[yatac42]

> > music I've purchased

> They really ought to stop using "buy"/"purchase" metaphorically to mean something more like "one time fee for an indefinite lease that ends upon account termination."

That doesn't really apply to buying music though, does it? If Amazon banned my account, that wouldn't prevent me from listening to the MP3s I've bought from them. It would only prevent me from re-downloading them from their servers if I somehow lost all of my local copies.

But if I buy a CD from a physical store, they also don't give a me another copy for free if I lose it (even without account termination entering into it), so I'm not really any worse off with the digital download.

[Pxtl]

I don't see why this is being downvoted. Music is the one digital good I feel the most confident purchasing because I know I'm getting a drm-unencumbered standard format like MP3 or AAC. I have all my music purchases backed up like I do my family photos. Yes, I also listen to my purchases on cloud services like YouTube Music, but if YouTube banned me tomorrow I would lose zero songs.

[justinclift]

> But if I buy a CD from a physical store ...

This is literally the nature of physical vs digital goods.

We can, and should, do better for customers than the current systems from Steam and Amazon (among others) allow.

[yatac42]

Which current systems?

For games on Steam and movies basically anywhere, the current system is that after I buy the game/movie, I can watch/play it for as long as I have access to the account. If I lose the account or the service shuts down, I'm fucked. That sucks.

For games on GOG or MP3s basically anywhere, the current system is that I buy it and then I can play the game/music forever as long as I don't lose the downloaded files. If I do lose the files, I can still redownload them as long as the service is still operating and I still have access to the account.

The second system seems fine to me.

[tmtvl]

> For games on Steam and movies basically anywhere, the current system is that after I buy the game/movie, I can watch/play it for as long as I have access to the account. If I lose the account or the service shuts down, I'm fucked. That sucks.

Slight pedantic nit, some games on Steam are DRM-free (though this is in no way indicated, you can find a list online, though*), those you can back up and keep using even if your account gets banned.

* https://www.pcgamingwiki.com/wiki/The_big_list_of_DRM-free_g...

[justinclift]

Good point, I've specifically mentioned Steam and Amazon.

[yatac42]

Yes and buying music on Amazon (which is what the comment I originally responded to was about), you get system number 2, i.e. a DRM-free MP3 download.

Buying movies on Amazon is a different matter entirely, but the comment and my reply were specifically about music.

[justinclift]

Nah. Being able to download a digital purchase at one point, but potentially being unable to download it again later on is a crap system.