memes

I agree with your sentiment. I grew up mostly with 56k as the shiny new mainstream internet tech. I got DSL for the first time when I was like.. 13? I dislike the "stream everything" paradigm, too.

But, I do know a thing or two about it, so I want to correct a misconception you have that does make it all seem a little bit more reasonable than might appear for you at first glance:

download again and again and again instead of only once. Why not keep it instead of constantly using bandwidth for the same thing over and over?

Most of these streaming systems have built-in, automatic client-side caching mechanisms. This means that when Spotify downloads a song to your phone to play to you, it keeps a copy around in a safe place for a good while, so it doesn't have to re-download it every time. In a sense, it automates our natural data hoarding instinct and does so transparently, with keep-around durations calculated to provide the most ideal "local-replay to storage-consumed" ratio for their average users' network capabilities. The computers just take care of it automatically now so people don't have to think about it. If you only play it once, it'll toss it out for you. If you listen to it a lot, it's coming from your phone. "Streaming" is just high-speed managed file downloading.

100% right about the risk of them pulling content though. They're still a bad proposition. The DRM and "rent not own" they do screws with the whole value proposition.