I have over a thousand vinyl records. Even more store bought CDs. Infinitesimal? Compared to what? The tens of thousands of records I could never afford? My store bought music collection represents a fair chunk of the house I don't own and still I find good music I don't own on Spotify everyday. Plus, it's much easier to hit the search engine than to dig through my tangible music collection. Oh the musicians aren't getting paid? I'm heart broken. As far I'm concerned if they want to jealously guard their art then **** their art. I got more than I can listen to already. **** Martin Rev's solo ****. I'm not paying for that **** and I don't care how good it is. They should all be happy anyone even gives a **** to listen to it. And get a ****ing day job. And think of a way to get my tired lazy ass down to the show because getting up on stage doing the same old **** doesn't cut it anymore.

That's awesome, but it still doesn't make buying hundreds of individual albums economically viable for most people who consume music in large quantities.

I assume eventually I'll be forced to get a Spotify account or something similar, because that seems to be the way things are going, but it's very unappealing to me. I like having a collection of music not being forced to pay a month fee to have access.

Then don't, don't use spotify then.

Ive never used it myself and ive never felt the need to cause i know other ways to collect music.. free ways.

Spotify can be free and ad free if you use it in your browser with Adblock.

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...and there are other free (with occasional ads) streaming services such as Deezer, though I imagine Spotify has a lot of music that the others don't.

the ads never bothered me much, probably because I don't use those sites for long serious listening sessions, I mainly use them for pre-listening to stuff and forming an opinion on it prior to possibly buying.

I don't. What I'm saying is that I think streaming is the direction things are going and it will be harder and harder to listen to music any other way. I'm not looking forward to that.

Paying them off for commercial free usage kinda reminds me of a Mafia move, like paying them to protect you from ads.

Whoa, I never said anything about buying. (See below).

I concur wholeheartedly!

Hear hear!

This is true. However, the tactic still doesn’t resolve the issue of abysmally poor content selection.

:clap:

The thread subject is “Unpopular Music Opinions” so I’ll make my own firm, albeit unpopular case in favor of "other methods" over streaming services.

My listening style is contextual – when exploring new musical territories I prefer to experience an artist's body of work as a complete chronology. I begin with their albums, then their demos, followed by singles and b-sides, prototypes and outtakes, DJ mixes (in the case of electronic music), live albums, soundtrack contributions, side projects, and finally solo efforts. This process makes filesharing the unequivocally superior method for surveying a composer's catalog.

Similarly, I enjoy exploring niche record label's libraries and their development over time. For labels such as Blue Note, Deutsche Grammophon, FAX +49-69/450464, 4AD, Obscure, Ohr, Brain, ECM, Nonesuch, and NinjaTune, a listener can develop a far more cohesive understanding of a genre by exploring the refinement of its sound over a span of decades. This task is preposterously difficult to perform via a streaming service, most of whom fail to even incorporate label searches into their user interface. Filesharing wins again.

There is also the matter of sound quality. The archival FLAC libraries of the better private trackers rival the lossy bitrates of streaming services and are ideal for cultural custodians like yours truly.

Cost, as others have mentioned, is most certainly a factor. The cost of 13,000+ albums would be astronomical in a physical format, to say nothing of the international shipping expense to import all of the records from their nations of origin. Streaming, in this case, is entirely ruled out as the majority of these albums are not available to stream from any service. The superior method is to begin exploring a genre or artist via torrent, develop an educated perspective, read all related literature to develop a cohesive and contextual understanding of the work's cultural significance, and then finally, make informed purchasing decisions for the crème de la crème selections for the listener’s vinyl library.

Accessibility is another major contributor to such a methodology. By building a massive personal archive and hosting it on a private server, a listener can instantaneously access any discographic library or personally-crafted playlist from any web-enabled device, lossless and commercial-free.

This leaves the looming moral factor, for which the rationale is purely mathematical. Statista reports that the U.S. average consumer spending on music was $48. I spend on average $1200 annually on vinyl directly as a result of my listening methodology – 25 times that of the national average. And the most valuable 25% of my vinyl catalog is currently appraised at between $10-$20,000. And I am not alone. Statistically speaking, filesharers are not the people the music industry have to blame for their perceived sales losses.

And on a final more personal note - I am a sorting-and-tagging fetishist. I absolutely love the management of metadata, folder structures, and data visualizations. Large library management is a personal passion and a delightful advantage for those who maintain their own music libraries instead of streaming.

I understand that I am of a particular minority when it comes to media consumption. But entire nations have come to embrace the social value of file sharing, and their numbers continue to grow every day. Streaming may satisfy passive listeners and casual consumers, but for serious connoisseurs of sound art there are far superior alternatives to the stream.

/soapbox