I always use snakes, mostly because it costs about the same (assuming the individual TRS pairs are the same quality) but mostly because the diameter of a 16-ch snake is a little smaller than 16 TRS pairs, with shield and insulation and outer jacket, bundled together.
This is because the outer jackets of the individual pairs can be much thinner in a snake because the snake has an outer jacket that will take any abuse. Also, its much easier to toss a snake into conduit, a duct, etc, than trying to drag 16 individual cables with wires ties.
In the many, many years I've installed and used snake cables, I've only had a few pairs "go bad". This was always due to a wobbly jack on the panel, flexing the solder joint, or people shoving stuff into racks immediately above or below, catching wires that weren't soldered on correctly to begin with.
Snakes are good.
BTW, if you're trying to pull a snake through a conduit, and you're having trouble, grease the cable. Most electrical supply places (not a home depot) have jars of cable grease. Its a nasty grease, almost like moly axle grease in consistancy, that makes cables slip through tight bends very easily.
An alternative is KY, but know that you will have to use a lot of it so you're not saving any money, and KY is usually scented. Used that in a pinch when doing a job in the middle of absolute nowhere, thus no electrical supply houses, but, walmart as we all know is everywhere, like a fungus
