> for a growing collection of rips and DRM-free purchases
I did the math once for my Spotify liked songs list [1] and it came to $52k for the last 15 years, or $288/month, if I were to self host, without piracy.
Yeah, mine is also a little bit ridiculous. I think Spotify encourages a certain overconsumption of music; for me, the things on my liked list are not necessarily things that I value equally.
I buy things that I either already know or have discovered on Spotify and that I enjoy enough that I want to own, so I amass a collection of favourites over time. I would never buy everything I've ever liked on Spotify, but that is also because my personal goal is not to become entirely independent of Spotify. The goal is to be a bit more intentional, to have a bit more autonomy, and to avoid good things vanishing into the inky blackness of distribution rights being withdrawn.
Music pricing is pretty ridiculous compared to streaming. Self hosting will pretty much always require piracy until artists decide they want more fans to buy their music than stream and price accordingly.