[ar0]

> paying gets you less, rarely more.

I think you are generalizing "paying" to "subscribing to a streaming service" here, which I don't think is entirely fair.

You can still pay for your music the old-fashioned way, by buying songs on Amazon MP3, iTunes, etc., which will yield you DRM-free, plain MP3 / AAC files that you can use where and how you want to (unless, apparently, you entrust them to iTunes and enable iTunes Music...).

And while the book industry unfortunately hasn't quite followed the same path, there are still many great sources for books around that also provide you with DRM-free, high quality files (e.g. OReilly, Packt, lots of smaller publishers).

[JadeNB]

> You can still pay for your music the old-fashioned way, by buying songs on Amazon MP3, iTunes, etc., which will yield you DRM-free, plain MP3 / AAC files that you can use where and how you want to (unless, apparently, you entrust them to iTunes and enable iTunes Music...).

This is true now, but it wasn't always; it's a hard-fought right that should be appreciated rather than taken for granted. (Not to say that you are so taking it, but a superficial reading of your post might sound that way.)