I think it is time we all give very serious thought to getting off streaming services for music. I've been meaning to un-stream my music for a while and I finally started this year. Here are the reasons that pushed me to making a decision.

1: Content Control

Have you ever asked Apple Music or Spotify to play a song that has naughty words in it and is labeled as such, but instead you hear the censored version? This has been happening to me for years. With my own music library, I can decide exactly which version of a song is being played. This could be the uncensored version or maybe the un-remastered version which has that extra bit of dynamic range they got rid of in later versions. The streaming services aren't worried about this and either often won't give you the choice or their own code will come up with the wrong track when you ask.

2: Artist Support

The most popular, Spotify, famously pays their artist next to nothing even when a song is played thousands of times. They do everything in their power to pay the average artist as close to nothing as possible. Some do a bit better, like Qobuz, but even this I think is not awesome. I think buying even a single album, going to a concert, or buying some merch would all put more money into the hands of the artists we like. I don't want most merch and many of the concerts are either in countries I don't live or are super costly, so my chosen method most of the time will be buying albums (digitally, I don't need a bookcase full of CD's here).

3: Intentionality

Streaming services give you access to just about any song you've ever heard of anywhere you have internet any time you want for no additional cost. Music just plays and it's easy to not actually pay attention to what's happening. It's easy to not even know who the artist is you're listening to. Finding and buying albums changes all of that. I'm listening to less music this way, but I'm very much aware of all of it. I'm not sure how much how this matters, but to me this seems better.