had to buy an album, or a ticket to a show, or learn to play it on your own instrument. These things took some amount of time and effort, and for most music lovers, there was an excitement centered around just the acquisition itself. Buying an album was an event. You would take it home and listen to it in a deliberate way. You might even have friends over for the specific purpose of enjoying that new record together.
The new way of doing things is completely different. Now that half the world is connected to the internet at all times from their pocket, it is no surprise that music streaming has come down the pipe as the next thing. Now, instead of trudging your way to the record shop and agonizing over which thing to spend your $10 on, you can simply access all the music for $10. Instead of being stuck in the dark ages with your one pitiful album, you get the library of Alexandria for the same amount of money. Sounds like the perfect deal for a consumer, doesn't it?
But wait a minute. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The first thing to notice is that you don't actually get the library for $10. You get a pass to the library, for one month. If you were planning on listening to an album that month but didn't get to it, what happens next month? Yup, you get to pay $10 again. What if you listen to just one album for a year? $120 for the corporation. What happens if the library burns down? Did you really think your payments mean anything is permanent? The library is gone, peasant. You got your access for the alloted time. You paid for a service and we delievered that service. We don't owe you anything because you never owned any part of the library. You only owned your pass. We made record profits, and we gave a few scraps to the musicians, bless their hearts. But you? You get nothing. You should be happy that you had the chance to walk the halls of our great library.
Aside from the issue of not owning anything and instead giving all control over to the servicer, there's another loss that comes from the adoption of streaming. I'll admit, I fell into the trap too. I slipped right into the convenience of it all. I thought it was cool that Spotify would "discover" new music for me. It was cool, sometimes. I discovered some bands. However, I discovered a different sort of feeling that never happened to me before using such platforms. It is a kind of apathy that grows from just having it all. What gift do you get for the person who has everything? That's right, nothing. There is no excitement anymore. When you discover something you like, you just click on a button. It isn't fun. It is a non-accomplishment. You don't feel like you have really found something, instead it is more like selecting an option in a character profile. It is like giving a personality token to the machine. You don't take anything home, instead you supply a data point to those who have graciously afforded you an amount of time in their warehouse. Even "saving" for offline playback is deviously fleeting - don't log in for 30 days, and that saved content is instantly locked.
The positive side is that we don't have to buy into this system. That simple decision is what gave me a rekindled excitement over music - that I would buy albums. I still take advantage of the luxury and speed of buying online and downloading the content, and I still make use of streaming to some extent for discovery (mainly YouTube), but I figured that if I redirect my monthly subscription money toward actually purchasing music, I'll be spending the same amount for greater enjoyment. And it worked! For the first time in years, I have actually looked forward to an album release (In this case, "it's just my opinion" by Girli). For me, buying 12-ish albums per year is actually a lot. I tend to hard-focus on only a few albums at a time. Instead of passively allowing things to come in an out of my stream, I actively look for music with the intention of adding it to my collection.
It isn't perfect. I did slip back a little when I needed to make a large playlist for an event... I thought "I'll just get Spotify for a month" and then didn't cancel. The tide of convenience is strong. However, I still feel like I have re-acquired the taste for the old way. Streaming just doesn't excite me the way that buying an album does. Furthermore, I know that I am supporting the artist more directly (I try to buy stright from their website), and that as long as I keep my data intact, I will always own the music that I purchased. If the whole internet goes down, it will still be playable. I think that is a much greater value than buying a monthly pass to an incomprehensible mountain of content, which cannot be digested in that time.
Unfortunately, some artists don't even offer digital downloads anymore. In fact, I tried to buy an album by Lydia Ainsworth and there's just nothing. No download, no CD, not even vinyl. I fear that some marketing expert told her that she would make more money if she refused to sell her music? Still, the majority of artists still seem to offer standard purchases, often on their own websites, and as long as consumers make the choice to actually own the music they love, there should be no reason to stop.
(written 5/13/26)