You don't own anything, though. I listen to CDs I bought 20+ years ago and then ripped all the time, in my home, at work and in cars. If you cancel your streaming service today what will you listen to tomorrow?
The market for people who actually want to own it is vanishingly small. I for instance literally do not care if I own it or not. All I really want is to be able to listen to it when I want to and I have that. I don't see a realistic future where I won't be able to listen to it.
All in all I'm with tptacek here. For all but the most niche consumer this is unambiguously better than we had before.
Nice to know you've completely lost touch with the rest of the world in terms of being able to watch significant chunks of recurring revenue fly out the door, along with realigning incentives away from getting any ambitious or different music that isn't "investment grade".
>"Screw you, got mine," does not tend to score points with the youth of today, and it doesn't score points with me. Not that what I think matters one lick. All of my music has either been consumed via radio, adopted via possession through being the family backup media, or public domain/OST, typically from ye olde CD store.
Furthering the arts my arse. Furthering the exploitation and monetization of the Arts as business model through aggressive litigation is more like it.
I like that I have a large music library--some of which is at least a bit oddball and, I'm guessing, not available streaming. But that's in no small part because I ripped a large CD collection (and pulled other songs off Napster, mostly to replace songs I only had on old vinyl).
That said, I'm not at all sure that I'd try to build a library from scratch if I were starting today. Maybe I'd buy the odd album here and there but probably not wholesale.
As for video, the vast vast majority people of people don't buy a lot of DVDs any longer. Heck, I've certainly had people express surprise that I even own a DVD player.
All in all I'm with tptacek here. For all but the most niche consumer this is unambiguously better than we had before.