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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]

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"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] 44 points 10 months ago (2 children)

It's taken longer than I expected, but more and more people are realising streaming services as a model are not good, by any measure.

They cost more in the long run, you are made powerless as a consumer (perpetually increasing costs and removing your favourite content), and you can't even get 'everything at the convenience of your fingertips' cause the market is fragmented and they remove things periodically. You own nothing and pay more. Absolutely stupid model that deserves to die.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (3 children)

Yeah, that is true for video steaming, but not music. Spotify has almost every song on the planet, and with a family account it's very cheap. Unless you only listen to a very small music library it's vastly cheaper than buying all the music

[–] [email protected] 21 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Spotify has almost every song on the planet

Until a contract negotiation with UMG goes south and they lose half the catalog overnight. See what's happening on tiktok right now for a good example of this.

I understand the convenience draw, but I'm not a fan of continually paying for content that can disappear at any moment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

Well if that happens, then there's always piracy. But until then. I'll use my family account. Because I don't have the resources to download all the songs that my other 4 family member likes.

Or, since I cannot download each and every song they like, I'll turn to another form of piracy. Revanced yt music.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 10 months ago

I do use streaming (although for free) to find new tracks. But I cannot imagine having my PRIMARY collection there, mostly because it's so locked-down. You can't use it on a dumb MP3 player, you can't use a player application of your choice, etc.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago

Their android app is total garbage and frustrates me to no end. I'm seriously considering just going back to pirating my music just because I hate spotifys music app..

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I'm surprised everyone didn't realize it right from the beginning before things got to this point. Better late then never, I - suppose.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago

My theory is that it's just the fact that there is always a new generation of people around the corner who haven't learned the lesson of how capitalists work. Therefore, there is always a market vulnerable to being swindled. They can keep using the same tactics, there's always a delay in people figuring out the grift, then by the time they do there's a new group of suckers ready to fall for it.