this post was submitted on 02 Feb 2024
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1088
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] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I doubt spotify's small price increase mattered as much as the big increase in overall living expenses. If the choice is between paying for services like spotify or paying rent, then it is a lot easier to pirate music than housing.

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

I don't know, waiting for the day your favorite tracker goes down unexpectedly and either never comes back or is replaced by an FBI seizure warning is at least kind of like waiting for the day the cops finally show up to kick you out of the building you have been squatting in.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I agree conceptually. Experientially, I would say losing housing (legally occupied or not) is far more dramatic and life changing than being inconvenienced over the loss of a torrent tracker.

Source: In my drinking, I've found myself homeless (due to choices I made, no doubt). Wildly, losing access to torrents (which I've also done) is somewhat less consequential than being on the streets.