> there was a nice time, albeit short, time where we downloaded music and felt as if it was ours to own. Granted, a lot of this was probably pirated

Nothing prevents you from doing it today, and there is more music to download than ever before.

Some of us never stopped. I never got into the whole streaming thing. My music collection today is a hard drive full of files, just as it was in 1999. No internet connection needed. No wondering if service X has song Y. I can load the whole library onto a phone, my car, wherever I want to play it. Peak music media.