2 hours after I eat lunch, what do I have to "show for it"?
I'm perfectly fine with all the hours of music and the accompanying enjoyment I've received from paying Spotify, and that doesn't start to take in to consideration the amount of new music I have easily discovered.
I paid to bark orders at my Amazon Echo's / Google in the car, and vend literally any song I wanted.
You could look back and be like >> Its amazing your ok with spending 100k on food over your lifetime, you could have eaten grass from the side of the road for free.
Piracy is easy, Spotify was easier.
Buying and ripping CD's is Effort
It's only a couple of hundred CDs. If you buy a lot of low-priced ones, perhaps a few hundred.
Almost everything I own I do because it is not cost-efficient to rent (which is what I would prefer to do). i.e. if cost-efficiency were even, I would rent things like books, movies, or music.
$3k would still buy a very large physical collection. Most people didn't have that kind of money into a physical collection back in the day.
Vinyl prices are a joke, but CDs are often cheaper than a digital download if bought new and they are easy to find for $1-2 used.
It's kind of amazing you're OK having spent $3k renting music but think the only option would be to go back to piracy if streaming rental isn't available.