Before iTunes, the only legal way to download music onto your computer was through subscription services. But these subscription services were not like the Spotifys and Pandoras of today. No, they truly sucked. They were clunky, hard to navigate, and lacked a lot of popular songs as they were often produced by the record labels. In people’s eyes however, the biggest problem with these subscription services was that they didn’t own the music they were paying for. Steve Jobs understood this, and made owning the music you purchased the foundation for iTunes, on of Apple’s most successful products. But in 2019, subscription services rule the market, and only a small percentage of people still buy their music. So what changed? Was it us? Was Steve Jobs wrong? No. What really made iTunes so much better than all the streaming services it was contemporary to was not that you owned the music sold on it, but the connection you felt with the music for owning it. Today, music streaming services replicate this connection through user profiles, which allow us to define ourselves through the music we listen to and the playlists we make. We have this connection with the music on these services not because of whether or not we own it, but because of the things we can do with it. We can make playlists and share them with the world, and that makes the music feel like it is truly ours. User profiles that suggest music based on our tastes contribute to this connection as well. We feel connected because we are, things that are suggested to us are based on what we listen to, and our user profiles, playlists, and recommended feeds feel like a true reflection of us, just as much as owning a record or a cd.