Thoughts and suggestions please

@goodlistening64 

"Guess you are either bearish or bullish on keeping a hold of your physical mediums, but in the end, streaming is throwing money away while throwing pennies into the pockets of musicians. Those that choose streaming services are the ones who choose not to support musicians."

+1 to that

It’s sort of like "well everyone’s doing it", which isn’t the case, everyone has a choice.  Some just double down on it which is really f’d IMHO.  Justify it however you want.  None of what I'm referring to is in the context of SQ. 

Yeah, buying multiple versions and the numerous catalog reissue are of the corporate marketing ilk, but I guess one just has to weigh the pros / cons and be diligent of those (re) purchases.  Some can be great and many are crap. 

The Bluesound streamer is a good product. I own both a Bluesound 2i streamer and an Innous Mini Mk III.  From a sound stand point, I like the Innuos product over the Bluesound. The application for the innuous has come along way from 3 years ago and is comparable to the Bluesound. Bluesound has a very slight edge for simplicity, and both are great. I pick the innuos Mini Mk over the Bluesound  for fidelity, clarity of details in music. Both in my opinion are excellent. The Mini Mk has a hard drive, now an SSD in newer models than mine. The one I have has a Western Digital Red drive which is a server drive. Since you can store your own CDs on the innuos and stream, it’s a winner. I think the sound of innuos is a notch up in sound from the Blusound. I tested at home the Blusound all in one with the built-in amp. The sound was not acceptable for my taste. Not rubust or accurate in my opinion. Plenty of power for 100w speakers, but instruments do not sound like the real thing. Both products get firmware update from the manufacturers. I hope this is good information for you.

@pcrhkr 

It is very useful information! Thank you for your thoughts. 
Happy listening !

@redlenses03 

The number of musicians who have decried streaming services is lengthy, including Prince, Jay-Z, Garth Brooks, Taylor Swift, Joni Mitchell, Thom Yorke, etc. Taylor Swift - somehow - was able to reach a new deal after her protest, which is a sure fire sign of corruption and favoritism shown by those corporations. 

For clarification:

• Qobuz's Payout Rate: Qobuz, a music streaming service, has made headlines as the first to publicly disclose its average per-stream royalty rate. For the fiscal year ending March 31, 2024, Qobuz distributed an average of $0.018732 per stream in royalties to labels and publishers. This translates to $18.73 for every 1,000 streams.

This from Qobuz:

Qobuz reveals that they pay a relatively high per-stream royalty rate compared to other platforms according to What Hi-Fi

None of the streaming services provide a real number on how many times an artist is streamed per month. In essence, there is no way for any artist (outside a powerful one like Taylor Swift) to know what kind of royalties other artists are receiving from the streaming giants. How is an artist supposed to know the "going rate" when such numbers are not provided? The only way would to be to ask other artists to provide them with sensitive data on income.

For smaller artists, even if they have obtained such sensitive income data in which to utilize in negotiations, they would still lack the leverage to get the streamers to the the bargaining table. The only way for artists to gain a larger share of their own revenues is to be as big - likely bigger - than the giant streaming services themselves.

I think that Taylor Swift's getting a new deal is more a sign of her immense popularity even more than 'corruption or favoritism'. The bigger you are, the more weight you can swing.