The whole point of music streaming services is to avoid doing this. Maybe it works for you, but that does not sound like a sustainable strategy for someone who listens to 100+ albums a year.

I don't see why. Maybe for those like me who still buy physical CD's and rip them, okay--but let's assume you buy all of your music, just digitally, meaning you purchase MP3 albums in full from Amazon/iTunes/Bandcamp, etc. Most of the work is already done for you, since the services themselves already function as sort of a "cloud backup"; your computer or smartphone fries, you can always sign into the service again from your new device and pull everything down once more. The only remaining piece is to have your own offline backup of all the stuff you purchased, in case Epic were to shut Bandcamp's doors tomorrow. It's even less likely that Amazon or iTunes would go away quickly.

And FWIW, I do personal rips when I have to, but I'm also as lazy as the next guy. Best case scenario is I buy a physical disk from the artist directly on Bandcamp which automatically includes a digital version as well. Next best, Amazon albums that include AutoRip. Finally, physical copies from private storefronts or used markets, and I'll do the rip myself.

I have like 400 favorite songs from wide variety of genres, and I've seen some songs becoming unavailable over time. And I don't know what it was, so I have no way to get it back in any way.

Not a huge loss, but annoying.

I should probably do that as well, but I listen to so much music that it would be really painful to back it up.

I have 1.5TB of music. It's because I have so much that I make sure I've got backups, backups of backups, etc.

Just get some kind of syncing client so that you can just copy the deltas when you're making backups of backups. Offsite/cloud backup couldn't hurt, either.

This is essentially what I've been doing. Spotify is usually decent enough when it comes to recommending new artists based on what I'm listening. When I find an artist whose work I plan on listening on a regular basis, I'll jump to Bandcamp or some other site where I can buy the song or album I'm interested in.

Sadly, the list of such sites seems to be shrinking with every passing year, and I've found many artists I'd like to support by buying their stuff, but they only offer streaming options. I've noticed it happens more frequently with artists that have been scooped up by a major label or one of its subsidiaries, unsurprisingly.

exactly, when i'm listening to music for 8 hours a day, discovering new artists and community made playlists is the killer feature. what i'm starting to hate about spotify is the politics behind what music is available. i invest the time into building out playlists just to have half the songs get blacked out a few days later because "money", yet the record label has the album on youtube as f2p.

also, show me how my monthly subscription is divided up while you're at it.

> rip it to MP3/FLAC

Alas that's illegal in the UK

To be fair, piracy was always illegal - it didn't stop it.