Why is it such a weirdo thing? I don't want to bleed money every month just to listen to music. Or put up with ads. Owning mp3s is the most straightforward way to achieve that.
Owning thousands of mp3s is only really cheaper if you obtained them via pirating. CDs in the 90s and 00s (I haven't seen a CD in a store since then) retailed for $15 and would probably have around 10 songs. A 3000 song library would run you $4500. That's like 40 years of Spotify subscriptions.
Re:RIP Google Music
by benhurmarcel on Thursday November 12, 2020 @11:53AM
(#25071734)
Music subscriptions are dramatically cheaper than buying music. Unless you prefer to listen to the same songs for a long time, but that's not representative of most people nowadays.
My wife and I are both 40s+; she has access to that library on her machine, but prefers Spotify for many reasons. Only weirdos want to own their own (music, video, text) libraries, most others would rather have someone else be responsible for the curation of that portion of their mental space.