Nowadays people probably stream their music through Apple Music, Spotify, YouTube Music, Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, whatever. While I have done this in the past, I've stopped doing it now (and along with it, cancelled all subscription services I once have). The reason is more circumstantial to me: I don't really listen to that much music, and I don't tend to explore new songs or artists. I have some artists which I adore, albums and tracks that I would come back to over and over, melodies so familiar I could replay them in their entirety in my head without skipping a beat. I don't mind listening to the same music over and over again, and in fact I prefer it.

That said, when I do find new music, it usually happens through one of the following ways:

• It was playing on the radio
• It was used as background music in the video I'm watching
• A friend whole-heartedly recommended it
• It was a soundtrack from a very good film

For artists I adore, I buy digital albums directly on their own website, or if they don't sell it directly, through a digital store like iTunes or Qobuz (my preferred store). For songs that I care a bit less about, I pirate them through SoulSeek, a very nice music-sharing platform.

Afterwards, I use XLD to convert them into AAC/ALAC and add it to my iTunes library. Well, they call it Music or Apple Music now, but it is what it is. Batch-editing metadata and creating playlists are easy (enough) on iTunes. I like this method because when I sync the lossless files to my phone (also made by Apple), iTunes has the convenient option to downsample them to smaller files, which helps save storage space. It is then very convenient to back-up the entire library to a physical storage of my choice.