Back to the question of why are people spending money (or "so much money" in the words of the OP) on streaming. I suppose the question is, relative to what, in the sense of why do people spend lots of money on anything? But to avoid going down that wormhole, let's just confine the question to spending on streaming versus spending on other source components. To that extent, I'd suggest that people are spending money in order to get an improvement in the quality of reproduction - probably with reference to other analogue and digital sources they own. In my own experience, whether it's CD, Vinyl or digital delivered over ethernet there is huge scope for improvement and, unfortunately, it usually costs money. In my own experience, streamed music is just as susceptible to improvement as CD or Vinyl.