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Music Piracy Is Back, Baby (gizmodo.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

338 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"Muso, a research firm that studies piracy, concluded that the high prices of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are pushing people back towards illegal downloads. Spotify raised its prices by one dollar last year to $10.99 a month, the same price as Apple Music. Instead of coughing up $132 a year, more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

Roughly 40% of the music piracy Muso tracked was from these “YouTube-to-MP3” sites. The original YouTube-to-MP3 site died from a record label lawsuit, but other copycats do the same thing. A simple Google search yields dozens of blue links to these sites, and they’re, by far, the largest form of audio piracy on the internet."

The problem isn't price. People just don't want to pay for a bad experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is that their software is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying user-hostile design. Plus Steve Jobs himself said it back in 2007: "people want to own their music." Having it, organizing it, curating it is half the fun. Not fun is pressing play one day and finding a big chunk of your carefully constructed playlist is "no longer in your library." Screw that.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The strange bit is, even in the 80s,I was paying waaaay more than that per year for records and tapes.

It's only the fact that someone suggested I had to pay them a subscription that causes me to download illegally

Don't fucking tell me I need to keep paying every year for something I don't own, I'm not buttoned up the back

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 9 months ago (8 children)

The apps is definitely a part of it for me. One if my friends got YouTube Premium, and since he has 3 profiles he can attach to it, hrs letting me use it. It's nice for the ad free videos on my TV. But it also comes with YouTube Music. It's honestly kind of annoying at times.

Like yesterday I wanted to listen to an album by a band, and they only have like 2 of 3 albums. The one I wanted to listen to is the one they didn't have. So I had to make a Playlist by finding videos of the songs.

And thats for a band that's not super underground. I listen to a lot of grindcore and black metal, and a lot of that isn't even on there.

And when you download things, you can only have it organized by albums. I can't organize it by band and then have all the albums.

It's also sometimes slow to load up stuff I've downloaded.

Over all its not the greatest experience. I'm currently looking at getting a mobile game device for my emulators so I can free up space on my phone, and then I'm thinking about just going back to having all the music on files on there and using an music player app. And like you said, I can have it organized how I want and customize things a bit more. Especially since I no longer have Comcast, so I can use Soulseek again.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

@HipHoboHarold @flintheart_glomgold

Yes, I have noticed a trend of homelab hobbyists going back to something like this:

Soulseek -> Nicotine+ for plentiful, lossless content
Jellyfin for self-hosting
Infuse for streaming the content remotely to save storage on your phone.

I don't endorse piracy for ethical reasons, but I get why this is trending up:
-Increasingly aggressive pricing models
-Service quality and content accessibility going down

Really makes it hard for consumers...

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Qobuz ... check it out

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[–] [email protected] 8 points 9 months ago

Songs disappearing, pushing podcasts, and raising prices. That's why I went back to buying music. I salute the sailors

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