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Music Piracy Is Back, Baby (gizmodo.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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] 4 points 9 months ago

Man, your comment reminded me of mp3.com back in the early days of digital music.

It had a lot of up and coming bands on it. And it allowed users the ability to create their own curated 'radio stations'. You could compile hours of music from those artists and share it with the rest of the user base. And other users could recommend songs for inclusion in your station (which also helped you discover new bands).

I created a station that was getting some decent listening numbers, and I got some good recommendations from listeners (sometimes self-promotion, but that's okay).

Then one day it was all gone. Probably related to the backlash from the record industry caused by Napster (even though, I think, mp3.com had acquired rights from those artists?). Sad times.

That's what music streaming fused with social media should be about.