I personally don’t find that to be true. Time for some objective anecdata.

There is a site [0] that ranks how “mainstream” one’s listening habits are based on their last.fm profile.

Punching in my username, I get ranked as 12% mainstream (i.e., only 12% of last.fm users listen to music more obscure than mine). Keep in mind, this is relative to last.fm users, whose musical tastes are probably more obscure than the general population.

Approximately 95% of my lossless library is on Spotify or Apple Music. So I’d say they’re doing a pretty good job maintaining a comprehensive catalog.

[0] https://mainstream.ghan.nl/

I personally find it to be true.

Apple Music has a feature based on iTunes Match that will take your local files and attempt to match them based on their metadata and audio fingerprint.

The last time I used it, from my (then) ~5000 song library, it matched ~3600. That means that a good third of the music I listen to is not available in the same exact version on streaming services.

I dug into why, and reasons include:

- The LPs were never licensed properly. Such as Exmilitary by Death Grips, which is a bootleg release with copyright issues.

- The artist hasn't signed up for streaming, like it used to be the case with Tool. Or they only stream on one platform and not another. Dr. Dre and Jay-Z come to mind. All three artists I mentioned in this bullet are "really mainstream."

- The version I like is not the streaming release. I like the casette version of Ashes 2 Ashes, Dust 2 Dust by Tommy Wright III, but not the CD reissue.

- The artist is actually too niche. I have quite a few things in my collection from Bandcamp or Soundcloud that don't exist elsewhere.

- The release is "weird." Like the radio stations from the classic GTA games.

Also, Apple Music allows you to just put any music in there and sync across devices, if you're missing something.

The reason between Apple Music and iTunes Match is that the latter doesn't replace your existing copies with the alternatives it find in its database. AM will gladly do it unless what you have offline is truly unique.

That site says I'm at 6%, and I agree 95%+ is accurate. Some particularly obscure stuff is only on YouTube or Bandcamp, that's maybe 3%, another 1-2% is simply unavailable due to various licensing issues, generally odd albums for artists that have most of their content available. If you go way, way down the long tail of 400-youtube-view music from decades ago, most of it won't be available anywhere except YouTube and pirate sites, both with spotty coverage.

I use datpiff for truly obscure/b-sides stuff

I don't know how well iTunes tracks with music available on other streaming platforms, but when I imported my library of ~700 CDs to iTunes Match about 40% of my tracks matched, and 60% had to be uploaded, so I suspect that for me there is a lot that isn't on any platform (but is on iTunes match.) Which is why I don't subscribe to any streaming service.

How do you see the match rate? I've been using iTunes Match for years and really prefer it over services like Spotify. But I've always wondered how much of my content wasn't available on the mothership.

EDIT: `Cloud Status` lists this. TIL

It has none of the songs from Kids Learning Tube. https://music.apple.com/us/artist/kids-learning-tube/9933602...

This is not an obscure artist. They have over 1 million subscribers.

Oh please. And in the "old days" you couldn't buy just any random indie music in a record store either. Yes, "any" music is obviously an exaggeration for a mainstream music streaming service. I'm guessing I own a few things that aren't on Apple Music or Spotify. But the vast vast majority of music most people in the West listen to is on the streaming services. It certainly isn't just Top 40.

I’ll post my playlist and you tell me how much of it you’ve heard on the radio.

Sure, maybe you won’t find that one band from the 90s you loved that played a few shows and only ever recorded anything on tapes that have been obscured over time.

But one of the reasons I use streaming over the radio is because streaming libraries offer 1000x times the diversity of any radio station or chart.

This isn’t true at all. I’ve been a Spotify user for years and listen to plenty of artists that wouldn’t get played on the radio.

With spotify maybe but for youtube music this is definitely true