1. Convenience (I never download or upload anything, and my playlists work and are automatically updated on the devices I care about)

2. Breadth of music (it doesn't have everything I want but it has a surprising amount of breadth in things I'd never care enough to amass deep collections in)

3. Easily accessible playlists from other people (I really appreciate the "This Is <band name>" playlists especially from Spotify)

4. Seeing what my friends are listening to all the time (I get a lot of new music this way)

Yeah, stuff goes away on the service. Yeah, certain less-popular genres are patchy and incompletely represented (and are we ever going to get Tool?). Yeah, the personal library limits are a bummer (although as someone who never uses this feature, I don't care myself). Yeah, the UI is terrible for certain things (classical music is especially bad, and I really hate that single-song repeat gets turned off in so many ways). Yeah, some of their clients are worse than others (why is the PS4 client's sound quality so bad and not changeable?) Yeah, there's no lossless versions of anything (I think).

And yet, for all that, Spotify has transformed my music listening, and I've been listening to a huge array of music for almost 25 years now. I listen to so many more new and interesting artists and songs on Spotify than I ever would have otherwise. I'll never go back, personally.

EDIT: Thanks for the answers folks, and yes, playing it out of order, or with interruptions would ruin its sonic beauty.

clarifying edit: This is for the paid version of Spotify. I've never used the free version but I believe that it plays ads in between songs.

It does require some mind-shifts on all sides, including those of content creators/providers, though. I don't know that I need to "own" any of my media in an everything-available-all-the-time world, but that requires, well, everything to be available all the time. If content availability comes and goes like the tide based on contracts and deals that I'm not a party to, it makes me a lot more skeptical of the implicit everything-everywhere promise.

I think that we're already there. This "cloud" generation seems to think that everything that exists (or at least is worthwhile) just sits on that magical Internet to be streamed to them whenever they want (and pay for it).

care to link it?

https://coyotetracks.org/for-sale/

And, a direct link to Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/Kismet-Watts-Martin-ebook/dp/B01MY02O...

What good is "better" if songs disappear every now and then?

Remember, 70 years * 10$ / month ~= 8,400$ for music over a lifetime. By comparison you can easily buy say every piece of music by Bob Marley and your done no need to ever do so again.

Sure, if you really care about music then a service is great.