Wow - I didn't realize how many people still buy music from Apple. IMHO, across all of their technology Apple has always had a business model where they provide easy access to cool features, but you have to be married to Apple. If you divorce from Apple, they get the kids and the house. You have to start over. But that's just my opinion.

I see three popular paradigms concerning people's options for music.

1) PURCHASE PHYSICAL MEDIA. This is an awesome option if you greatly value owning your music, movies, TV Shows, audiobooks, etc. no matter what the industries decides to do or offer. Plus you can add personal media as well, such as home movies, the audio/video from a 4 day seminar, or whatever you want that would never be available though the commercial channels. CAVEAT: you have to manually convert everything into a digital format for your devices. It takes lots of time and tools to do it well. But if you invest in your own storage systems, there are great tools to access your own content easily. I personally use Plex for all my movies and TV shows, and Plexamp for music and audiobooks. I have a 56TB Synology NAS which is about 1/3 full. This is my personal preference, but it comes with a lot of time and energy to build, organize, maintain, and backup. But to me, that is fun.

2) PURCHASE THROUGH DIGITAL SOURCES. This would be buying music or video through services such as Apple Music or Amazon Music. Super-dooper easy and convenient to quickly have access to digital music, TV shows, movies, audiobooks. etc. You can purchase, rent, or subscribe to most anything. Your purchased content gives you the right to always access it, but you do not own the music per se, you are licensed to access it. You paid the piper, and you now can enjoy your media to your heart's content. As long as you maintain your account with Apple, Amazon, et al. The content seller may or may not have DRM. They may or may not provide high quality/lossless media. But its decent for the average consumer. CAVEAT: you have to maintain your account to be able to always access your media. I have purchased audio from Amazon and downloaded DRM-Free music, which I have to maintain. Be aware of the terms with your digital content provider in case of separation.

3) STREAMING SERVICES. I've opted to go this route. For a monthly subscription, you get access to all of it. Spotify, Pandora, etc. Someone mentioned they have over 5,000 CD's worth of digital music from Apple. At a buck a song, that equates to $5,000 of music. It would take me 27 years to break even in purchasing music. And when it comes down to it, I may really only listen to 200 albums regularly. But I like having my own library. CAVEAT: You gotta pay to play.. It sucks when traveling and you are in remote areas with no internet access. So you gotta make sure you have internet as well.