Bandamp allows you to purchase music directly from the artist, in high quality, and download and own it permanently. They also let you stream it from them after purchasing it which is a useful bonus but the main thing is you own the music.

TIL. Thanks for the info! That does seem like a nice alternative to Spotify/Apple Music.

I discovered Bandcamp while trying to buy music by Hatari a few years ago and have loved it since. They have definitely done things right and the ability to discover interesting artists there is just an additional perk.

I buy stuff from Bandcamp, download the ALAC, and then iTunes Match automatically adds it to all my computers and phones. It's not an either/or proposition lol

I used to use iTunes Match but now it syncs through Apple Music’s iCloud syncing feature. It’s the one thing that keeps me on Apple Music instead of Spotify because there’s a lot of live stuff I’ve got from Bandcamp and demo stuff from Patreon that aren’t on streaming services and would be a pain to sync manually.

As someone with 60+ gigs of mp3s all organized into folders and properly tagged, I'll take Apple Music all day long. What "mercy" am I subjecting myself to? A friend says: check out this band, and within seconds I am playing it. Compared to spending a huge % of my income on records and CDs and then a huge % of my time dealing with mp3s, this is living the dream! How am I being abused? Because I don't own the music I am renting? My annual sub would buy a paltry number of CDs.

You're attributing a lot of malice to my message that I did not put there.

And yes, the convenience is great, until 1) you stop paying, 2) they go out of business, or 3) you are interested in music they don't have licenses to.

As contentous as the relationships are between spotify-alike services and the music rightsholders, I don't believe that they are a very good long term investment. I almost expect to see the music space to move towards where the TV space is now - each publisher running their own streaming service.