mm. I can’t deny the convenience of streaming. I usually just go on YT, Soundcloud, or Bandcamp to browse stuff I may want to buy.
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I do both I am slowly replacing my current digital library with HiRes as I can, and when tracks are available. Streaming is really convenient for try before buy and listening to the tracks that I can’t find in better quality. I’m using Spotify for music discovery, and recently started an Amazon HD trial where I’ve been doing a lot of listening to entire albums.
I’ve never streamed until about two weeks ago when I started the trial for Qobuz. There’s almost nothing on Netflix that has appeal for me anymore and no other pay TV services really appealing to me either. With Qobuz being within a dollar or two of Netflix I decided what the Hell, let’s see if I want to shift that money to music should I cancel Netflix. Unfortunately, my listening location is based off of Daphile and the UI for its Qobuz plugin is fairly primitive. At least to my level of UI/UX snobbery.
Only hi-rez download or CD purchase here.
I’ve got a pretty massive lossless collection. A significant portion of my digital listening is from stuff I already own. With that said, in the past few years, I’ve been using ROON a lot, and switched over to Qobuz and stream HiRes quite a bit. With ROON, its easy to incorporate streaming options into your collection and have access to it wherever.
I also listen to a lot of vinyl that I own. I just consume a lot of music, man…its easy to get high quality steams these days. Can kill it and enjoy them on a variety of headphones, can enjoy it on the road in the car, can send that stuff wirelessly, can play it over your expensive speaker set up, idk man, you can just get incredible sound these days without physical media.
I already said that I don’t stream music right? sure I don’t do some streaming for music, but I do stream when it comes to gaming from time to time. I don’t know, I just felt like doing it. But yeah, I do understand the convenience of music streaming for it does not need for you to download a specific artist’s album in order to get that listening experience that you wanted. Overall though, I would go for just downloading music, because when there’s no connection, you can still listen offline plus higher quality of fidelity, for me at least.
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The songs i like with poor DR i buy the track on itunes. So i guess thats limited streaming.
Well yea, ofc I give things one play-through before I buy, not sure that qualifies as streaming for this thread title though. That was the only thing I even got Spotify Free for a while back, but for some reason it stopped working in Firefox on Linux so I gave up on it. (Never worked on mobile for evaluating full albums, as it would always start playing other “related” stuff before finishing the album, and I wasn’t going to sit through that. Not to mention the ads.)
I have taken very well to streaming services. Roon, Quoboz, Tidal. I am a bit ADD and many times purchased music in my youth for a single song or just found that I much preferred the variety of radio or having my own mix tapes made by DJ’s.
After 30 years of listening to the same tired old music for decades the ability to stream through thousands of new to me albums and so many varieties of genres has been a revelation and I did not realize just how much I could enjoy music styles I never had an idea existed or thought I would never enjoy!
I have found myself listening to music from different countries and even in foreign languages and enjoying it immensely. Streaming services, internet radio, even YouTube music have made it worthwhile to me to invest in bigger and “better” equipment. My girlfriend owns much music and I have slowly incorporated her cd’s into a large lossless library for Roon to use to mix and match suggestions for us.
I am happily but slowly learning to use modern technology and appreciating what it has to offer. It’s not easy for those of us with dated technical knowledge and skills but doable with the invaluable help all you technologically savvy folks offer.
Thank you all.
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The question of how much money makes it to artists is valid. It’s also not a new question. Artist, labels, and retailers have been fighting over their sizes of the pie slices like preschoolers fight over the size of slices of real pie since there was a music industry. There are two truths here:
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Music streaming companies pay a lower percentage of their revenue to labels and artists than brick-and-mortar retailers pay or have paid historically.
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Music streaming, led by Spotify, revitalized the recorded music industry and made it a profit machine again after the dark ages of Napster/file sharing.
Industry numbers show net profits up for everyone in recent years. Here’s a Rolling Stone article with data: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/streaming-platforms-keeping-more-money-from-artists-than-ever-817925/
The issue isn’t black and white. IMO it does no good to say “streaming doesn’t pay artists well” and ignore the net benefit to the industry that is streaming. It also does no good to focus solely on that net benefit and give everyone a pass for proportionately under-supporting artists.
Disclosure: I stream from both Spotify and Qobuz for different reasons. I also make it a point to buy from active artists who I like to give them additional financial support. I also am still slowly building a library of purchased classic albums. So, like my opinion above, I firmly straddle the streaming-not streaming divide as a consumer and music lover.
Cheers all 
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I think the clarification is not whether streaming makes an artist money. It makes money for artists whose songs get played millions of times. For smaller artists it also provides visibility. As stated, if you support an artist, you’re better off going to a concert, buying a physical copy of the music from the artist directly preferably or hell order a mug or a tshirt. They make money off of those.
Another aspect of the discussion needs to be the difference between accumulation of music versus actually listening to music. In my library, I listen to everything that’s there. In my back up there’s shit that I have never listened to and may never listen to. Don’t necessarily see an issue having those.
As an example, Little Dragon is a group I’ve been into over the last year. I have bought every one of their CDs and bought a ticket to a concert… Covid got in the way of me actually seeing the show. 
I also have albums from the Beatles, I don’t listen to them I don’t necessarily like them, but I have them. Am I going to pay for that?
IMO as long as you monetarily support artists that you enjoy/love/adore/cherish it’s all good. Oh yeah, and buy directly from the artist or bandcamp whenever possible.
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The heart wants what it wants.
If i want to find out what all the youngins are listening i just look in the music threads. But theres so much old stuff i still havent mined yet like classical, who da thunk it ? Also streaming is radio 2.0 only you are paying a monthly fee to not hear 15 min ads for crazy eddies electronics stocking deep sell’em cheap or rockos bailbonds
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Some price increase in near future. Curios to see will others follow behind.
What do you do if the internet goes out ?
With Tidal, you can mark some of your songs for offline mode, which will store it temporarily to your hard drive.
I used to stream religiously using Tidal mainly because it seemed like they had an ongoing sale going on. Ever since I purchased my DAP, I have switched to all FLAC offline now. It actually sounds better 
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Spotify lets you download some music as well. Google says 6,667 tracks.
Both Qobuz and Amazon Music HD allow this also.
I sometimes use it on my phone.
don’t do it on your cellular data…unless it’s unlimited. my wife downloaded a lot of her music and I got hit with a $350 overage bill >.<
I have a pretty excessive cellular limit, I don’t think I’ve ever been anywhere near it, but generally I do it before leaving home when I’m on Wifi.
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