Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I’ve used Spotify for like 20 years now, and I’m finally going back to pirating.

They started “innovating” and adding shit I didn’t want last year to justify fee increases.

I can’t trust businesses to not enshittify, so might as well continue on with where I left my library all those years ago.

Plus: So much music isn’t available on there. I have a huge collection of Japanese Rock, Pop, Visual Kei from the 90s and 00s that you just can’t find easily.

Can you save it DRM-free? That's all I ask for.

my two cents,

I personally buy some music from Bandcamp, and I'm pretty sure those songs don't exist on the Apple Music catalog. So I don't want to handle multiple apps to listen what I want.

Also, streaming platforms have the internet constraints. Sometimes, like when I'm driving, I don't have a stable internet connection

My good faith response to your good faith question: because having a DRM-free copy on your own server or hard drive is the only way to be sure you will be able to play it tomorrow.

Streaming services are a complex collection of licensing deals that are by design temporary. You may not hear beforehand when your favorite artist's label's parent company's conglomerate's CEO decides to pull their content because they're going to start their own streaming service, or another service gave them a lucrative exclusive deal.

And while you're never going to have a hard time finding Taylor Swift, that one 70s esoteric album may become instantly impossible to find once it drops off a streamer.

In the end there are no promises with a streaming service. On the other hand, you put in a small amount of work to grab MP3s or FLACs, set up your own Plex server (or Emby, etc), and you're good for pretty much forever.

Similarly, support artists by buying their direct merch, going to shows, and so on, but they are barely seeing any Spotify money. Between Spotify and the labels, they are cleaning the plate and artists are getting whatever crumbs fall off the table (unless you're Taylor Swift or another global artist).

Many artists I like were signed with a now defunct record label called Tympanik Audio. Whoever got the rights to the name after the label went under stopped paying their Spotify license fees, and a large chunk of my Spotify library vanished overnight. While the albums still exist on Bandcamp, the money probably gets thrown into the void now.

Never again. The only way I can ensure my music is accessible tomorrow is to have my own copy. I buy on Bandcamp where I can, or will buy physical and rip it if I really like the album. Everything else gets ripped from Deezer automatically because there's no guarantee anything on those platforms will always be there.

it’s easier to just sub to something like Apple Music… literally $110/yr for all the music that exists.

As others have stated, not all music exists on every streaming platform. That alone is enough of a reason for me. I recently canceled my longtime Spotify subscription because the price kept increasing while my library kept decreasing. I actually don’t pirate music when I can help it because I’d rather support artists on Bandcamp or purchasing physical media directly. If I can’t do that then I head to Soulseek!

I've been using a hacked Spotify app for years. It takes 5 minutes to set up and I don't have to pay any money to a soulless corporation who will throw a few half pennies to the artists that I enjoy. Oh, and I get to disable the shit ui choices that they try to implement so I get a better experience than a paying customer.