I am interested to get some feedback for a paper I am preparing on the commercial future of a streaming world for the music business and your comments triggered a few thoughts. I would very much like to hear your views. With streaming content there is no guarantee that you will be able to listen to that particular version of that particular song. I can keep safe under my care where I know it will be found again. There is no guarantee that streaming content will ever be available to you again.
Companies go broke, web servers with no back-ups hatch out.
Whole directory structures on web sites change ever 6 to 18 months. Any of these thing could prevent you from accessing streamed music that you accessed before and perhaps payed for the right to listen to forever. That's why something you can get and keep will be valuable to people who realy care about what they're listening to. People who just want to listen to music, well they all ready just listen to the radio, and they don't want to buy anything anyway. YOU have to travel it.