Except with Spotify the songs can go away, so it's not necessarily equivalent - you don't get access to the same music as long as you're subscribed, you get access to whatever Spotify is currently serving up.

I was an early Spotify user and that annoyed me enough to stop and go back to buying music instead.

BTW, albums usually have more than 5 songs.

That's fair. Hmm...maybe it's my listening habits, then?

For myself, when I listen to music, I insist on listening to it start to finish, in the order it was recorded. I hate skipping around. I find it distracting and frustrating. If I start listening to an album, I am "locked in" to finishing it.

Most albums I own are closer to 12 songs per album, with each song being in the 2-5 minute range, that makes listening somewhere around 24-60 minutes of solid music.

When I find an artist I like, I generally start to buy the other work that they've made, and will queue up their newer and older work together, too.

I will usually queue something like: new album, old album 1, old album 2, old album 3, translating close to a few solid hours of music. By the end of it, my ears will be pretty exhausted and I'll either continue in silence, or switch to an audiobook or YouTube video.

I might have a dramatically small collection of music that I listen to compared to other people, because of how I listen. I can essentially repeatedly listen to the same songs many times, but because there's a lot of stuff in-between it still feels new because I haven't fully memorized each note yet.

Not OP but I agree with his sentiment. Maybe I'm not as "into music" as some people, but I do like finding new artists and songs, though probably only to the tune of 1-5 new artists a year and I buy on average about 5 new albums a year.

It's cheaper and better for me to own the stuff I want to listen to than sign up for a subscription in perpetuity.