When I was a kid, I would go buy a CD basically every paycheck/allowance, for probably around $15-$20 of '03 money. 12ish tracks. I would add basically about 30 tracks to my collection per month for $30-$40. And even though I owned those (as long as my little brother didn't fuck up the disc), I could only access the handful that I could carry with me. If you told 15-17 year old me, that for $11 a month I could access basically any music I could think of instantly, anywhere, I would've been like "sure, and then we'll listen in our flying cars, right?"
There are lots of things that absolutely suck about modern life and the enshittification presented here, but music fans have it pretty good.
I remember the early days when iPods were still a thing and you had to buy music on iTunes. I don't miss that at all. Imagine the price of buying every individual song of your current Spotify playlist, you're getting a steal in comparison now.
Precisely. Tbh I would be comfortable paying more but only if it went to artists. At some point there will come a time when I go back to the 7 seas for music (especially given hdd sizes and the ease of streaming from your own library) but I feel pretty far from that at the moment especially as it's the free tiers mostly that have been getting enshittified. But I think that's roughly the lessons of the 2010's - free products on the internet are either a loss leader to get you subscribing, or they're probably selling your data to everyone.
Even then, the free versions of Spotify/Pandora are miles ahead of radio when I was a kid. Pick one of three stations that caters entirely to mainstream normies and then have a third of your time spent listening to ads and shitty DJs.
When I was a kid, I would go buy a CD basically every paycheck/allowance, for probably around $15-$20 of '03 money. 12ish tracks. I would add basically about 30 tracks to my collection per month for $30-$40. And even though I owned those (as long as my little brother didn't fuck up the disc), I could only access the handful that I could carry with me. If you told 15-17 year old me, that for $11 a month I could access basically any music I could think of instantly, anywhere, I would've been like "sure, and then we'll listen in our flying cars, right?"
There are lots of things that absolutely suck about modern life and the enshittification presented here, but music fans have it pretty good.
I remember the early days when iPods were still a thing and you had to buy music on iTunes. I don't miss that at all. Imagine the price of buying every individual song of your current Spotify playlist, you're getting a steal in comparison now.
Precisely. Tbh I would be comfortable paying more but only if it went to artists. At some point there will come a time when I go back to the 7 seas for music (especially given hdd sizes and the ease of streaming from your own library) but I feel pretty far from that at the moment especially as it's the free tiers mostly that have been getting enshittified. But I think that's roughly the lessons of the 2010's - free products on the internet are either a loss leader to get you subscribing, or they're probably selling your data to everyone.
Even then, the free versions of Spotify/Pandora are miles ahead of radio when I was a kid. Pick one of three stations that caters entirely to mainstream normies and then have a third of your time spent listening to ads and shitty DJs.