I'm quite happy with the monthly streaming "lease" from Apple or Spotify.

"Buying" digital files from Apple/Amazon whoever is where I feel like the least value is.

At least for music they've mostly gotten rid of the DRM, so they lose the ability to take your music back.

But at this point buying digital files saves nothing over CD. I feel like you either need to just stick with streaming or if you must purchase buy CD/Vinyl as it's pretty easy to argue it's a better product other than the case of wearing a vinyl record out, which is awfully rare.

My biggest exposure to digital ownership is books, followed by games. I am very very unlikely to care about re-playing games. Books I'm a little more likely to re-read. But paper books take up a lot of space and I'm more likely to have to get rid of them before I get to re-read them.

TV/Movies I just don't care, I watch it once and that's enough, so it's rare I would ever buy them. And even if I have to buy them it's less than going to the theater once.

It’s not the same thing. With Spotify there’s no expectation of owning the music, I pay my subscription knowing that I pay for an access to a music catalog. Although it sucks, I know some titles can disappear from my playlist from time to time, but at 10 bucks a month I don’t care.

Now if I go to a digital store, select a specific movie or show or song, click « buy » or « purchase » and pay full price (sometimes more!), I have an expectation to own the media indefinitely. Not « as long as the store is licensed to distribute it ».

These stores simply shouldn’t be allowed to use words like « buy », because it’s a blatant lie. Prime Video is pretty clear that you can rent movies at a small price. That’s clear, there’s no expectation of ownership either.

I don't care enough about music to deal with the costs of owning it, relative to the monthly cost of streaming it. If it goes away, it goes away. If it is something I really, really like, then I pay for the mp3 file, but that is rare.

Renting for a discount makes sense.

Buying without a discount only to then lose access is different.

Because it would cost me a small fortune to “own” the music that I listen to.

$10 a month for botomless music discovery options is an unreal bargain.

A lot of people simply don’t value ownership of

For many, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal or whatever serves as an addition to, not a substitute for a large music collection. Over the years, I've amassed some 2,200 LPs, 2,500 CDs or so, lots and lots of live recordings on cassette, CD-R or DAT tape - yet still I keep a Spotify account to keep up-to-date on what's being released, checking out artists recently being brought to my attention &c - there's no denying that the '(Almost) all the music in the world for one flat fee' is an attractive proposal when checking out new stuff.

Spotify's artist compensation is laughable, though, so whatever good stuff I find, more often than not I seek out physical media. (Much to my wife's despair...)