I pay for the discovery features. Then I get my music locally.

You can just rip it off Spotify.

I am very happy with Navidrome for over a year now. It also reminds me how I listened to whole albums when I was a teenager, what I now started doing again.

Go to concerts, buy physical.

I mean… you own or have nothing when your Wow sub ends also.

Okay, but I can access my full library from anywhere at full quality from multiple devices, I have several 5,000 plus song playlists with little to no overlap between a few of them and I have had CDs lost or stolen and had drive failures delete digital libraries. But sure.

I still download my music. Two pros: I have control over where, when and how I listen to it. And I only download music I actually want to listen to.

One con: Finding new music is harder (I imagine).

A couple of years ago, I had a Napster subscription (the reborn, legal variant of it). At first, I was happy to have unlimited access to music, then after 2 years I realised that I was paying 120 EUR a year for music I'll never own, so I cancelled the subscription and put my yearly budget for music to exactly that amount. It yields more than enough given I buy used CDs, and then digitalise them. That way I own the physical media as backup AND am able to transfer the digital, PCM-quality tracks unfettered across my devices AND with no need for DRM or shitty proprietary applications.

This would be right if not for the fact that Spotify will regularly introduce you to music that you might like and otherwise might not have heard of. That can be worth paying for.

You idiots don’t have a 6 cd changer in your car? Pathetic!

Back in the days we were paying 10$ for an album. Then Napster came.

Now we pay 100$ for a concert.

Try Metrolist maybe.

I only play songs once on Spotify, if you catch my drift.