It's either streaming services or over $10 per album. Plus preparations.

It's either streaming services or over $10 per album. Needing to buy a second-hand CD not to pay thrice as much to a non-indie creator whom i don't believe in paying that much. I can't even play a CD, I just rip them. Would I want to resell them? Enjoying the packaging and the booklet.. but against the beliefs, e.g. the budget. Will lending them to friends work at least?

Ripping a CD takes some learning to do in a sure way. AccurateRip, and I hope my USB optical disc drives will have findable offsets. So so far it's been just CDParanoia.. and I had to disable the paranoia because it kept getting stuck, after ripping the zeroth track. I would expect it more to get stuck on ripping the post-end hidden track.

Cassette tapes are often cheaper second-hand. Cassette tape decks are expensive, and require maintenance. Can I count on myself being able to maintain a tape deck? What tape deck should I get first for ripping? Will I manage to sit down to maintenance, or will it get left aside when first issue comes up. Will I get cassette tapes ruined? If I want to benefit from the cassette tapes, should I get a walkman? Too bulky for me and I don't want it to take a fall, but at least stylish and single-purpose. Minimalist, I choose beforehand what I carry on me (would).

Do I need to keep paying for Spotify to listen to music I want to listen to for the first times, if it weren't for me probably going to share a friend's Deezer/Tidal subscription to pirate music legally? I really don't want to listen to YouTube, and I don't want Spotify Free either.

Needing to have a phone with Bandcamp app playing down the headphones' cable isn't what I want either. Down my headphones' cable should be the lightweight and single-purpose pocket player.

My things suck or are DRM-discriminated

The DAC in my phone sucks

My phone has a very low volume and rather low fidelity output from its DAC.

What am I supposed to do, buy myself a new phone? Tether Internet connection to an iPhone 5S after getting one fixed?

• I can plug a USB-C DAC but if I plug it into the phone first, phone will see a headset with microphone and thus random things will trigger Google Assistant and things.

• The USB-C DAC doesn't hold well when walking. And it's bad for my phone case which has an elastic cover for the port.

Listening to Spotify or Bandcamp or SoundCloud means it has to be that USB-C DAC.

It can't be my ThinkPad because the browser keeps glitching the sound with Bandcamp. (and a USB DAC too, because ThinkPad X220 doesn't have too good of a soundcard.) And there is no Widevine DRM for OpenBSD to listen to Spotify.

And I don't want to be stuck at my desk and at another screen for that anyway!