I’m old, with bad hearing, but upping the quality to max and I hear no compression problems. Of course my cellphone service includes free data for music, so I can always have max quality on streaming even on mobile data.
This is exactly the reason why I am such a fan of platforms like Bandcamp. With that, I can stream and/or download any music I purchase. Bandcamp gives you the options when downloading music to have CD quality, fully lossless (FLAC), even ogg vorbis formats. Pretty sweet IMO.
The convenience factor of being able to stream your collection in CD quality audio is huge winner in my book, but the biggest reason I’ll use Bandcamp or other platforms like it is that you’re buying content directly from the artist or label (which, by the way, the labels and artists are pretty much 99% independent so that’s cool as well). Spotify has an absolute garbage reputation with rev sharing for artists that put their music on that platform. I’ll never use them because of that…just my opinion though, if you like streaming services lie Spotify or Pandora by all means continue to use them.
Just a rant by a Bandcamp fanboy lol
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I try very hard not to be 
Just the 1.3TB of FLAC files 
Very much so 
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I love Bandcamp Friday.
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I could not afford to listen to half the music I do if I had to pay every artist individually. I would have to go back to piracy or well… FM radio. Back to my childhood, as described above.
That’s another factor here: If Spotify didn’t exist, those artists would not get any money from me, because I would not listen to them at all.
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Checking out Bandkamp…
Yeah, that looks like an old fashioned Used Record store alright. Absolutely chaotic, very bad layout and site design, artists I’ve never heard of (this is not criticism, just observation).
But yeah, first problem is that I don’t know a single one of the artists, with no recommendations to go from either. Second problem of course is well… as discussed above: I am not a wealthy man and responsible for more people than myself on top, and music isn’t even my prime interest. There is NO WAY I can afford paying the same amount for a single album as I pay for a month streaming. I would lower my musical consumption with a few thousand percent per month.
- https://arloparks.bandcamp.com/
- https://christineandthequeens.bandcamp.com/
- https://fontainesdc.bandcamp.com/
I’ve bought music on Bandcamp from the above three, all of whom have had at least one Top 3 album here in the UK, and been nominated for Brit Awards.
Fair enough. I wish you the good fortune so that you can one day 
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I mean part of it is that I am old. I am 48 (well, in November) and I have “finally” reached the stage where I don’t keep up with new music anymore.
I have playlists split by decade, and the 2010-2020 playlist is actually quite full, even with “new” artists (a few hundred songs). The 2020- playlist however… I think I have 12 songs on it. It’s a natural progression, I think, but I just don’t feel the need to hunt down new artists anymore.
Well, having money is fun.
Seriously tho, a math experiment: my 1980s playlist on Spotify has 642 songs (44 hours of music). Splitting that by 12 and assuming a price of about 10 dollars per album… 535 dollars (5400 SEK). I think I’d rather get an Xbox, thank you. 
Btw how much money do artists get from radio play? Because I doubt it is significantly more than from Streaming services and as I said Streaming should be compared to radio, not records.
I’ll just leave this here, for those “justifying” theft/piracy:
Those figures are US only. So scale that up to both the rest of the world, and over the past 14 years since.
I’m older than you 
It’s much more on radio (especially national radio) than streaming. There’s an explanation of music royalties here:
https://www.openmicuk.co.uk/advice/music-royalties-explained/
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Those figures are total rubbish made by the Music industry of America, Lol
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Piracy is stealing, no matter how much you try to justify it, tho.
I have pirated a lot in my life but I am fully aware that’s illegal and should be illegal.
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The moment of truth !
Thank goodness. It’s just the butthole.
It is much more per played instance, but it is apples and oranges.
That’s a fixed amount based on last year’s average amount of listeners, while streaming gives you a much smaller amount but is per individual stream but is without any limitations in repeats etc.
Not only does it make calculations difficult (after all of the radio show in question becomes much more popular this year, you are “losing” money), radio stations are limited to how many times they will play your song per hour and day.
The radio channel also determines if they are going to play your song at all, so up and coming artists must first break thru a barrier to be played.
It certainly is 
But ask any musician if they’d prefer 1 play on the radio or 1,000 streams, and they’d choose radio every time (a small payment and significant audience exposure).
Whether streaming is closer to buying music or listening to the radio depends on how you use it. If you are actively choosing which individual tracks to play, then it isn’t much like radio. If you are passively sitting back and letting the algorithm decide for you, then it is.
Spotify allows the download of content to the spotify device. You can download all your favorite music to your mobile device and you would never need internet again to listen to it.I assume other streaming services have a similar convenience function.
But for me the main advantage of spotify is the music that I do not know. I am learning about new songs and new groups on a daily basis. Without spotify I would not have known about them.
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There’s this author called Cory Doctorow who’s a huge proponent for sharing intellectual property for free. His own, to start with. And he makes a living out of his writing.
It is just so that the following link is to one of his novels, free to download from his website (but also with links to bookstores if people want to buy it).
It is also free to share (“You are free: to Share — to copy, distribute and transmit the work”): https://craphound.com/littlebrother/Cory_Doctorow_-_Little_Brother.htm
The introduction, in its section THE COPYRIGHT THING mentions a lot of the points covered here.
I thought it would be enriching to the dialogue here because its the take of someone who has been outspoken about this topic and has reflected a lot on it. The popularity of books and audio is different in the world, but many ideas might apply to both worlds (which also overlap a lot).
The licence (stated right at the beginning) doesn’t allow for commercial gain.
From my point of view, this is important especially because it stops corporations (publishers, film studios, music companies) from using the artists’ work to profit without giving the artist back.
They wouldn’t be stealing anything, but they’d be creating a monopoly, which is… arguably… the same thing, in that it prevents things outside that monopoly to exist.
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And this service is a lot more than just the music file. In fact if I compare my CD collection as a regular product with the music service from spotify, I see that spotify offers so much more. The service contains all music on this planet. I know that spotify only covers may be 80 % of all music but for my practical purposes this is all the music. I could never afford to buy all the CDs of all the music I have on my playlists in spotify.
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I do both honestly. I stream and if I deem worthy - I’ll record it from a source. IE - from youtube for instance. It’s the same as when I was a kid and would hit “record” on the tape player when a song came on the radio I liked and wanted to keep.
I have not and will not pay for music ever again. I will however gladly pay good money to see music performed live in person. I’ll pay for the experience.
Also - TL:DR. In my opinion if an artist has put it on a streaming service - it’s available for me to record the same as I have been doing for doing for decades.
I generally stream though - mostly because I listen to podcasts and don’t care enough to waste the space to keep all the various varieties of things I like musically.
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Forum threads like that What are you listening to right now? are much better than any algorithm. 
There’s no way in hell you get tasteful and interesting results like that anywhere else:
Any genre, any era, any taste, history, associations, discussions… 
EndeavourOS 
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