If I like something, it is in my library. There is not that much good music out there, maybe 3 or 4 albums each year these days. I don't see how a subscription could be cheaper than just buying those albums.
It can also be rather convenient: you don't have to load up all your music on a device, and if you ever feel like listening to something new, it's really easy to find. But if you're only updating your music library three or four times a year, it's not a big deal.
You also probably didn't need to boot up a virtual machine every time you wanted to sync your phone... But that's a different problem.
Streaming services also typically have a radio feature, where you can specify a song and say "play more things like this". Which I've found is both nice on the "just give me something to listen to" level and useful for finding new music.
But I like internet radio to find those albums. Local FM radio plays a very limited selection, vs streaming where I can hear really cool albums from 5 or 10 years ago that I would have never heard otherwise.
That said, the author should probably consider streaming services as "advertisement", and try to sell recordings and concert tickets.
The other nice thing about a streaming service is that you may get exposed to something you didn't know you liked.
I was about to quote the annual Pandora One price as being less than the cost of 3 CDs, but evidently I missed where the annual option was nixed due to several increases in SoundExchange royalty rates.
I've never really had good luck with music recommendation services, I always seem to get the safe recommendations from the priors.