It takes a lot of trust to lose a lot of trust.<p>First there were records, then cassettes, then compact discs, and they all wore out. A plausible lifetime for something you bought was maybe 15-20 years: not really a problem but indeed a nuisance. You knew the day would come when the cassette would snap or the CD would just jump way too much.<p>Moving to digital music was the big revolution. I could encode songs into files on my computer and I could replicate those literally forever. I would never, ever lose my music again, or be forced to buy it back in the de facto format of the next decade.<p>Then came the streaming services. That meant convenience but it did trade in even worse life expectancy and uncertainty. Anyone could bet money that a digital streaming service in the 2000&#x27;s would not be around 20 years later. But they did become popular, especially when mobile 3G&#x2F;4G data appeared everywhere.<p>Ironically, while it did become possible to stream anything anywhere, you could also fit all your audio files onto a memory card. Several times. At a negligible cost. Surely you would only have your own collection with you, but that collection was actually hundreds or thousands of compact discs all compressed into a manageable amount of data.<p>For reference, I still have my music in ogg&#x2F;mp3 format and digitally bought albums as flac. I didn&#x27;t have plans to move away from that and I still don&#x27;t.<p>If I want my music in a new phone or in my car, I&#x27;ll just replicate my collection to a new device or memory card. And I then have the exactly same collection on my phone that I have on my desktop. And my work computer. I still have my 80&#x27;s-90&#x27;s CDs in the closet but I&#x27;ve ripped the most important albums no later than the turn of the millennium, at the latest. The setup is so manageable and dirt cheap that I can&#x27;t but wonder what would it take to replace it.