[Sakos]

It's still extremely simple to get music without having to put up with snobbish exclusive communities. Most basic solution is getting JDownloader and just copying a YouTube link with a song or playlist. If you want album releases, I could list half a dozen publicly accessible sites off the top of my head that don't require you to sign up and don't require you to beg somebody for an invite and don't require you to fulfill absurd seeding requirements.

[LM358]

I don't know where you get that snobbish vibe from (maybe my comment, in which case it wasn't intentional), but of course it's easy to just use yt-dlp or whatever. The places I frequent come with curation, organization, quality control and a community of people who deeply care about music which is something I value a lot.

Seeding, uploading and staying in it for the long haul is a lot more work than just buying a Spotify subscription and certainly not for everyone, but as someone who is constantly disappointed by the selection available on streaming services and also need local files for DJing, I couldn't imagine living without it.

[Sakos]

I got the snobbish vibe from being in these communities and wasting my time on them. It's just another form of gatekeeping.

[LM358]

You do you. After the takedowns of its predecessors (Napster, Oink, What.cd) some quite literal gatekeeping is required IMO.