It is very logical, and this is the point that many of us, advocates of owning over renting, try to explain to people, unsuccessfully. You didn't purchase a license to content. You purchased a temporary license to listen to a piece of content on a particular service - a license that's valid only as long as the service wants it to, and definitely won't outlive the service itself. Basically: you're renting, not owning. It's all there in the terms you agreed to. Except, of course, services design the UX to make it seem like you're buying, and not borrowing.

(EDIT: this applies to most services people use for music, videos and other digital goods, even when they offer you to "purchase" copies instead of paying subscription fees - like Amazon here, or Steam games. That said, I see there is an option to download MP3s from Google Music, so perhaps the licensing terms there technically give you permanent license for the content itself. iTunes would be similar, IIRC.)

> Do not the rights holders keep track of who owns licenses to listen to what? Shouldn't they be tracking this information on the other side of their business

They do not, because they don't want to. It's against their interests. With the way things are, they get to charge you multiple times for the same piece of content.

Let's be happy that books predate modern IP laws, because otherwise bookshelves and libraries wouldn't be a thing now.

> Purchasing a license to stream a specific item via a specific service is, literally, buying nothing.

Exactly. That's the big "secret".

That is not true for music. DRM-free downloads of purchased music have been the industry standard for pretty much all digital music stores for over a decade now - from iTunes to Bandcamp.

In that regard music differs from video and gaming since the fact that it's sold DRM-free enables you to truly own your digital music collection. Obviously this doesn't apply to streaming options which are much closer to renting, but that's self-explanatory I think.

It's not your lifetime, it's the lifetime of the service and company behind it.

Thanks for pointing this out, that takes most of the sting out of my eternal September-style ranting.

However, I've noticed that the one album I've ever purchased through GPM is not available on YTM and even though I purchased it, it is still greyed out in my transferred playlists.

Lesson learned -- I'm just glad I only ever made that mistake once and didn't lose a library (or would have to painstakingly download each album manually and reupload)

EDIT:

To be clear, not only did the "ownership" of the music not transfer, but (presumably) because of a change in licensing agreements the music has become entirely unavailable in any form. At least, it will once GPM goes offline.

However, I wouldn't compare this to a movie store, or a music store. At least while I used it, GPM wasn't positioned as a store where you buy music and take it home, it's an app/ecosystem where you listen to music.

So I'd argue a more apt comparison is it's like buying a movie at a store with sofas and televisions for watching the movies, where you can purchase content and ask for it to be displayed, and can optionally take the disk home.

Stretching the analogy too far probably, but GPM didn't exactly encourage downloading FWIW -- can only download a song twice ever through the web interface, or all at once through takeout, or through a chrome extension/app, otherwise it's all on the GPM app, where you're "supposed" to listen to it.

You do have the right to download DRM-free music though, so at least GPM had that.

... youtube music on the other hand ...

Admittedly I haven't done this for a year or two, but last time I bought an album on amazon it came with a digital download which was just DRM-free MP3 files. Maybe that's not the case anymore, I don't know.

You do have the ability to download films on Amazon.

(They're DRMed, and you can't transfer them to another device, but they don't expire).

they might've given you that service, but thats a very different complaint then what this article is about - which is that people that bought it cannot download it and its amazon's choice to revoke their access at their will.

I never used Google Play Music, but don't they sell DRM-free music like every other digital music outlet from iTunes to Bandcamp? If so, the files are yours to keep, aren't they?

Obviously Google (or iTunes, Bandcamp and others) aren't responsible for hosting and backing up your media indefinitely. That's the buyer's duty in my opinion.

Assuming this is a typo, it's a funny one. It's starting to seem like privacy is illegal, or will be soon.