Me too, mine lives in my office at work. I replaced the spinning rust with 256gb SDcard and fed it a new battery and now it’s a beast. The text list scrolling seems so quaint now.
Sheldon
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Mine is a Classic 180gb , it just keeps rocking .
It was my constant companion when i worked 10 YEARS AGO 
. It has been in my car for ages , who needs Android or iOS apps , even ARC when you have such a trusty tool …
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Agreed, ipod is the best portable music player in this house for car, gym etc, walks etc.
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There’s another key reason: because the hobbyist is a control freak, and wants to be able to have the experience of listening without regard to external factors. I fall into that camp, and suspect a lot of others here do as well. This means that not only do I value the offline experience; I also care to provide my own metadata (track dates, album artwork, choice of track naming, etc). And I can browse and enjoy that music and metadata in alternative playback mechanisms such as Synology Audio Station. So, I provide my own offline playback solution. But it would be even better not to have to.
That said, I’m a mix of all 4 of your reasons, but I’m a control freak as well.
There’s another reason. Some people’s psycho-acoutic imp insists that streaming (and also rips) don’t sound as good as the original CD, or that digital doesn’t sound as satisfying as analog…
I’m not going to get into that sh*t pile, but for people who believe that, then they have not only local media, but physical media.
(I have both a turntable and an SACD player, so there’s that)
Well, also, depending on the age of the music, what is on the streaming service is not the same as the original cd. So probably does sound different.
Well I don’t fall into that camp, but I do fall into the camp that I don’t trust the provenance information from streaming services. Their metadata is crap, too. Release dates are wrong quite often. Track dates are non-existent. Can’t 100% trust that you are listening to a particular release as-labeled. I could go on.
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That is so true, remastered crap with a bunch of stuff that should have stayed on the cutting room floor tacked on at the end. It’s not the same album I grew up with.
I also download and keep TV series that I really like and want to watch again. My NAS has my entire digital life on it, TV, movies, music, and my files since the mid 80’s. I don’t care what happens with streaming or netflix, or whatever. I have it already, and if I don’t and like it, I will.
Sheldon
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THIS!!!
While my main reason for adding and hanging on to my local collection is for backup purposes, I can relate to the sentiment conveyed by this writer…
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I sure hope it is, I’m just starting with Roon 
For some reason I like this platform, it does a really good job identifying everything.
I have a bunch of albums that aren’t on streaming so I like local libraries.
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I think those are the reasons, but they make streaming a more problematic way of building a library than you’re implying.
Albums do disappear from streaming services, and the content that is available is often compromised. Watermarking was a major problem with Universal releases a few years ago; that seems to have gone away for the most part, but it comes up occasionally. I’ve encountered a number of albums with the very end of one or more tracks cut off. One album had a strong buzzing distortion baked in. There’s MQA, dynamic compression, and whatever else the labels decide to do with the music files now or in the future.
For me, building a music library is like building a library of books. It’s an ongoing process of exploration and judgement aimed at producing a stable resource. In my mainly classical library, I want a more or less comprehensive representation of the compositions in the periods that interest me in performances that I regard as the best or otherwise most worth having.
Streaming is great way to access a huge amount of content, but it’s not ideal for building that kind of library. Even if it worked, mostly, for years, companies could fold, the business model itself could change, or minor alterations could go unnoticed until a part of the resource is sought and found to be no longer there.
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Allow me to ask a different question: do you think Roon is still relevant if you only have local music and do not subscribe to Qobuz or Tidal?
If there’s a thread that has discussed this, please point me to it.
I’ve grown my local digital library in the last 3 years and I’m now wondering if I can drop Qobuz for a cheaper alternative (Apple Music) and just purchase the albums I really like and add it to Roon. Am I going to miss on some key experiences in Roon?
I’m also in your situation. My library consists of a ton of music in hi res format that’s not available on the streaming services.
I still use Roon because of its usability and the excellent metadata and search capabilities.
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@Arthur_Gonzales_III, I have only a local library, about 1300 albums and 19,000 tracks. The main reason I love Roon is the metadata and links between artists, albums, musicians, producers, etc. which has been just as important for discovery purposes as the Roon Radio function. I can’t see any other service that provides this type of information, and now with not just TiVo data sources but also Wikipedia. To me the zones synchronization (also incredible) and other features are icing on the cake.
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Very much so, at least for me. This is how I used Roon for years before I suscribed to Qobuz. 
I value my local collection much more than streaming services.
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Thank you very much for your replies. My Qobuz sub is about to expire this month. I think I will cancel it for now and see how it goes with just Apple Music and local files with Roon.
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I have always been and always will be a music collector of my own, meaning only buying and no streaming services at all. As Jesse pointed out, like building your own library. It is personal thing - a kind of Diary of my musical journey through the years.
That goes for all kinds of media, be it Vinyl, CD, DvA, Blu-Ray or just (mostly High-Res) files on my NAS.
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It might have been said earlier in the thread, at least said in different words, but to me the local library will always be relevant, since many of us has an interest in a specific recording/release. When searching for albums to purchase, I often try to seek out the one version (if several exists) which has been the least damaged by too heavy handed mastering engineers, and with as preserved original dynamics as possible.
If one has no such interest then I understand that a streaming only option seems like the perfect thing. To me it is far, far far from it.
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Yea if you live in the last century…