Balthazar B
500+ Head-Fier
If Amazon became the only online streaming option available, I would just go back to playing ripped CDs and maybe get a CD transport.
They won't be getting my business, that's for sure!
We might be beyond the point where it's become feasible for the music publishers and the distribution channels that are part of the ecosystem to go to a completely licensed model and end physical distribution of content. "Easy" enough to do when everything is digital, since playback can require a check-in/authorization step beforehand. It may be possible to hack some kind of circumvention to that, but then one becomes subject to civil and criminal consequences.
IIRC, today there's a two-tier model governing streaming: analog source content and digital source content. The replay royalties (currently) are less for the former. Not hard to imagine a new dominant tier comprised of tracks that are only/strictly licensed via DRM for use by listeners and not ownable by them. Ultimately the publishers would own those rights/licenses, while distributors would continue to pay for streaming rights and serve as aggregators (the Spotify/Amazon/Apple/Google/etc.) model. While content that has been distributed on physical media will continue as long as the physical media itself exists (years, maybe decades), when no new physical media for music/video content is being produced, the air will be slowly sucked out of that ecosystem. just as it has been for tape.
If this comes to pass, Amazon won't be the only option available, and it will be the publishers who are the oligarchs (even if some/many of the publishers are the artists as well). It'll be in their interest to have many channels competing and paying them for their content, not just one.
Sorry for the dystopian post, but it's the zeitgeist these days, no?