one thing that I've never regretted, and is paying dividends, is that I've been buying and collecting physical music since I was a teen and grown my own library. Thankfully I have a lot of music buffs in my family who encouraged it.
What I do is pick one or two dozen records at the beginning of the year and limit myself to them, listen actively instead of just putting it on, don't just treat it like noise. Don't need to bother with any subscription service or AI bs. Even before the AI slop if you looked at the numbers, random influencer crap was much more heavily promoted than some of the greatest music in human history, there's such a recency bias in the entire streaming industry.
What I do is pick one or two dozen records at the beginning of the year and limit myself to them, listen actively instead of just putting it on, don't just treat it like noise. Don't need to bother with any subscription service or AI bs. Even before the AI slop if you looked at the numbers, random influencer crap was much more heavily promoted than some of the greatest music in human history, there's such a recency bias in the entire streaming industry.