In my teens I started collecting CDs instead of tapes even though I didn't have a CD player, because I record them to tape on someone's player. So when I got my first PC and shitty little modem, I had a nice little stack of CDs to rip, as soon as that because feasible. (Actually, I remember ripping Rage Against The Machine's "Bullet in the head" to .wav in 1994, I think, and then deleting it because it took up most of the hard drive space). I've used audiograbber, EAC, Nero and a whole bunch of encoders. I must go back and find my earliest surviving rip and see what I used to encode it.

Anyway, none of what the author is doing is novelty to me, I stuck to my guns this past 30 years. I buy on Bandcamp or 7digital, or I rip charity store CDs. Occasionally, for really hard to find stuff, I download from YouTube or get a torrent, but only if I can't find it legally.

I've been running Musicbee on Linux/wine for a decade (I think). My last two DAPs were tiny, light-weight Hiby models.

I have had happily never actually paid for any music streaming service.