Content in Apple Music is still best in class.
And music lovers spend less money with a monthly streaming subscription, than they used to spend purchasing tracks or albums. I don't know about you, but I certainly spent more than $10.99 a month back when I was buying CD's. And it's even cheaper now in relative terms if you factor in inflation.
Some people think that curating a music collection is fundamentally different from collecting funkopops or some other similar mass-market consumerist behavior.
Those people are wrong, but that is what they think.
They'll ramble on about purity and emotion completely oblivious to the fact that someone searching for, categorizing, and collecting various types of paperclips is perfectly capable of experiencing the same emotions.
Now it's too easy: I have the absolutely fantastic experience of having infinite music in my hand on demand without any of the work. I've completely lost touch with music over the last decade. I am always vaguely frustrated because it's not _that_ good, it panders to my taste too much, and there's no value to any of it.
The foraging made it a hobby and intellectually stimulating, the "please tap this! or this! or this! or this!" makes it boring and all the same.
Funny, I get a far superior foraging experience exploring radio stations based on obscure artists and other people's playlists.
I don't understand how the friction of having to build programming tools made your music experience better.
And I truly don't understand how making things easier leads to you losing touch with music. Maybe it's more just a function of getting older and having other, new priorities enter your life?