My CD collection is around 30 years old. Spotify is currently $13/month. $13 times 30 years is $4680. A lot of people could cover most of what they listen to with that much budgeted to buying CDs... and I'd remind people that the relevant price isn't list price but what you actually pay. Fetching a Michael Jackson album out of a bargain bin for $1 is that album for a $1, whatever someone else somewhere else somewhen else might have paid. I also buy my own movies, and there's a lot of "$5 for the entire Lethal Weapon series collection" sorts of purchases in there.

You're probably objecting to the fact that you don't have 30 years, which is correct, but is also the point of the "long term" part of the comment. Someone who listens to stuff that is on the streaming services and is literally constantly switching between artists and who doesn't mind if some stuff disappears from the services sometimes and so on and so on is perfect for the streaming services, yes. However, the more of those clauses aren't true, the less obviously advantageous the streaming services are, and I don't think most people are sitting down every week and sampling a dozen brand new artists. A lot of people could, with just a bit of care to buy things frugally and used, build a CD collection with $14/month faster than they will want new music.

It can help to jump start a bit and not compare this to building a new collection from scratch. It also helps that such a jump started collection can start by buying the cheap stuff that fills out collections quickly.

On the plus side, the "cosmic jukebox" seems to have mostly worked out for music streaming and most stuff is available from most services, which is a huge point in favor of the music streaming services. In my opinion for movies and TV shows that can be legally acquired (putting aside piracy for the moment) the analysis tips much more heavily in the direction of just building your own collection. I don't even know what it would cost you to buy a month's worth of access to, let's say, 80% of my movie & TV collection (since I have stuff that is just plain not available on streaming at all). They're so fragmented it's insane. And with my rate of consumption of TV, oh, call it $50/month just for a nice round number, that's way more than I'm spending on building out the collection anyhow. Maybe if Hollywood would hire more writers who have taken and passed Writing 101 my consumption rate would increase, but that's not the current situation.