Earlier quoted context omitted.
Dystopian you say? For $15 a month I can access basically every song ever recorded at the click of a button, wirelessly on an ultrapowerful mobile computing device that fits comfortably in my pocket. Place yourself in about 1997 and savor that statement for a moment. But what have we gained?
> I can access basically every song ever recorded Not really, there is a lot missing from Spotify, and not just obscure music. And you have to accept the fact that music may (and does) go missing at any time. Plus, even for songs that are on the platform, you are forced to listen to what version they have, which is almost always a "remastered" version. Example: early Beatles songs have vocals hard-panned to one side,…
The Spotify forums seem to suggest this is because someone licensed that one song differently and conditions have changed, so I'm no longer entitled to play it.
That seems bonkers to me, but regardless of the reason, the effect is infuriating.
I ditched Spotify a while back and I'm slowly clawing my way back into physical CDs, ripping and encoding (or not even bothering to encode; storing as plain WAV still doesn't take that much space given modern hard drives), and trying to ensure that songs don't vanish out from under me ever again.