Cloud storage for 8TB of music files on an external HD

The operative phrase is that "your mileage may vary".  Most of the time, most folks can get by with the streaming service of their choice and be happy.  If most of the  time is good enough and a music-less future is OK, Thats all you need.  My esperience has included a Lifetime subscription to a storage service that disappeared after seeming fine for several years, some hard drives that started clunking 5+ years into their service life, and SSD's that stopped responding once they were 3/4 full.  I won't even talk about lightning strikes or politicians who decide that if they can't have it all, then no one can or at least no one that is not on their list of supporters can.  

Bottom line, enjoy streaming when you can.  For me, that is utterly unreliable. I have lost my connection to Audiogon's server a couple of times just typing this note. Where I am moving to, there is no fiber or cable broadband.  Just satellite if the sky is clear.  Bottom line - Keep everything, rip everything you actually like, and keep copies on as many types of media as you can in as many places as you can afford.  

My current long term media is M-Disk,  readable on almost any optical drive and with an expected service life more than 10X that of a person.  It'll just have to do. 

NAS. That's it. You buy it, install drives, and you have your own FREE 'cloud' storage. In the unlikely event that a drive goes bad, you have RAID, so you can replace the drive without data loss. You can make a copy of your data on a seperate drive and keep it 'off site'. I'm surprised no-one has mentioned this here.

I spent over a year 'backing up' all my CDs using EAC onto my PC, now also placed on my NAS, and on another drive kept off site incase of fire/theft. Although, now I'm a Qobuz subscriber, I find I use my copied music less and less.

Cloud  is not good as a solid SS drive , if you have a older drive 

get rid of it, Waay to slow and noisy.

Hard wired audio. Not wirelesss for best sound Ethernet  as well as all digital

cables high quality, as well as power cords 

As much as cloud services provide convenience and expansion for file backup, I don't want to be tethered to any particular data company. And nearly every large tech company, including Apple, leverages Amazon Web Services. This includes cloud storage. At the end of the day, if you want convenience and like to pay a monthly fee then go with cloud storage and hope it remains "forever" during your lifetime. I prefer having my digital music files on a disc drive for the music I've bought over the years. I also have music that is not on streaming services. 

And when the internet goes down, so does your access to your files. It happens all the time. 

The upside of having your music stored on drives at home is that you'll never lose access to them, and the upfront cost of storage is minimal. Keeping it simple is key. Get a cloud back-up for convenience and a physical drive backup for peace of mind or just go with the largest drives you can afford and give yourself room to grow if you're still buying music like I do.  Not all artists release to streaming and I have a lot artists I listen to whose catalogs are incomplete on streaming so buying digital or physical formats is the only option if I want that release in my collection.