Music Piracy Is Back, Baby

If y'all got kids, don't forget to teach them how MP3's and actual media files work, I see many young people nowadays don't even realize you can locally store your own music in a portable device-agnostic format. They're beginning to get used to the idea of not owning anything.

Look, it's on it's last legs, but Bandcamp and Bandcamp Fridays still exist.

Reasonable cost, money goes directly to the artist, and you get high quality FLACs with no DRM to keep permanently.

I pirate a lot, but I also spend a lot of money at Bandcamp trying to get money directly in the hands of the artists I enjoy.

Don't use shady sites. Use yt-dlp.

I have a slightly different suggestion.

Inflation is crap and the first thing to go are subscriptions that raise their prices when people are already hurting. If you want retention, keep your prices locked when users are having bad times and you're raking in record profits.

I think curation is great too, but I also think age plays a lot into individual views. A bunch of the younger guys at work were saying how they didn't want playlists and they didn't want to listen to an album, they just wanted to hit a button that knew their tastes musically and would give them a mix of familiar likes and new discoveries. The proceeded to describe a radio station to me, sans commercials. They were hot on all the music streaming and though I was crazy for wanting to spend time sorting through music.

Looking at a Spotify by age graph, the boomers dig it (because it's easy?), Gen-Z and the Younger Millennials dig it, Gen X has less than half the uptake of the other groups.

We were mixing our own tapes in our tweens and teens. We wired ourselves to find music, copy it and play it in the specific order we want.

or at least that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

One of the main reasons I still pay for Spotify is because it is very cheap in my country, specially when splitting a family plan. However I noticed that the user experience has gone downhill over the past years.

I remember when I could seamlessly switch playback devices, from my car to my phone, to my computer and them a Chromecast almost instantaneously. Now I'm lucky if my devices recognise each other even if they are on the same network.

And if you have a poor internet connection, the app is near unusable because it tries yo grab online content first before checking whatever is downloaded. Time and time again I have to put my phone on aeroplane mode just for the main menu to load, it is so frustrating and this didn't happen some 5-6 years ago

Not fun is pressing play one day and finding a big chunk of your carefully constructed playlist is "no longer in your library."

this is exceptionally true from my experience with Spotify. I had downloaded a playlist that had a specific song. One day I went to play my locally downloaded playlist only to glance over it and see that the song was unavailable. I had the song downloaded. In my device and it still removed the song. No warnings, no nothing. Ever since, I downloaded everything locally and completely ditched Spotify. Fuck this scummy behaviour

I wish we had Google Play Music again. It really was an excellent app and had flawless suggestions for me I always enjoyed, and truly the most intuitive mixes. Google is evil of course, but honestly one of the best features was the listing of bands playing near you in the upcoming weeks, I went to so many shows because I'd try their music via the GPM suggestions.

I listen to the Henry Rollins show on KCRW to try to get into new music but despite my appreciation of him I find his music tastes repetitive. How many weeks in a row can I listen to the Jesus and Mary Chain?

Never left, baby! Although ripping from YouTube should be a last resort. And even then, use a proper tool like Yt-dlp.

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.

It never left. My MP3 collection is getting kinda disgusting at this point. I really should delete a bunch of it, but you never know when I'm going to want to listen to that album I downloaded 15 years ago and haven't gotten into yet!

Piracy creates an endless loop of artists taking advances and eventually losing royalties. That's just what I've seen growing up in the music /film/ TV industry and briefly working in both. Screw labels and Spotify but go support artists and actually buy stuff.

The problem isn't price. People just don't want to pay for a bad experience.

It's all about the price for me cause I live in a 3rd world country. Even if their service improves, I will not hesitate for a second to pirate stuff. I'll just use the money i save to pay the internet bill instead of availing a monthly sub

Sheesh, kids have it so easy now... Back in my day, we had to set sail along the Atlantic trade routes looking for ships full of the latest wax cylinders out of Europe and Asia. Didn't have anything to play them on but at least we owned our collections.

Never a bad time to plug ListenBrainz. ListenBrainz logs what you listen so you can keep track of what you hear and it helps you get recommendations and insights into your listening habits. It's not specifically for music pirates but it is compatible with music piracy. You can submit listens from all kinds of sources, youtube, spotify, but also local files (pirated or not). ListenBrainz is FOSS and publishes all their data on a open license, for the benefit of everyone.

I used to do lots of piracy back in the days. I am so glad those days are behind me and have not been big on the scene. What would be some sites to avoid to not fall in the trap of being a criminal. I love giving companies all of my money and do not ever want to go back to my old ways. Please help me with a nice list of things to avoid.

If I download music, I have access to a larger music library, the ability to change the pitch, speed, and equalizer of the music, and the freedom to choose the player that I want. Can't do that with a streaming service.

I try to support artists if I can still download the music in a DRM-free file. Just this week I made a purchase, and late last year I bought an album and a midi file to support two artists.

And this is for personal listening. I make sure to follow royalty laws and attribute the artist when the music ends up in something I publish to the Internet.

For me, it’s neither the price nor the quality of apps (idgaf, it plays music in the background). The thing that pushes me towards piracy is the same as for movies and TV shows: disappearing content. Because of content licensing deals, every piece of media is temporary on a service. I do rewatch movies from time to time and it’s infuriating if it’s gone (or rather would be, if I was still paying for any streaming service). This is especially true for music. My Spotify favorites list has a huge percentage of greyed out entries (and I’m pretty sure there are things that were outright deleted).

I fucking love my selfhosted flac collection! 250gb and growing

I wanna know what is so different from my experience with Spotify. Because as far as enshittification goes, it hasn't really changed since I first began using it almost a decade ago aside from the price going up a little last year. I mean, I constantly see people saying it has ads even with premium but I have not once ever heard a single ad for anything, even for Spotify's own services on the platform, that was put there by Spotify and not simply already in a podcast that would be there from any source of listening to said podcast.

Maybe it's because most of the artists I like are fuckin dead so their shit never gets removed 🤷🏻‍♂️

Over 20 years ago, the internet was revolutionized through free music file sharing. Today, Napster’s legacy lives on through websites that rip YouTube’s audio.

Is this guy a boomer or a zoomer? It sure seems like he doesn't know that what made Napster great wasn't really the downloading so much as how it facilitated discovering new music. Looking through other people's collections while the thing you came for downloaded was amazing.

Edit: I looked it up, Zoomer

What are you saying OP? You don't want video and paid, exclusive podcasts on your streaming service? /s

I found some of my favourite bands by downloading mislabelled songs on limewire.

The strange bit is, even in the 80s,I was paying waaaay more than that per year for records and tapes.

It's only the fact that someone suggested I had to pay them a subscription that causes me to download illegally

Don't fucking tell me I need to keep paying every year for something I don't own, I'm not buttoned up the back

I'm kinda waiting for this bad boy to come out so I can put into it all the songs I legally acquired all these years...

Songs disappearing, pushing podcasts, and raising prices. That's why I went back to buying music. I salute the sailors

Qobuz ... check it out

The apps is definitely a part of it for me. One if my friends got YouTube Premium, and since he has 3 profiles he can attach to it, hrs letting me use it. It's nice for the ad free videos on my TV. But it also comes with YouTube Music. It's honestly kind of annoying at times.

Like yesterday I wanted to listen to an album by a band, and they only have like 2 of 3 albums. The one I wanted to listen to is the one they didn't have. So I had to make a Playlist by finding videos of the songs.

And thats for a band that's not super underground. I listen to a lot of grindcore and black metal, and a lot of that isn't even on there.

And when you download things, you can only have it organized by albums. I can't organize it by band and then have all the albums.

It's also sometimes slow to load up stuff I've downloaded.

Over all its not the greatest experience. I'm currently looking at getting a mobile game device for my emulators so I can free up space on my phone, and then I'm thinking about just going back to having all the music on files on there and using an music player app. And like you said, I can have it organized how I want and customize things a bit more. Especially since I no longer have Comcast, so I can use Soulseek again.

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.

i'm a big fan of music streaming, the way i listen to music only really works with a discovery algorithm. but the way streaming services and labels have been unnecesarily fucking over the customer as well as the artist is getting ridiculous.

qobuzz could be a possible alternative, with them providing FLACs and/or CD quality tracks to purchase and download, but also having a subscription plan. they say more money is going to the artist. the only thing missing is the algorithm.

go ahead, tell me i'm "corrupted by capitalism" or whatever. this is the way i want to do it. there's no point in building up a collection worth hundreds and thousands of euros now, apart from FLACs being gigantic files and taking up all of the storage on my phone. plus i would cut myself off from being able to discover good artists the way i'm used to.

So what is the best way to actually own music? I miss having a physical file I could put wherever and listen to anywhere, but haven't resorted to pirating anything since limewire

OK so they didn't find the other sites. Good good

The problem isn't is price. "People just don't want to pay for a bad their software is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is that user-hostile design. Plus Steve Jobs himself said it back in 2007: "people want to Own their music (reuters.com)." Having it, organizing it, curating it is half the fun."

Fixed the post for you. I am not trying to be an ass and stated this in a previous post but people's push to piracy is almost always to obtain what is believed to be what is becoming or is unobtainable. Price is and availability is almost always the driving force of piracy because price plays a part in availability.

I was all on board with the post until I saw, "people just don't want to pay for a bad software that is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is the user-hostile design." This to me is so far from the truth that I like to call statements like this the Lemmy or FOSS mentality that I see on here and it isn't meant to be insulting. I have defined it that way because I think Lemmy users get just as wrapped up in their own opinions and personal belief system that they forget they are also in a bubble and their opinions steer far off course to justify some personal idea or hope about what is actually pushing "mainstream" people to make choices that just aren't why average consumers are making choices.

People will 100% buy and use bad products user experience does only go so far though. I would say Spotify is as popular as it is because of its design as well as Apple Music. The features and design layout are what make their music services easier to use for most consumers that and they are popular services by word of mouth and are commonly used on the most popular devices because they are pre installed. Why have 5 music apps on an iPhone when Apple makes a music app that is already there. Point being design isn't the issue. The issue is competition, choice, and price. There really aren't a whole lot of options, popularity wise, outside of Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube music. These users aren't flocking to open source apps they are going straight to Piracy by ripping the content from YouTube directly and it is absolutely almost in direct relation with the increase in price increase. The "mainstream" user which I call the average consumer isn't worried about Spotify's design they want it to just function and play their music and be available and popular by design.

Yeah.... How many times does the lesson need to be learned? The worse deal the consumer is given, the more likely they'll just pirate instead. This is in both price and usability/frustration level.

I still remember when Sirius/xm was actually popular. Ad free good quality radio where you could tune in to specialized stuff for a good price.You could generally get it for around $6/7 per mo/device. At the time I was going to buy a new stereo head just for better navigation of my flash drive with my music (I was already off of burned discs). But Sirius/xm was so cheap and it had an added bonus of some discovery and stuff that why bother? I'll just primarily use that!

The prices raised a couple of bucks and commercials for their top 10 channels but they are very quick.

Then prices raised and it was commercials for every channel and so on. I cancelled when it was $18/mo/device with commercials everywhere long enough that it wasn't as bad but close enough to being as bad as radio, except I'm paying for it. My friends told me "yeah but you just call them when your time is up and they'll always make it like $12/mo/device for the first year and sometimes if you complain after it runs out they'll do it the second year too.

But why bother when by then you had great alternatives like Pandora and then Spotify and so-on. You get the same experience as Sirius/xm but it is free. Don't want ads? It's just a few bucks a month!

Now streaming music is going down the same road that every popular service of everything always does. Worse experience and ad revenue. The price point for the pay options rise and won't atop. It won't be but maybe a decade until you can't pay for no ads. You'll pay to be able to pick exactly what you want to play and to decrease ad time I'm sure.

In the background as the deal gets worse and there is no alternative offering a good deal with a good consumer experience then piracy rises. It always does. Companies will always complain piracy hurts them and the artists but all they have to do is be more reasonable.

But YT audio quality is pretty shit most of the time. There’s plenty of sites that will strip the audio for you from a video and IIRC a couple browser plugins, too. I guess if you really want the song you’ll have it, but it’s not going to sound great.

I'm not even able to put music on my watch unless it's a mp3, so paying to stream music is out of the question.

"when pigs fly: the death of oink, the birth of dissent, and a brief history of record industry suicide"

Look it up if you haven't read it, I never miss an opportunity to post it but it looks like the original demonbaby host is now offline. There are mirrors though.

Nicotine+ is the way to go for this.

Did it ever go away?

Always has been

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Last year, over 17 billion visits were made to music piracy websites around the world, first reported by Wired.

We’ve come a long way since Napster, but people are once again using the internet to illegally download their favorite songs in a major way.

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.

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.

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.

Google has hardline policies against copyright infringement in its terms of service but seems to let these music piracy sites scootch by.

The original article contains 379 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 61%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Permanently Deleted

Spotify raised its prices by one dollar last year to $10.99 a month, the same price as Apple Music.

Meanwhile I've been paying the same $4.99 for Pandora's simple commercial free service for the last 10 years. I can't select individual songs to play, it just plays random songs based on my channel choices, but it works fine for me. Anything I specifically want to listen to I'll just look up on YouTube.

Bandcamp ftw

Fuck YouTube rips. V0 for life!

more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

Noobs...

I used to DJ on Second Life and it was always a treat to hear someone else DJing and they play music that was obviously ripped from YouTube. Because they were too lazy to cut off the parts when the channel would ask for subscribers, play different sounds and they'd even rip off music video versions.

The other thing with Spotify is that it bullies you into it's subcription. Limited Skips. Ad bombardment (ads are still on podcasts so why even pay a subscription?). The app on mobile is abysmally slow with connection issues.

Me, still using youtube-mp3 website

Family sharing is the way to go for me.

I really miss iTunes circa 2007 (I think?) before it got enshittified. I had it running on a Windows machine with my carefully-curated music library until the machine died. I got the music files off but had to reinstall iTunes and by that time it was a bloated piece of crap. I haven't found the equivalent since!

If there was soulseek on an iOS app I think I’d go fully back to piracy. Never gotten over Apple Music ruining all my playlists, just want to go back to basics

verifiable via personal experience

"The problem isn't price. People just don't want to pay for a bad experience."

The experience using a paid service is way better than pirating, let's be honest here. The problem for some people is price.

They don't want a bad experience so they use shady websites to download music in the shittiest possibile quality? I don't buy it.

People are just not able to afford what they want, that's it