I do. Streaming sites (official or pirate) can still remove content or go offline all together. Also the pirate sites often have low quality.

With downloading I have full control over everything. And the collecting itself is fun, too!

The only real downside is HDD/hardware prices.

Streaming is awesome, but I've stopped paying for streaming in most cases. Everything has gotten too expensive. When I run out of storage, I'll start culling.

I haven't backed up or collected movies or tv shows in a long while. Not much they've put out in the last ten years has been interesting to me. Music on the other hand... Lot good music has been put out recently and I'll either buy the CD or if I have to, purchase a download. Either way, it's going to be streaming from my server.

I hoard. Physical media is getting harder to come by, but I've ripped all my DVD's, TV shows, all BDs, all UHD BDs, and 3D. About 2k discs in total. A lot I've found used, local video shop closeouts, etc. My dad has about 400-450 retail CDs. I've backed up all his stuff too.

I've got 8x 16TB drives (RAID5+spare), 10x 8TB drives (RAID5 +spare), and some 2TB SSDs (RAID10) for personal files for my family.

I've purchased a new 24x bay Rosewill case for the next expansion 😅. My wife doesn't like the noise emanating from the basement. ✈️

I've been wanting to make a collection, but ironically now as storage solutions are becoming more expensive I'm between a rock and a hard place. I could spend the stupid prices for more hard drive space and then grab more. Alternatively I could take some existing smaller hard drives and use them for storage.

If I hadn't gotten laid off last month I likely would have just expanded while things are still (relatively) affordable. But idk now. I might just stretch things where I can and hope that the bubble pops sooner rather than later

Right now my idea is to store things i find that are more niche or less likely to be shared in the future and i'll cycle things that are more popular or that will stand the test of time

I hoard media. I’m particular about my releases. I don’t want to stream some shady website that could disappear half way through a show.

I kept waiting to invest in more drives. Now I’m stuck with 4x4TB for the foreseeable future because replacing that raid array is brutal and even then I want to go bigger. Like the other commenter said, I’d like to be able to mirror big data sets.

I download everything, I just may not ultimately keep it long-term if it turns out to be uninteresting or bad. Streaming and downloading transfer the same amount of bits, one just has higher demands for timeliness.

i don't really pirate music any more, i get 90% of what i want to listen to from podcasts, internet/community radio and youtube mixes. trying to get in the habit buying stuff i really like from bandcamp to actually support artists.

my mate put me on his family spotify... so use that very rarely, mostly for nostalgia hits.

movies/tv 100% 🏴‍☠️

I would if I could afford the storage. I'd download and archive every YouTube video I watch instead of streaming it. But I hoard and with like 20tb of collective storage, I'm still always moving things around.

If I had the capital, I’d mirror git repos, anna’s archives, libgen, scihub, Wikipedias, torrents, usenet, sketches, websites, portfolios, archive.org, minerva, etc. etc..
It is precisely capitalist oppressions that I haven't been able to “download everything.” Otherwise I would, and then some.

Been free streaming forever. I'm in my 50's and started with downloads to floppies. For a time over the years we had external drives with favorite TV and movies but we haven't used them in years. Our kids all free stream too. They've never known any other way.

on my server I have the entire library of NES, Master System, Game Gear, GB, GBC, GBA, SNES, Genesis, Sega CD, Saturn, Dreamcast, N64, PSX, and PS2 games. Terabytes of games. have I played them all? no way.

I don't stream anything. If I want to watch something, I will download it. The downloads for the shows I watch are all automated so I don't have to do anything except click play.

When I go on a trip, I just load up my laptop and phone with whatever I want to watch. That way I don't have to deal with an unreliable or non existent internet connection. Good luck streaming anything over the WiFi in an airplane. There's barely enough bandwidth for audio unless they have Starlink.

I don't have much time to watch, but when I do I do it on the TV, and streaming on the TV from some random website is extremely difficult to pull off because you only have a shitty browser and the remote control, just to make it full screen is almost impossible without a mouse and keyboard, let alone browsing.

So that is why I use Jellyfin which has a lot of life quality features but needs downloaded files.

I buy physical discs for the stuff I really care, Steam for digital-only games, streaming and piracy for everything else.