I personally love my collection (records, CD, digital) and enjoy sharing the experience with friends. I don’t use streaming unless you count soma fm at work. Sure, I’ll use YouTube to listen to some albums I don’t own, but if I truly like it I’ll buy or download it, usually on bandcamp or direct from artist if I can.
For me, I don’t believe the human brain was ever made for this level of stimulation (we shouldn’t really have 24/7 access to social media either. Go back to the “family PC” model). People have very little connection to music anymore becuase there’s too much and its too easy to access. I can barely remember all the members names in my favorite bands or all their albums. There’s little chance anyone even knows the artists of the millions of songs they’re streaming, or the story behind them.
My lifetime collection of music tracks is currently at 821 tracks in total. My music taste is somehow stupidly specific. Theres no formula. I like rock, metal, death metal, Goth metal, dance music, video game theme tracks, electro, instrumental covers, some classical, some Mongolian throat singing, etc etc. But I will only like specific tracks and I’ve got no tolerance to have things I don’t love in my library.
When I see that most people just throw on whatever on Spotify and just let any ol’ genre playlist play out, I find it amazing. People don’t have to be as restricted as me, but how is everyone now so very non-intentional with what they consume.
But this isn’t just for music. People let algorithms decode what content they see online, what YouTube videos to watch, what movie to stream… I would strongly advocate being at least a bit more intentional. Pick what you want to be exposed to. Pay attention to it. Stop being so passive and try to intentionally consume art and you’ll get a lot more put of it.