by owning the CDs, you’re not beholden to anyone’s interests in keeping the albums available for streaming.

You are 100% correct about this, and I have thought about it greatly.

The flip side is with streaming you have access to so much more music than you could ever consider purchasing.

The “right” answer is to do both - pay for streaming AND buy what you like, what touches you. But that’s just not realistic for most.

I don’t have a laptop dedicated to my audio system. From a usability pov, an app on my phone is a better solution than a laptop. A laptop in my living room is not a viable solution - it’s not an office.

The Node infrastructure (not sure about Wiim) opened me up to multiple systems playing music in synch throughout my house, which a laptop won’t support.

You could have asked the same question 20 years ago - “why have a cd player, why not use a laptop?” My first paragraph still would apply.