[_carbyau_]

Meh, the two ideologies are a tradeoff decision.

If you own, you don't pay subscription and can use that money to buy. And in tenuous circumstances you have control.

If you subscribe, you don't pay money to buy massive library. But in tenuous circumstances you don't have control.

Everybody rates the risk of tenuous circumstances differently and so that affects the decision outcome.

[lucsky]

+1000

There's absolutely no way in hell I'm going back to hoarding stupid ass CDs or MP3/FLAC files when I can legally have immediate access to tens of millions of titles. I have absolutely zero interest in the "owning" part but I understand some people would prefer it.

[sidrag22]

ive often thought about a happy middle ground product that would make me consider coming back to spotify... a version of the subscription model, somewhat similar to ebook stuff, where if you are subscribed you can choose X amount of songs that month to "own" forever.

so if you decide you cant pay their monthly fee, you still have full access to your library of songs that you chose to own over the years, and are not subjected to the feeling of being a prisoner to their subscription model if you decide you cant afford it for x amount of time.

this feeling of being a prisoner is the absolute main driver of why i prefer non spotify solutions. i love the actual product otherwise. if i had not experienced the non subscribed version of what my account feels like, i think i would still happily be paying for spotify today.

[j_french]

I use bandcamp intermittently and have often wished that they offered a "subscription" feature like this, whereby they take a certain amount of money from me a month to put into my "bandcamp wallet" or whatever, that I can then use to buy music. I mean to spend a certain amount on music in bandcamp per month but life gets in the way and it falls off the radar. A model like this would definitely keep me more engaged

[tomrod]

100% agree. I'll note that the more one gets jaded with individual systems, they like to reach for easy systems that give them more control.