Kelly Sims wrote some thoughts on Ownership in the Rental Age:

And so I find myself once again thinking about ownership. I owned this music, as much as anyone can really own anything these days. I took time to curate the music and time to carefully rip the CD’s into a portable format. Now, as I look through the songs I had added to Apple match, a large portion of them are now DRM’d as Apple Music files. I can’t ever take them to listen on some other player, which means I do not own these anymore. I effectively sold them to Apple for free. And in exchange for this “sale” I get to listen to some of them some of the time, all when Apple and the music licensing gods decide.

I’m right there with you, Kelly. This was the same issue I’ve faced. And for much of the last decade, I had essentially given up on the whole damn thing.

Until earlier this year. I upgraded my computer, added a home NAS, and decided that I was going to reclaim my music library. A branch of the Phoenix Public Library is just a couple blocks away from my house. So a few seconds to set up a hold request on some music I used to own, select the local branch as the destination, and a day or two later, walk over and pick up the CD, and via a $25 external cd drive, rip it to my computer.

And thereby, own it once again.