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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] 19 points 10 months ago (3 children)

I don't listen to nearly as much music these days, YouTube music is so ass, I really miss gpm. YouTube can't even get notifications right, like I get a notification that a band I like released a new album or something so I tap it........ and it just fuckin opens the home page of the app??? EVERY SINGLE TIME. How do you fuck up even the most basic feature of the notifications?!?!

The "radio" always brings me back to the same shit that's playing on the actual radio, regardless of me playing the radio based off of bluegrass or fuckin clown techno idfk it will play imagine dragons and blinding lights shit eventually, guaranteed. The algorithms are actually dumpster fires.

Probably around 60% of the roughly 20,000 songs I uploaded (I think that was the limit) didn't get transferred over and are just gone. Thanks Google.

Also even though the notifications don't work, it is nice to know when your favorite artists release something new. Gpm was great about this, ytm seems to think I want the hottest vevo shit

Also who the fuck ever thought it was a good idea to use the music video versions for songs instead of the song version, when we're in the music app, should be fired into the sun. They're probably the same person that originally synced your video and music "histories," skewing your YouTube algorithm entirely so your homepage would suggest nothing but music videos

Seriously, what a shitshow of an app, but that's where most of Google is headed these days

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Also who the fuck ever thought it was a good idea to use the music video versions for songs instead of the song version, when we're in the music app, should be fired into the sun.

Agreed, this is infuriating. I'm in the music app, searching for a piece of music by it's exact name and artist, and I know that it's available on YouTube Music.

Here's a lyric video uploaded to some random asshole's YouTube channel. Or maybe you want this awful cover version from this other asshole on YouTube. Oh, my mistake, you wanted it as performed by the actual band? That you included in your search? How about this phone camera recording of a live show.

It's compete garbage. Made even worse when you're searching by voice command while driving and can't just quickly correct bad results by looking through the list yourself.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

I still use YTM (don't judge me 😛) and it actually defaults to the audio version instead of the video version. They just give you an option to switch to video if you wanted to.

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago

I still use it because I will not give Spotify money, and Apple Music is SUPER Caucasian and repetitive, I still like YTM the best, but it is way shitty. I hate the video function.