Hesitation to Music Streaming

Format of music marketing has changed dramatically in last decade. CD took over the market from LP. Late 90's, when I started to listen to Pop musci (that is... J-Pop as well as some Americaner), MD (Mini Disc) became a popular format, at least in Japan. (According to Wikipedia, MD didn't succeed as much in other countries.) MP3 came out afterward. iTune and Amazon became two major marketplace for music download.

Now emerging is streaming service. You can listen to your favorite music for free with advertisement or monthly fee. Pandora, iHeartRadio, Spotify... It is like internet radio. But there are services that allow you to choose songs to play. Comparing to buying albums, it may turn out to be cheaper to subscribe such services.

I think streaming can bring substantial change in music industry, better or worse.

Since I got Sony Xperia, I looked into Music Unlimited, Sony Entertainment's music streaming service. But I am hesitant to have my playlist fully dependent on streaming service. I don't know exactly why. I just don't feel right about streaming.

First of all, under a streaming service, you don't own the music. You just have access to the music through the Internet. The access is not free. You either listen to commercial or pay a fee to maintain the access. Fee itself is not expensive. As I mentioned above, it can be cheaper than buying songs. But, ultimately service providers have control and once they decide to remove certain songs, you cannot play them even if you put them on your playlist.

Some apps, including Music Unlimited, let you download songs on your phone and play offline. I think this is what keeps me from fully shifting from buying to streaming. It's great that I can listen to music that I like, even offline. But isn't it too much of consumerism? How are those artists and bands paid? I read a few article about how little the pay is even if their songs are played so many times. I feel like if I store songs in my devices, either my laptop or phone, streaming apps or MP3 player, they should be purchased. 

Recently I had a conversation with friends about music download and streaming. They were discussing how great Spotify and Pandora are. And I was not as positive as they were. To me, having music in my devise from streaming is like downloading music illegally when download was booming. 

I have to admit that streaming has its own strength though. New artists can be more visible. It can be great alternative to radio too. I think streaming will never go away. But, I'll probably rather download songs that I like so much that I want to have them in my devise.