This is true and a category of music that got hit notably hard was live recordings. What had a wide array of live recordings made by sound engineers straight from the mixer. This is something that you simply cannot find now unless you maybe know a guy.

Yes. RIP a ton of very rare material. What.cd has a special place in my heart.

Which also means almost always limited to the latest, almost always crappy (or blind to the original ambiance) remaster! One of the main reasons why I don't bother with streaming, really.

(And because they lack much obscure stuff and I don't like being dependent on the Internet and a renter's whims for something as essential as music, I guess)

Yeah, it was a great place. I have a paid Spotify account but finally got an ancient hard drive onto my network for all sorts of stuff Spotify doesn’t or can’t have (e.g., Coldcut: 70 Minutes of Madness).