I think there is some magic lost in how music discovery used to work online over the last 20 years or so. I spent a lot of time on IRC, and then later Waffles.fm working to build my musical library, and discover music. A few things that are sorely missed..
* A community built by common interest in music. Community written articles, recommendations, and friendships built from across the world through music.
* Consumption was not the only form of participation. Ratio maintenance was required - this IMO helped everyone be a "good citizen"
* There was still a formal boundary between "the communities music" and "your music" since you had to download it to listen to it. This helped encourage a more pro-active form of discovery.
* Less emphasis on playlists - more emphasis on artist and album discovery.
* While there was some concept of tiers ( power users, etc ) - there wasn't a tier low enough to subject to pushing advertising through your home speakers.
I tried Qobuz for many years in search of a community that cared about music - and just a couple of months ago finally switched to Apple Music. It was hard to stick with the poor streaming infrastructure (streams cut out all the time) & terrible recommendation engine. A lot of the Apple collection is lossless at this point - and there's no reason not to pick them unless you want to wax philosophical about AAC vs FLAC.
* A community built by common interest in music. Community written articles, recommendations, and friendships built from across the world through music.
* Consumption was not the only form of participation. Ratio maintenance was required - this IMO helped everyone be a "good citizen"
* There was still a formal boundary between "the communities music" and "your music" since you had to download it to listen to it. This helped encourage a more pro-active form of discovery.
* Less emphasis on playlists - more emphasis on artist and album discovery.
* While there was some concept of tiers ( power users, etc ) - there wasn't a tier low enough to subject to pushing advertising through your home speakers.
I tried Qobuz for many years in search of a community that cared about music - and just a couple of months ago finally switched to Apple Music. It was hard to stick with the poor streaming infrastructure (streams cut out all the time) & terrible recommendation engine. A lot of the Apple collection is lossless at this point - and there's no reason not to pick them unless you want to wax philosophical about AAC vs FLAC.