I just have a hard drive in my car, home and a backup. Streaming doesn’t work well where I am, + I listen to a lot of live music so spotify type streaming doesn’t make sense. Quality could be an issue too.
Yeah. With Spotify you can do something akin to download the tracks to a playlist, but it doesn’t seem to always work for me when I have zero reception. I have a lot of Spotify playlists.
Annoying thing with Spotify is, they have a “family plan” but unlike say Netflix, it’s still all the same playlists they just charge you 50% more. You can’t have 2 people playing on 2 devices. In fact if one person is listening, another person on the plan can interrupt the stream by pushing a different song. Very annoying. Wife and I sometimes have Spotify wars to amuse each other, but otherwise it’s really annoying. I downgraded from the family plan because that feature is totally useless. Sometimes (often!) the wife and I watch different shows on Netflix or whatnot. They don’t interrupt each other like Spotify does.
Another thing about Spotify that I’ve noticed, and was reminded as the wife and I spent a few hours driving yesterday, is that some number of the ‘classic rock’ songs they have are actually re-recorded versions. Usually by the same band (maybe substituting a studio musician here or there), but recorded decades later for release on streaming. I can only guess it has to do with royalties e.g. they make more money per play count re-recording their own songs again vs what they make off the original recording. Or, for whatever reason, the label doesn’t allow the original to be streamed.
Does the iTunes/Apple music stream do the same?
They are usually pretty good ‘covers’ of their own songs. But these are songs we’ve all probably heard 1000 times over the years and when you hear them on Spotify you can tell it’s not the same. The singer is 30-40 years older and difficult to hit the same notes, the guitar solo is only 95% the same, the mixing is a little different etc. Imaginary Lover by the Atlanta Rhythm Section was one we heard on the drive back that was clearly not the 1975 album/single version that got all the radio airplay over the years. Close but not the same.