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Opinion: Will Apple’s streaming music service mean I finally stop buying music?

I was an early adopter of digital music (you hide your surprise well). I bought my first mp3 player in 1998, some three years before the first iPod. It cost a silly amount of money and stored exactly one album at a time in its 64MB (not GB) of flash memory.

Me being me, I went through a few different generations of mp3 player before Apple completely changed the game with the iPod. Ironically, by adopting a less sophisticated technology–a hard drive in place of flash memory–Apple created a far better product. One that allowed us to carry around 80 albums at a time. I bought one the day it went on sale, having by then finished ripping all my CDs to mp3.

When the 160GB iPod came out in 2007, I again bought one immediately. That was large enough to hold my entire music collection at the time. I not only carried it everywhere with me, I also plugged it into my hifi at home and to the AUX socket of my car stereo. At which point, I started wondering why I still had a wall full of CDs … 

The thing is, those CDs had cost a lot of money. One of the trickier parts of what was an extremely amicable divorce had been dividing up the CDs we’d bought together. It seemed a little crazy now to think of them as just junk plastic.

But the truth was, I never opened the cases any more. All the music I listened to–at home, in the car and on foot–was on the iPod. The CDs were just taking up wall space for no good reason. Really, there was no justification for keeping them.

I couldn’t quite bring myself to throw them away: all that money! So I stashed them in the cupboard under the stairs, and there they sat for several years before I acknowledged that hanging onto them was a completely irrational act. Finally, maybe five years after I’d actually stopped playing them, I took a deep breath and put them into the trash.

Today, I’m wondering whether my continued insistence on owning my music is as irrational now as hanging onto a bunch of useless plastic discs was back then.

I have a Spotify account. As is often the case with technology, we get a little ripped-off in the UK, paying pound for dollar, so it costs me around $15/month. That’s still around the cost of buying one album a month, so to me it’s a no-brainer.

And yet, if I really like an album, and find myself listening to it a lot, I still buy it.

That’s not a wholly irrational thing to do. Artists probably make more money from me buying the album than they do from me frequently streaming it. There are places I can’t stream music, like on the London Underground, on planes–and when wandering around the streets of other countries (unless I want a data roaming bill on a par with Apple’s turnover). So there are arguments in favor of downloading rather than streaming.

But it is mostly irrational. I can stream music at least 98% of the time. I have unlimited data plans, both at home and on my iPhone. Spotify Premium allows me to save tracks for offline listening. And it’s not as if I have access to all of my downloaded music all of the time anyway these days: the 160GB iPod is long gone, so when mobile I only have those albums I store on my iPhone. So my transport and travel arguments don’t really hold much water.

There is one further argument in favour of owning music: the software. While I’ve had a love/hate relationship with iTunes over the years, I do like the Genius playlist function. A lot. I also habitually use Siri when mobile to control the Music app on my iPhone, because it’s a lot more convenient to tell her what artist or playlist I want than to take my phone out of my pocket and select it manually.

But if Apple’s rebranded Beats Music service is being integrated into iTunes on the Mac and the Music app on the iPhone, that argument also bites the dust. I’ll still have Genius–which will presumably now be able to combine downloaded and streamed music–and Siri will still be able to control the Music app.

I still wasn’t ready to make the shift last year, but I’m thinking 2015 may finally be the year. The year I admit to myself that there is no longer any convincing reason to own music instead of renting it, simply switching from Spotify to Apple’s service when it gets unveiled in June.

Are you planning to do the same? Do you still see reasons to own music rather than rent it? Or did you stop buying music years ago and can’t figure out why I didn’t do the same? Take our poll, and let us know your views in the comments.

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Comments

  1. standardpull - 9 years ago

    For me, I haven’t stopped buying music. It’s more that I found a compelling replacement for the dying radio industry.

    I really do like music. There are some things that I will listen to forever that I will buy to enjoy whenever I want, wherever I am.

    I also listen to iTunes radio and Pandora. These functionally replace FM radio, which is a media that has been slowly dying since the advent of MTV. iTR and Pandora are great for discovering tunes, just like radio used to be until radio became highly managed and mechanized and no longer fit my needs.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      It’s a good point: I hardly ever listen to FM radio these days (even spoken-word radio has been replaced by podcasts).

  2. bubffm - 9 years ago

    I was an early adopter of digital music as well but was never a fan of compressed music, be it mp3 or aac or whatever. So luckily enough I was smart enough to rip all my CDs into FLAC (free lossless audio) format for my home hifi use and use a ‘quick-and-dirty’ mp3 copy to carry outside, when surface noise etc. will ruin truly high end audio experience anyway.

    The reasons for low quality (compressed) music have all but gone. Storage is cheap. The future will be lossless streaming, which TIDAL is offering and which links directly into my high end audiophile home hifi as well as the iphone on the road.

    Apple with its historic resistance to open up iTunes to the FLAC format will miss the beat if Beats (or whatever their revamped streaming service my be called one day) will not offer lossless audio streaming.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      I suspected the lossless market is too small for Apple. You’re right about local storage, but there’s (currently) still streaming bandwidth to consider, especially on mobile. I think lossless as a mainstream format is still a few years down the line.

      • PMZanetti - 9 years ago

        Lossless audio is a thing that may never, ever be mainstream.

        Apple may yet wheel it out and call it “HD Music” or whatever…but who knows. Unless they go full boar with it…(24-bit @ 96Hz)…it wouldn’t even be worth it to me.

      • Lagax (@Lagax_) - 9 years ago

        @PMZanetti Just so someone said this: ‘never’ is a word that we shouldn’t use in technology and definitely not when looking at apple… I’m 100% positive that there’s no doubt we are going to have lossless audio everywhere in 100 years, even though apple might be gone then.. that’s a long time…

      • bubffm - 9 years ago

        Bandwidth is already a non-issue in urban areas. CD-quality lossless audio streaming takes less bandwidth than even low res 720p video streaming. I am not talking about full 24bit / 96khz Hi-res streaming. I agree that that might a a few years away.

    • Lagax (@Lagax_) - 9 years ago

      It won’t because 95% of people don’t even know that there is loss in quality and 90% of the remaining 5% don’t care, making MAYBE 0.5%(totally made up numbers, but this is conservative… Even one of 200 people still sounds too high for me) care about lossless audio… And as storage capacity and even more download/streaming speeds are important to 99% of the people and this lossless audio would also hurt them financially and compete with TIDAL(what they might want to get around), they definitely won’t implement lossless audio…

  3. Weston - 9 years ago

    I would probably stream if the music I listened to was streamable. Unfortunately listening to a lot of Japanese and indie music means most of my library would be unavailable via streaming. I find that iTunes Match is a nice workaround. I hope that whatever Apple decides to do with Beats still includes iTunes Match.

    • spiralynth - 9 years ago

      One of the greatest bands in the history of music—Tool—simply refuses to have their music available in digital format. One has never had the ability to legally stream or purchase a track or an album of theirs anywhere—ever. If you want to listen to Tool, your only option is to buy the physical CD or LP (again, I’m talking about legally obtaining it). They’ve had that kind of control over their masters pretty much since their inception, though that is an extremely rare status for any band (rare business-sense made that happen, not luck).

      Though I don’t listen to her music, Taylor Swift, one the biggest selling artists today, removed her latest chart-topping album from all steaming services shortly after its release, and a lot of people took note of the public smack-down she issued Spotify. Artists typically get shockingly diddly amounts (like low 5 digits) from those services and they all seem to be in a mood to fight back about it lately (maybe Tidal will change things, who knows).

      And until sources like hdtracks dot com or Apple or Tidal or Pono or whomever vastly increase their lossless catalog, there will always remain a group of purists who’ll be in the market for physical CDs or LPs, even if in limited amounts.

      I imagine I’ll continue doing both for a while—streaming and buying physical CDs—because I don’t see a 100% solution to either issue any time soon, if ever.

      • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

        Yes, I figured out years ago that my ears weren’t really good enough to appreciate the difference between lossless and lossy unless I’m actively listening out for it – in real-life listening, 256Kbps AAC is good enough for my ears.

  4. PMZanetti - 9 years ago

    Glad to see I’m in the majority of people who still own and purchase music. There are so many other considerations. Quality being one of them.

    A lot of the digital music I buy does not come from iTunes, because iTunes still does not offer FLAC or any other kind of lossless audio, or anything in 24-bit format. If its something I don’t really care about the intricacies of the sound, I’ll buy the compressed aac.

    And I do of course enjoy the convenience of iTunes Match, which is a trade off with quality. I don’t mind accepting my whole library (which locally has a lot of AIFF or Apple Lossless) streamed to me as AAC purely for convenience. But I pay $25 a YEAR for that. That’s nothing. That’s a no brainer.

    I’ve never paid for Spotify for any other similar service because I don’t see the value. I am really not in to overpaying for low quality streamed music. If I want to casually peruse pop music, iTunes Radio and other free offerings serve that need.

    For me its either 1) Streaming Radio (iTunes Radio or Sirius), 2) Streaming my Library (iTunes Match), or 3) Buying high quality music directly from the artists themselves (yes thats a thing).

    I don’t see where any sort of monthly subscription fits in to that. I would never use it. Its not going to save me money either. I am still gonna spend $15 per FLAC album I purchase, whether thats one a month or two.

    I’m sure there is a market for it, I am just not it. Some might say audiophiles are not the market for anything, but thats not true. I see the value in and use iTunes Radio and iTunes Match. A lot. But paying $10/mon to rent iTunes Store music? No, I really don’t think so.

    • chrisl84 - 9 years ago

      Unless you listening to Vivaldi or Bach sound quality for most modern formats is a silly argument. Overly bass pumping/distortion cranking/synthesized modern music for someone who wants to claim to be an audiophile is oxymoronic.

      • Max Mars (@devianter) - 9 years ago

        “Overly bass pumping/distortion cranking/synthesized modern music”
        That’s because you listen to shitty music. Not all music is done the same, and not all MODERN music is “Overly bass pumping/distortion cranking/synthesized modern music”. So, yeah, nope.

      • bubffm - 9 years ago

        >> Unless you listening to Vivaldi or Bach sound quality for most modern formats is a silly argument

        Thats of course a heap of b**shit. If you have not damaged your ears yet with all that low-res banging and you ever listen to lossless or hi res Pink Floyd, Beatles, Jazz or whatever, its a very notable difference to the the same stuff in mp3

        But I agree its a cultural and educational issue. If you only listen to the iphone earplugs or some cheap streamers you’ll of course never be able to appreciate the difference. Same as you’ll never appreciate a Porsche if you only ever drive Ford :-)

      • standardpull - 9 years ago

        So the only place where quality counts is Vivaldi and Bach? Yes, great composers. But there is a lot of great modern music out there by artists who are great musicians who care about their sound. That’s the 95%. Even much pop fits into that.

        In other news, remember that compressed and lossless are not mutually exclusive. Most lossless formats do use compression. Including FLAC.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Makes sense.

    • Weston - 9 years ago

      I would not call myself an Audiophile, but I can definitely tell the difference between the “feel” of a streamed song on spotify and iTunes Plus 256k encoded files.

      iTunes Match and FLAC have virtually no difference for my ears, but I recognize that some people haven’t ruined their hearing like I have and they should get to enjoy it :D

  5. joannbendzsas - 9 years ago

    To Me it’s simple. I use Spotify to discover and iTunes to cherish.

    • sewollef - 9 years ago

      @joannbendzsas:

      That’s a philosophy I can agree with. Except I have no current desire to use Spotify or other streaming service, with the occasional exception of iTunes radio. My tastes are so varied they run into many aspects of what is euphemistically called “World Music”. Streaming services just don’t cater to that.

      I still read magazines [and sometimes they’re made of dead trees]. I learn about much music I’d love to hear more from that source, and either go to the artist directly – as in Zoe Keating for example or from other usually digital source to buy.

      Currently, I’m comfortable with my choices. I buy only maybe 4-5 actual CDs a year these days to supplement what is a ridiculously large music collection. With the exception of maybe the last 2,000 or so CDs, all of it is now digitized.

      Never say never in technology is my motto.

      • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

        While writing this piece, I did actually work out roughly how much I’d spent on music to illustrate the money I had invested in those CDs – which is, I think, one of those sums We Should Never Do. I didn’t, in the end, include the number in the piece, but suffice it to say if you are referencing “the last 2,000 or so CDs” you bought, your number will even scarier than mine!

      • thebums66 - 9 years ago

        I just tried Beats 14 day free trial and have now become a subscriber. I was amazed how quickly the suggestions matched my tastes. I was thinking I’d miss my iTunes match, but it’s all there and when I want to look up someone like Zoe, there she was. Only one album it seems but thank you for introducing me. In fact I’m listing to Exurgency as I type and I’m hooked… I was reluctant myself to go streaming and felt my kids who use the free spotify were taking away from the artist but feel comfortable subscribing to Beats and looking forward to the next generation. Thank you again for Zoe.

  6. Thanos Sofias - 9 years ago

    For me there’s another issue with streaming. You lose that feeling of owning and knowing your music. You depend on a router and a carrier connection. That feeling of taking your iPod out of your pocket and listening to hours of music is gone. My opinion/suggestion is that Apple should integrate the streamed songs into the iTunes, so they can be transferred to your iPod. It is simple. Buy the membership. For as long as you are a member you can have the songs in your iDevice. Stop the subscription, songs are gone. Kind of works as Kindle Unlimited. Arguments saying that you can load your iPod and never connect to the internet, so you can cancel and still have your songs, are not that viable. Cause we do search for music.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Spotify takes this approach: you can listen offline for up to a month, then you have to reconnect to verify that you still have a subscription.

      • Thanos Sofias - 9 years ago

        I love Spotify. I have a student premium subscription for £4.99, which is nothing. But i still feel something is missing. It is an third-party app. It is a battery/data killer. It is just not the same interface with iTunes. I miss those days when i had just to press the iTunes icon on my Mac and enjoy music.

  7. Sebastian James - 9 years ago

    I own about 200GB of music. I own 2TB of TV and movies.

    I listen to my collection streamed via iTunes Match, as well as other streams/internet radio/blogs, namely iTunes Radio, SomaFM and Mr. Mod’s Mod, Mod World.

    I understand streaming media. And movies, TV shows, etc.

    What still keeps me hanging on to my physical media and backing up my collection to the cloud are hardware failures and attorneys.

    Hardware failures mean my music could get lost, and I’d have to re-load it the old-fashioned way.

    Attorneys mean that sections of streaming music could get removed and added back in arbitrarily.

    It sucks to want to hear “that” track, and can’t get to it.

    If you want to GUARANTEE (sorry for the right-wing all cap) you can listen to your music anytime and anywhere, own it.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Yes, that is an additional argument. There aren’t many cases, but there have been a few, so if we really love a piece of music, that would be a reason to own it.

  8. scumbolt2014 - 9 years ago

    I still use my 3rd gen iPod Nano in the car. I’ve found the click wheel control is much quicker and safer than an iPhone or iPod Touch control. I also have an assortment of other older iPods I’ll use when/if the nano craps out.

    • scumbolt2014 - 9 years ago

      I forgot to add that an older iPod necessitates purchased music with no internet connectivity. I stream new album previews on iTunes, but as long as radio exists streaming music is a 3rd option for me.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      In the car, I use Siri to control my music.

  9. mpias3785 - 9 years ago

    I buy music and never use streaming services. To quote Douglas Adams:

    1. Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works.

    2. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty-five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it.

    3. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.

    • mpias3785 - 9 years ago

      I didn’t mean to “like” my own post, (Which I did otherwise I wouldn’t have posted it, but “liking” your own post is narcissistic and rude. My trackpad is a little sensitive today or my aim may have been bad, but I was curious who else appreciated a memorable quote from the Master of Memorable Quotes, fellow Mac aficionado and all-around brilliant author who was taken from us far too young.)

      Do I win some award for ratio of post to parenthetical remark?

  10. Max Mars (@devianter) - 9 years ago

    Buy music? Most music doesn’t deserve to be bought. That said, i still love my CDs. But only the best of the best.

  11. modernaudiophile - 9 years ago

    After moving so many times and losing/damaging my music collection, it is soooooo nice to have Spotify.. (and I’ll soon be switching to Tidal because I like high quality). This is such a PERFECT time to be a music lover :)

  12. For me, there is no substitute for iTunes. Point. Blank. Period. I could possible loose my job and won’t be able to afford the monthly payments for streaming services which would result in my loosing all my “stored” streamed songs. I know that no matter what happens to my job, the $1.29 song I payed for will ALWAYS be there ready for me to listen to.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      I can see that argument – though I think I’d give up eating before I gave up music …

  13. ahovdave - 9 years ago

    No, well at lest not in Australia, streaming is the future but today’s broadband plans are just not up to it, take a look at netflix, an hour of streaming a video equals 1Gb now the most Australans have is a 8Gb plan..so streaming movies are out of the question, and streaming music is as well, sadly, anything lager than 25GB can cost you more than $200, so at lest in Australia it won’t be big, our last century company with lack of competition and CEO only recently finding out about the invention of the wheel, I don’t see streaming becoming a large part of australian live.

  14. The folks who’ll stop buying music will be the people who were compelled to buy content for their portable devices. There will always be a group of music mavens who want to acquire music, whether that be CDs, files, vinyl, or music pills, whenever they get those perfected.

  15. freediverx - 9 years ago

    I can’t stand commercial radio or anything that resembles it, like Pandora and iTunes Radio. When I want to listen to music, the most important things to me are:

    1) the ability to listen to exactly what I want, whenever, wherever, and as often as I like.

    2) the ability to discover new music that matches both my musical tastes and my current listening mood, without having to endure listening to crap I dislike.

    The commercial radio services I cited above fail all miserably on both counts. They are “push” services, meaning I’m forced to listen passively with very little control. They provide very limited (if any) options for me to override their pre-programmed and sponsored music offerings. More often than not, when requesting a particular song I’m presented with an alternative I don’t find satisfactory. Any attempts at delivering playlists that match either my current listening mood or my previous listening habits are utter failures, synthesized by business-oriented algorithms, rather than by curated by a real person with a genuine interest and understanding of a particular genre or sub-genre of music.

    For me the best solution currently is a service like Beats Music, Rdio, or Spotify. Ninety nine percent of the time I can quickly and easily find a specific song I want to hear and, with Beats at least, I also have an easy way to browse the world’s music by artist, song name, album name, or genre with minimal clutter and commercialization. For offline listening I can easily mark tracks, albums, and playlists for download to my device. And again with Beats I also have a selection of human-curated playlists for when I want to discover new music that matches my tastes.

    Since finding a streaming service that meets my basic needs, I no longer see any value in purchasing music, except perhaps in the odd case where a particular track or album is not available on my preferred streaming service. When I do buy music, it’s certainly not from iTunes. It’s typically from Beatport given their massive library of dance music accurately categorized into sub-genres like “deep house” and “dubstep” rather than “dance” or “top 40.”

    I do feel bad for (some) artists getting a raw deal from the streaming music services. I’m not going to shed a tear for Kanye or Beyonce but it sucks that smaller artists and songwriters are getting pennies for their work while music labels pocket the lion’s share of the revenues. THAT is the root cause of the problem. THAT is what needs fixing – NOT my listening or purchasing preferences.

  16. iSRS - 9 years ago

    I purchase most of my music, and listen to it. 256k AAC is fine for my ears. Like my eyes, my ears will never be 100%. I am also of the “good enough” that the music sounds good enough to me. I know audiophiles will disagree, but it is good enough for me.

    • freediverx - 9 years ago

      This has nothing to do with your hearing. All these recent attempts to market “hi-def” digital audio are a sham. David Pogue conducted blind tests of Neil Young’s $400 Pono hi-def music player and it lost to the iPhone playing standard 256k AAC tracks.

      Not only is his overpriced player ridiculously shaped like a Toblerone and overpriced, but it’s also deceptively marketed. Young’s audio quality tests pitted low-res MP3 files against hi-res, specially remastered versions of songs. In other words, he’s a fraud.

      • bubffm - 9 years ago

        Yes, thats because Pono is a sham. Not high def music as such.

      • b9bot - 9 years ago

        Totally agree. Those people that thought they could tell were truly mistaken. Young’s player is ugly, overpriced and probably doesn’t play any better than anything on the market including the current iPods and iPhones.

  17. b9bot - 9 years ago

    I still like owning my music so I will stick with iTunes Radio and buy what I like. I don’t like subscriptions to anything really. Radio will let me hear new stuff I might like and buy later. Not going to pay to just listen sorry.

  18. galley99 - 9 years ago

    You’ll have to pry my CDs out of my cold, dead hands!

  19. Tim Kendall - 9 years ago

    I like supporting folk artist that come through a local Coffee House so I still buy CDs from them. I also listen to a lot of J-pop/anime but that is all streaming. But occasionally I find one I like so I will buy it usually an import from Japan so it can be pricy ($40+) I still like to be able to choose what song I like so I will always be buying music just not as much. Plus I still need to rip my vinyl.

  20. crateish (@crateish) - 9 years ago

    Between us, my wife and I have about 2500 CDs. About 75% of them are on Spotify. I rarely listen to music that isn’t streamed these days. I started ‘matching’ my CDs with iTunes Match, but had so many issues and glitches that I gave up.

    I have a DAC hooked up to my MacBook Pro and hardwire stream directly into my Amp. I invested in some commercially sold FLAC files, but I simply do not hear much of a difference (if any) between HiRes files and the top streaming quality from Spotify and iTunes.

    I’ll likely switch to Apple’s version of Beats Music once it launches.

  21. J.latham - 9 years ago

    First of all Ben, this a wonderfully written article. You continue to be a good amount of the reason why I come to this website. I find yourself and I have very many of the same issues and questions with new technologies despite our probable age difference. Not saying you are old or anything, I just probably feel very different about digital mediums and the purchasing of materials digital and not then most others my age (25).
    Coming from someone with a rather large music library (a little over 13,000 songs) streaming services have always seemed odd to me. I wouldn’t say there isn’t a value in it, but there are probably less then an album a month that comes out that I would really want and I already have a pretty large base of selections. That being said, I’ve been using Beats now for a couple of months and I probably mirror what others are saying so far in that I really like how dialed in the service has become with recommendations.
    That aside, my biggest issue before making the switch is one of both habit and laziness. I like skimming through my library for something to play sometimes when I’m not sure what I’m in the mood for and finding an old favorite that I haven’t maybe put on in a while. I miss having my library right there at my finger tips. For that reason alone, I still have iTunes Match and end up using the music player a lot of the times. Now, I could add my music into the My Library section of Beats but I’m just to lazy to add all 13,000 tracks. So when Apple’s alternative (revamped Beats Music) comes out I will probably finally make the switch as long as there is a way to analyze and match my existing library into the service. That to me is the deal maker.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Thanks for the kind comments, JL. I will admit to being older than 25. :-) I’m reasonably confident that the relaunched service will be able to base its playlists on existing libraries – it would be crazy if they don’t make adoption as easy as possible for iTunes users. I’m currently using a VPN to trial Beats …

  22. Quasar_ (@Quasar_) - 9 years ago

    No. Just as with the other streaming services I’m a bit unwilling to pay as I’ll have to buy music because their catalogues are incomplete. As it is I’m forced to import cds because not all the music I want is available on itunes or any competitor (mostly japanese music).

    • Tim Kendall - 9 years ago

      Same here a lot of the music I like (Japanese music) I can’t get and Shazam never recognizes it. It is available in iTunes Japan but that doesn’t help me. Although iTunes match has matched up some of my questionable acquisitions;) even the track is not available in the USA iTune store.

    • J.latham - 9 years ago

      A lot of Japanese love on this site. Luckily most of my favorite artists from Japan are iTunes in the U.S. but I would LOVE to see Apple really make waves by offering up iTunes as a distributor for foreign music. I’m sure there would be a lot of red tape, and I mean a lot, but even if it started with just a handful of countries with an International iTunes Store/ Catalogue for Beats, it would be pretty awesome.

  23. All the music I have I bought, either the old records LPs (still have my old 90° JVC turntable as well as 2 digital turntables for creating MP3 of my collection) or CDs or via iTunes.
    Perhaps it’s irrational but anything I want I will buy as long as I can afford it.

    Most of our actions especially buying not needed products (and this is true for nearly all digital devices) are irrational.

    For me streaming services are irrational.

    1st I only buy music when I really like it
    2nd most modern music are ripped off titles or I don’t like them at all or do all sound the same
    3rd so paying for streaming titles I don’t like to hear is throwing away money
    4th I still listen to real radio but not for the music, but well researched informations (it’s true most radio stations do podcasts, but only part of it and only days later. I want to be informed now by professional reporters and not by some bloggers who either have no clue or are misinformed or have wrongly reports. Plus those often do sound like drunken junkies.)
    5. iTunes Radio not available in my country as many other Apple services (and no Apple Store at all) but being the main iTunes address here in Europe for financial reasons is ok.
    6. why pay for something that I can’t own? Or won’t be available after some months? Did happen to me with iTunes movies: when I wanted to watch a movie from my wishlist “Sorry this movie isn’t available anymore!”

    The main problem with streaming is that people are too obsessed by the internet. Only virtual infos, no real world contact. If they do loose data (songs, movies, cloud data…) they just accept it. Point.

    Unfortunately this evolves so fast we can’t stop it. I don’t want my data in a cloud, I don’t need streaming.
    And I don’t want to spend money every month for something I won’t use regularly.
    The same goes for leasing a car or renting a house.

    Only makes sense for a short time usage.

  24. My only fear is that like movies on netflix, they can just decide in an instant that a song or an album is no longer available and then I’m out of luck. I have countless bootleg albums in the cloud now, and I am constantly in fear that they’ll just suddenly be gone – I got rid of the physical media long ago.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Yes, that might be an argument in favor of my current approach of buying albums I really like, but then I could always do that if & when it disappears from my chosen streaming service.

  25. stuffradio (@stuffradio) - 9 years ago

    Not Apple’s streaming music service. I’m not holding my breath thinking it will leave the US. I also have Spotify, so why would I pay Apple? They couldn’t even release Apple music outside of the US or Australia.

  26. Ben, this is a great article! I find that making the transition to streaming to be a love/hate relationship at the moment. I am currently a Beats Music subscriper. There are some licensing issues that cause me to go back to owned music. I didn’t quite understand what the licensing issues are for streaming music, but it seems that there are some litigations that keep certain tracks from appearing on an album, which frustrates me sometimes. When the merging of Beats/iTunes reports I will be a happy camper. I have iTunes Match as well and merging the services will finally give me some peace.

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Thanks, Rion. There have been so many recommendations for Beats I’m currently using a VPN to trial it from the UK and have to say I’m already very impressed just two days in.

  27. I still buy CDs. (Mainly Japanese.) I’d rather pay $50 for a CD than one cent for an mp3. That’s like asking me to pay for air. It’s not going to happen. I want the real thing.

  28. I still by the CDs to groups like The Bealtes, John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney!

  29. evilbyte - 9 years ago

    With the exception of a few ‘hi-def’ albums, I’ve stopped buying music since I’ve started streaming a few years ago. I really see no point; I find it almost entirely irrational. As mentioned in this post, services like Spotify allow offline access to any of the millions of tracks. I, for one, welcomed the freedom and convenience of having to forgo the management of my music library. I no longer have to worry about storage, syncing, accessibility, back-up, not to mention the cost (I used to spend around $100/month). With services like Tidal, which offers lossless CD-quality streaming, streaming is even more attractive for me. I will not be switching to Apple unless its own service offers lossless audio and significantly better user experience (I have a few issues with Tidal’s UX).

  30. Michael Buss Andersen - 9 years ago

    I buy and listen to my own music for one simple reason, it simply sounds better than anything you can stream with the current offerings, and i’m not talking about bit rate compression as many others seems to do. I simply don’t believe that any of you have the ability to hear the difference between a lossless format and something like 256 bit/s AAC.
    No, the real problem is the modern music industry. Music nowadays is compressed dynamically which means that it sounds flat and boring. Old recordings are often only offered as re-mastered editions on Spotify which often also sounds poorly. On CD I can just buy older matters that sounds much nicer. I don’t have that option when streaming.

  31. Dean Redding - 9 years ago

    Owning your music far outweighs the streaming of music… You owning the music means it will always be with you, but as years come and services like spotify lose the rights to certain songs or artists (ie; Taylor Swift), you won’t regret keeping the music that you owned via digital or physical.

    I will never give up my collection both CDs and Digital, but will use streaming on times when required.

  32. catscout - 9 years ago

    The problem is that outside the U.S. Is impossible to have unlimited data plans for mobile services, usually the cap is 1 or 3 Gb, and the monthly fees for mobile services area above €30. Add 15 for spottily, or similar services, you start to see what is the yearly costs. And if you stop paying the subscription bye bye music.

  33. For my favorite artist, Lady Gaga, I buy a physical CD and download it on iTunes. Then I use Spotify to stream the album. Talk about supporting the artist (and label) lol. For all other music I usually just stream it on Spotify. If I like the song I add it to my music list on Spotify so I can listen offline.

  34. Mark Ram - 9 years ago

    I think there is a difference between USA and Europe or at least a lot of European countries, we already adopted Spotify (three years ago) which gives the opportunity to download your playlists offline as well. I even think the Mac app is far better then Itunes. (For instance: I never understood why if I want to listen to music, I am bothered by lots of other stuff: tvshows,movies, apps, podcasts. I just want to play my music, which spotify does). And if you want to be sure you can play a certain album or certain songs anytime, just make sure you have them on your offline playlist and you can play the music, without any connection. I am not advertising, but I just don’t understand that we already use this for years, and that the US is only getting there now.

  35. Ilko Sarafski - 9 years ago

    Maybe it’s a little bit too late to join the conversation, but I’ll give my two cents on it. Well, the Ben’s point make sense in some cases, like USA, UK, etc. But as some people mentioned, in the 3rd world/developing countries it’s still not common thing to pay 10% of your salary just for the phone’s plan. In Bulgaria, where I am currently residing, we don’t have unlimited data plans. Yet, one hopes.For 15 euros you get 10GBs. No other options for now. On the other hand, I haven’t noticed people talking much about illegal music. In Bulgaria 98% of the people are simply downloading the music they want. In whatever quality they want. Haven’t heard too many people saying that they bought music in… lets say 5 years now. And I am closer to the audiophiles than to “don’t care what FM is on” people. When you are poor and you have the opportunity to listen to 24/96 music for free, you are onto it for sure.
    Ben, 2015 might be for you, 2020 is for the Eastern Europe. Or something like this. Maybe only Poland has it, but other EE countries don’t have 4G yet. :) More, our 3G is not the best either, even downtown (it’s because there’s too many people on 1 cell, not because they don’t have coverage).
    P.S. We do have some 4G provider, but its ridiculously expensive for us, + it covers only 4-5 major cities. Which makes it useless.
    P.S.2 – Great article, Ben! What I love about your articles, is that you (always) think forward. In some short-to-mid term trajectory (the long term might be futurism in some cases), which always gives us “food” you know. :) All the best and looking forward for your next materials! :)

    • Ben Lovejoy - 9 years ago

      Thanks, Ilko, I appreciate that. And yes, unlimited data is a pre-requisite for this decision – if I do indeed make it. I’m currently trialling Beats (via VPN) and am rather impressed so far.

  36. James Conley - 9 years ago

    I can’t believe you just trashed the CD’s!
    I’m sure someone would have like to listen to some of the music. Why not give them away to a charity store.

    Someone could have enjoyed that music and avoided all that plastic going to landfill.

  37. bsenka - 9 years ago

    I strongly dislike any and all variants of streaming services for audio, even if the content is free either way (such as podcasts). I want to have a copy in my master iTunes library on my computer, and I want to be the one who decides when of if it goes away. What I won’t do, is pay someone a monthly fee in order to keep those files alive.

    And that’s not counting the fact that mobile data is totally unreliable. I can’t even count the number of times I’ve had either no signal, or one so weak that using any data is out of the question. I have to know those files are actually on my device before I leave the house, otherwise there is a pretty good chance I won’t get to listen to them where ever I go.

  38. thcorneloup - 9 years ago

    I’m surprised that nobody mentioned that earlier but the reason I’m not switching to streaming is that no steaming service handles Smart Playlists. I have a main smart playlist which is almost the only thing I listen to. It’s a mix of my new additions and of older tracks that I haven’t played or skipped for a certain amount of time. Unfortunately even iTunes Match doesn’t sync properly metadata (like play and skip counts, or last play or skip date) across devices so I’m sticking to a regular iTunes library synced with my iPhone.

  39. After reading your piece it seems to me you are only concerned about one thing; price. Streaming services, in my opinion, should be used to discover new artists – I would never use it as my only music source. A compact disc should be treasured. You refer to CD’s as plastic junk, yet I’m positive you’ll be able to tell me where you bought it or if you were with someone…there is a story, a memory, a personal connection with a CD…because it’s a physical object. Streaming services / downloads can not give you this pleasure. Why rent when you can buy?

  40. I am not nor ever will be agreed that streaming is a 100% replacement of really high quality album downloads after purchase, like from, hmmm, iTunes Store. You then definitely own the albums, you store them on other devices, making backups of them, whatever you want, but you have them. And if you decide to buy certain albums, especially from favorite artist or groups, they are probably also worth it to do so, an exciting album you own with pleasure….just digitally, on your devices

  41. Denny Burkes - 9 years ago

    You are overlooking the file quality question. To me, this is the elephant in the room. I purchase and play only vinyl when at home, but use TIDAL or Spotify Premium on my phone while on the go or in the car. I can’t for the life of me figure out why no one is talking about file quality?!?!?!??? TIDAL is the only service that is addressing/correcting this. As bandwidth becomes more readily available with the advent of fiber connection offerings, there is no need to be listening to crappy sounding file quality (such as Spotify, or anything else that is less than “lossless”). For all of TIDAL’s faults, there is one thing that they get absolutely correct, and that is the quality of the sound. I will pay extra to have good sound. Call me crazy, or call me an audiophile (I’ve certainly been called worse). Up to this point, I cannot find any info regarding the file quality of Apple Music’s files when listening in “offline” mode. I am praying that they will be offering an ALAC option. At least for those of us who give a damn. Jesus… it is 2015 already. Compression is dead.

  42. Chuck Clarke - 9 years ago

    What’s mostly making my heels dig in about only streaming the music is that I like to do my own organizing, changing, arranging my music library as I want. Streaming (as far as I know) won’t let me combine tracks on a CD and re-download them into one song: (Like combining “I Am the Sea/The Real Me/Quadrophenia” into a single track instead of the senseless division that cuts in – especially when shuffling). I like to select personal albums of the year and add that year to the title – I like to change the genre on a track to be more accurate – I’ve always loved this creative freedom to work with the library you’ve got. Streaming may let you make “Playlists” but i doubt it lets you manipulate tracks. What about tracks with dead air space followed by a ghost track? Would I be able to go in and set the parameter of time so as to skip the dead space? Perhaps I’m a bit AR on this aspect of music collecting, but it’s always been part of the joy of music, being able to organize it the way you want. It’s garnred from the time of records when you hold it, open it up and admire the feel, the art work (Paul mcCartney said something similar). I do like and use (free) spotify as a way to really listen to something to find if it’s good enough to own (as opposed to just 30 second samples). Streaming is here to stay, but I would rather see it complement rather than swallow up the joys that come from simple owning the tracks.

Author

Avatar for Ben Lovejoy Ben Lovejoy

Ben Lovejoy is a British technology writer and EU Editor for 9to5Mac. He’s known for his op-eds and diary pieces, exploring his experience of Apple products over time, for a more rounded review. He also writes fiction, with two technothriller novels, a couple of SF shorts and a rom-com!


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