Honestly, I think this is the biggest reason that music subscriptions are popular.
Nobody cares enough to curate their own music collection anymore, even if it's entirely legal, it's just too much damn work for most people.
Unless you have a special interest in music, eg, audiophiles, then it doesn't matter enough to spend any time on it. As long as you can listen to what you want, when you want, who cares?
Yep, I have a plex server, ihave radarr, sonarr setup, there is probably a same software for music or something similar that would let me get music easily, but I just don't care, spotify discover weekly has been serving me well, we are 4 people paying into a family plan so it's less than 3 euros a month.
This is me too. I completely have the know-how to obtain any media but I still pay for Spotify. I have a shared plan with my parents. It's literally my only subscription. I listen to music constantly. Even with the price hikes it's been a huge value.
Yt music for me because I needed more Google drive storage. I just couldn't get around it anymore and had to get more (long story explained elsewhere). Anyways.... The recommendations are generally trash but it's free and ad-free with my Google one thing, which I share with my family, so there's like four or five of us getting it for the cost of one subscription. It's one of the lowest tier subscriptions too.
I also know the Plex/radarr gambit, and it's been wild to say the least.
I swear that if there was a unified online video platform, the same way that music is distributed, where it doesn't matter if you're on Disney+, Hulu, Amazon Prime video, Netflix, Paramount+, whatever, you just get all the content regardless of platform and the platforms are affordable, then I'd turn all that shit off. It's not worth the headache.
Music companies are fighting with very little piracy as a result of their openness with people like YouTube music, Amazon music, Spotify, Apple music, etc..... Specifically because no matter which one you get, you have pretty much all the music ever. It's packaged slightly differently per service, but it's all there. Sure, it still happens, but it's pretty rare IMO. I hear more and more stories like yours so over, and very few where anyone feels the need to start warehousing music data.
There will always be a market for high fidelity/physical music, and there will always be a few that want their own copies of the music to have, and some of those may get that through piracy, but the fact is, it's way down from the days of Napster, when just about everyone was doing it.
I've long thought that the video media companies should take a page from the music industry and just open up the licensing, but they've gone the other way on it. IDK. Seems dumb.
They're still fighting with piracy and shit, so.....
It's nice when it works, but Plex has so thoroughly enshitified themselves now it needs internet access to stream on the home network! (Yes, I have read the KB/wiki pages and done the setup but it loses user management when connecting that way by IP).
Yeah that sucks. Mine has 128 GB internal and I added a 128 GB SD to store my music and (temporarily) store my movies which are normally stored in a HDD
I like the freedom of streaming anywhere without buffering while not worrying about mobile data quotas