And that’s why so much of my music sounds like shit on a nice sound system, the bitrates be low on that ripped MP3 shit.

I still do this because Spotify annoys the hell out of me. I am also “I made mixtapes on actual tapes” years old. So…

I still do what OP is talking about because when you stream music you don’t “own” it. If you lose your account or the business fails music gone. If I really like a song I download it.

This. Spotify is literally holding years of your music history hostage and the best case scenario is that one day when you want to stop paying them, you’ll be able to export that list and do the download work after all. In many other scenarios you just lose it all with no backup. The same is true of every other streaming service. If you can‘t change a music file from one format into others, you. don‘t. own. it.