Lapis the Nevrean

You're getting a lossless PCM copy of the music, and you're getting it as a physical object that cannot be taken away from you except by force. You can copy and convert it whenever and however you like.

I rip my CDs once on a Linux for a FLAC copy I can convert to Vorbis as needed for my Android and Sansa devices, and again on a Mac for an ALAC copy iTunes can convert to AAC as needed for my iPod and iOS devices. And if I need an MP3 to share something with a friend, I can make that too, and I can decide if I send them 128k or 320k.

It's worth the hassle of paying more up front one time, to get an object you physically own, that you rip yourself into a digital library you control, that doesn't stop playing if your internet goes out nor rack up a cellular data bill, in order to not have to subscribe to multiple streaming services to make sure you can listen to all the music you like as the licenses change hands amongus them.

And if you don't have the space or time or spoons to do this yourself, you can ask around with your music and data hoarder friends. Surely someone can hook you up.

If you wouldn't go through all this trouble for its intrinsic value, you can at least do it to not give any more money to all the labels and streaming services deciding when and how and under what stipulations you're allowed to enjoy music.

even CDs aren't immune to the passing of time - some of my old (audio and data) discs from the 90s have started to degrade, but it's not too dire yet.

and some places, you just can't get physical media - like a lot of small artists on bandcamp. or you just don't have room for it

the important takeaway is, own your music (or any other data you value) in a format someone else can't just take away, in at least one place you fully control, but also in more than one place

cloud storage as a second copy is fine. if it gets taken away, you still have your local copies, and if your local copies die, you can restore them. it's far less likely you will lose both at once than any single one of them, and that's all that matters. you don't need to be a computer turbo nerd to click and drag some files to a google drive¹ or whatever. two copies of anything you value, that's all that's important²

as for format, anything reasonably high quality works. you just want to be futureproof here. i remember encoding everything as 128k MP3s ih the early 2000s and we sure, uh, left that in the dust quality-wise, didn't we?

I like FLAC for this. You don't need to be a weird audiophile³ or anything. it just hits a few important marks:

• its lossless so if the archival format du jour ever changes, you can just transcode it to the new one without it eventually becoming a soupy mess of audio, like listening to a deepfried jpeg
• it's so well supported now that even if it does ever get eclipsed by the new hotness, you're absolutely going to have a looong period of overlap where everything can still read the old format, and an extremely generous window to migrate
• it's still small enough, and storage is still cheap enough that it's fine. album is a gigabyte? buddy I can get two thousand gee bees for like sixty bucks

everything degrades, and preserving anything of value always takes at least some minimal amount of effort

1. okay i mean maybe don't back up like your passport to google drive or anything though
2. you can go more robust than this with like fault tolerance and data checksumming, but "two copies" is a reasonable goal for people who are not extremely computer people
3. you know the specific type i mean - not the interested hobbyists who just like music a lot, the ones who prefer certain implementations of memcpy()