Nobody Owns Their Music Anymore, and Some People Miss It

A streaming subscription doesn't buy a song, it rents access to a catalog someone else controls — and catalogs change. An album that was there yesterday can vanish over a licensing dispute nobody involved in the listening ever hears about, taking a personal playlist's continuity with it.

The renewed interest in vinyl and CDs isn't really nostalgia for the format's sound, whatever the marketing says. It's a hedge: a physical copy doesn't get pulled from a library, doesn't depend on a company staying in business, and doesn't change terms in an update nobody read.

None of this is an argument against streaming's convenience, which is real and which most people aren't going to give up. It's a recognition that convenience and ownership turned out to be different things, and that a growing number of people have decided the difference is worth paying for on at least a few records that matter to them.