I feel like I interpreted this post differently to the other people that have commented, as I didn't think it was them saying people who don't stream are bad fans. I sort of read it the opposite way, as in you should just listen to the songs when you feel like it if you truly enjoy them. You shouldn't feel like you have to stream non-stop. I could be wrong though since everybody else seems to have interpreted it completely differently.

If they're making the point I think they are, then I really do agree with it. When I first started seeing people say "stream X song" I really thought it meant "please give this song a listen, you might like it". I've been a k-pop fan for a decade now, and I only recently learned that streaming actually means playing a song on repeat constantly... Which is so wild to me. Maybe I'm just too old to understand it, but I could never even begin to imagine making myself listen to a certain song whilst knowing I'd actually rather be listening to something else. I know people want to help their favourite idols win awards and stuff, but you shouldn't feel obligated to stream. At the end of the day, they're strangers and you owe them nothing. If you choose to spend your time streaming, you do you of course, you absolutely have the right to do that, but I personally can't see myself jumping on that trend any time soon. There are some songs I could (and do!) listen to for hours on loop, but they're very few and far between. Usually when my favourite groups release new music, I'll watch the music video maybe once or twice, and if I like it then I'll watch any live stages or dance practice videos, then I'll save the song to my Spotify so I can listen to it a handful of times throughout my day for the next couple of weeks. I feel like I'm doing my part without burdening myself in any way.

One thing that does genuinely bug me is that I find a lot of the people who get antsy about streaming are the same people who complain about MV views being deleted, or about how award shows are really just popularity contests. Using multiple accounts to repeatedly stream the same song on loop for hours in order to artificially inflate the views is bot-like behaviour, so I'm not really sure what people are expecting - If you act like a bot, you're going to be treated like one. As for award shows, if people didn't artificially inflate the views or streams for a song, then songs could be more fairly judged on merit and quality. Groups with larger and/or more dedicated fanbases are going to have more people streaming to inflate the statistics, therefore they're going to be more likely to win awards. Whereas, if people just listened to songs when they actually wanted to because they genuinely enjoy them, higher quality music would be more likely to receive attention, making the "popularity contest" issue less prevalent. Of course the issue would still be there to a certain extent, but it wouldn't be nearly as stifling for the groups and as frustrating for the fans as it is currently, such as with situations at award shows where the same 2 or 3 groups win every award and fans who invested a lot of time into streaming for groups that didn't win anything end up disappointed.