These streaming services are approaching the right price (digital media’s marginal cost is $0), but at the expense of user freedom to backup, time shift, collect, and use offline. Is $9/mo streaming better than $20 CDs? Maybe, maybe not. The higher quality product (DRM-free files you can store) is still free and unencumbered by usage rules.

CD's do break, and I'll tire of the music on it. Spotify is cheaper than a CD a month and provides a superior service than radio or music TV ever did.

I have absolutely no need to own a piece of music.

I'd start here about Spotify not paying artists enough. But honestly, the music industry - as a whole - has been screwing over artists for decades, at least, so it is pretty much same thing in a different dress. If I'm going to support musicians more directly, I'll head over to Bandcamp while still giving the artist listens on spotify if they have music there.

You said it yourself - now you can pay $1 for 1 song and own it forever. Still a better deal than what we had back in the CD era.

I don’t think you own it, just a lifetime license (for you and X friends/« devices » sometimes).

Depending on how extensions go, your children and grandchildren may have to re-pay to listen to your collection.

Amazon Music used to sell music DRM free, you could download it and do what you wanted with it. Not sure if that's still the case.