[gglitch]

Music-as-a-Service is fantastic as a convenience, and I too have discovered a lot of great music this way, but (a) I all the time want to listen to a record and find it missing from their catalogs; and (b) as with so much else on the web, I'm so over the constant minor psychological drag of knowing that my interactions are being tracked, logged, and gamed.

[tptacek]

Music is probably one of the only services where I get value out of being tracked and logged; I listen to enough different artists that it's very easy to lose track of something, and to find myself in a rut of listening to the same 10 artists for weeks on end. One thing Apple Music does pretty well is providing a bunch of different gradually-learning thingies that keep the rotation fresh.

[floatboth]

> psychological drag of knowing that my interactions are being tracked, logged

Remember last.fm? We used to track music listens very deliberately to share with the public… Back in the day I had a "minor psychological drag" whenever I listened to something without scrobbling :D

[skinnymuch]

Seems no one else has brought up scrobbling. Especially with Apple Music and some other things brought up not supporting scrobbling.

I still feel this way. Though I also still use Foursquare/Swarm to check in. I also scrobble most of my TV and Youtube. All my podcast listening. I love scrobbling!

[xanaxagoras]

(a) was the breaking point for me. I pirated my entire Apple Music library from Soulseek and switched to Plex + Plexamp. Not as convenient for discovery but otherwise superior for me in every way.

[Dylovell]

I have started switching away from streaming services as well. Thanks for recommending Plexamp. It's awesome.

[ghaff]

I had a large enough digital music library pre-streaming services that I've elected to (mostly) keep maintaining my own library/playlists/etc. But I'm honestly not sure what I'd do if I were starting from Square 1. Would I really spend thousands of dollars to purchase songs/albums? Well I'd almost certainly pirate a lot--and TBH a fair bit of my library is Napster copies of previously owned vinyl--but there's still all the organizational effort.

And also TBH for files (and email) in general I used to spend a fair amount of effort filing into hierarchical structures. These days I do a bit of rudimentary sending to an archive folder or tag, delete older stuff (or not), and figure I can find something with search if I really need it. And, if I can't, it probably wasn't worth the effort to do the upfront librarian work anyway.

[lloeki]

> all the organizational effort.

Musicbrainz Picard helps a lot with that.

[amelius]

Minor conveniences will destroy the world.