Often it's not. I remember cleaning up MP3 headers from all the stupid 'downloaded from TUNEZ4U.blah - <real title>', weeding out tracks that were clipping or with their volume way too low. Or bad quality or weird codecs etc.. It was a lot of work!

Something like Spotify really makes it worth it then. Totally better than downloading and the convenience is easily worth the price.

I buy most of my ebooks as well as I like the sync between the Kindle app and the real Kindle. And most of them are well priced anyway.

For video the convenience argument worked well too with Netflix for a while but now that the landscape had fragmented so much the whole "paid content is more convenient" thing is under a lot of pressure. It's not even the price that's an issue as you can subscribe to most services by the month to see one thing. It's the hassle of signing up, cancelling and downloading all their separate apps. So there the downloaded content is becoming more convenient again.

Couldn't agree more. For me certainly not worth the hassle to save $3 on a reduced book that will magically appear on my kindle after I clicked 1-click-buy, compared to pirating it.

I remember how upon Radiohead's release of 'In Rainbows' people would argue that the fact that people would still download an album from Kazaa that you can legally download for free from the artists website proves how rotten everyone is. No - it's just that the UX of doing it legally sucked so much more.