What am I missing?

I have owned hundreds of movies in laser disk, VHS, DVD, DVD special addition, Blue Ray and on line. So, conservatively I have spent $500 on copies of permanent copies of Star Wars and many other movies.

I bought vinyl, audiophile pressing, CD, and HD copies of Kind of Blue.

We can stop this madness now. Over the next years the best available will become what is on line as all content becomes so. All documents, music, video, photographs…

People will always want to own physical media. Vinal, CD or DVD. Not seeing any of those formats go away in most people lifetimes. 

In 80's and 90's they said vinyl is dead. Guess sales just slowed and with most things it is all part of the cycle.

I am enjoying the heck out of the cheap prices on CD's 

When you compare cost, even with the ongoing monthly subscription costs over a lifetime, the value of streaming is unbeatable. It would cost me at least multiples of $10k to own all the music in my streaming libraries. While I appreciate the art and tactile sensation of physical media, in the end its the music that matters most for me.

Lack of artist compensation is not an inherent problem with streaming, rather its business model. Present business model works because a critical mass of consumers don't value music greatly. Consumers could demand greater payouts to artists and artists could refuse to release music to streaming services, perhaps this  would lead to fairer compensation. I doubt you'll ever see either of these scenarios take place, vast majority of consumers certainly happy with present situation, and artists want their music to be heard. Think about how many of these artists wouldn't get to be heard if only physical media existed. Distribution of physical media costly, unknown artists have no chance for exposure with that business model.

I still receive mailings from physical media sellers, don't see vast majority of contemporary artists in my streaming libraries with vinyl or cd offerings, mostly twentieth, thirtieth, whatever remaster of older popular artists. How many copies of a single release from artists llike the Beatles, Stones, Steely Dan, etc do I need! Physical media ain't making vast majority of artists rich!

There is a very good 6 part (?) series about the creation of Spotify called The Playlist.  Well worth watching.  Sheds a lot of light on how streaming came to be, where the money actaully goes and how little the artist is being compensated.  Check it out.