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Music Piracy Is Back, Baby

"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.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

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 🤷🏻‍♂️

Deceptichum ,
@Deceptichum@kbin.social avatar

Yeah I've been using Spotify for about 15 years now, since i first had to pretend I was German to access it. It along with Steam have always been the only two services I'm happy to pay for with zero issues.

As far as my experience has gone, nothing has changed for the worse in all that time.

ShepherdPie ,

Agreed. I'm a frequent sailor of the high seas with TV and movies but I actually pay for a Spotify family plan because it's so convenient and I love the features they have like being able to use my phone app to cast music to any available nearby source or having a party and allowing multiple people to input songs to a shared playlist. I do encounter frequent bugs with all their updates but that hasn't risen above the level of mild annoyance yet.

Pirating music is such a pain in the ass these days since there is no standard naming conventions like with TV and movies and there can be multiple sources for the same song (single, album, compilation album, web rip, etc) so even tools like Lidarr don't make it easy and most public/private torrent trackers are pretty sparse when it comes to music outside of the most mainstream of mainstream albums.

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Pirating music is such a pain in the ass these days since there is no standard naming conventions like with TV and movies

Things haven't changed much since the days of Limewire and Kazaa in that regard. I remember when System of a Down did that Zelda song! 😂

Buddahriffic ,

That one got properly labeled when I was going through a "add all the data" phase. The Rabbit Joint turns out to be the ones that made it, but that singer did sound a lot like Serj.

ShepherdPie ,

Back in those days there was a lot of options which meant you could typically find what you're looking for with the right search terms and knowing what to avoid so you didn't download an MP3 of Bill Clinton talking about Lewinski. Its definitely a lot more challenging these days since the quantity of files is lower while naming hasn't gotten any better.

XeroxCool ,

I haven't enjoyed possessing music since my phone replaced my ipod. Maybe I didn't try hard enough, but the seamless* updating of my library and playlists on iTunes and iPod was great. The poor format of the music I did pirate off limewire wasn't as big a deal - partly from the smooth UI of iTunes, partly due to lower music acquisition. I say seamless* because it was problematic when my iPods got full, having to cull the library, but I do beleive it was simple enough to drag selections and individual playlists.

But now what? I don't have a program to load my pc and phone, I never liked what I found for music management on windows, as you said formatting isn't consistent on torrents, and my phones fill with pictures faster than music. So, in comes Spotify. Anything I want on a whim, shared playlists, I do enjoy not storing music myself, the social aspect of public playlists, and an option to store things offline. It's similar reasons Netflix curtailed my pirating. But, as a warning to Spotify, if music streaming services break up content like Netflix, I won't wait to cancel my subscription. That'll be my push to start whatever suggestions I imagine I'll get here in the replies

Appoxo ,

Getting back to CDs after about 10 year hiatus.
Discogs is usually very neat.

BigPotato ,

I mean, you just have to learn everything mp3 formats and go pass the What.cd test and you're good.

ShepherdPie ,

What.cd shut down almost a decade ago.

LainTrain ,

Are there standard naming conventions for movies and TV? Where?

ShepherdPie ,

Yes, pretty much everywhere which is why you see files named something like: Forrest.Gump.1994.1080p.Bluray.DTS-MA.5.1.mkv. Movies and TV have databases like TVDB and TMDB which don't really exist for music. There are things like MusicBrainz but it's a crapshoot in my experience.

nevetsg ,

Spotify was OK back when I used it after Google Music died. YouTube Music's algorithm sucked so I used Spotify for about a year. Then I installed Plex for movies and TV but also found it was also great at streaming music. PlexAmp gives me access to a good suggestion algorithm. I made the decision to give them my $$ instead.
Now with lidarr+scripts I can have any music I want with almost zero effort. Plus, as the OP said, I get the fun little side hobby of music curation.

GhostTheToast ,

I'm curious about where you find your music. When I looked into an indexer for music ~3 years ago, it was slim pickings. I recently found that there a method to download from Spotify, but haven't had a chance to try it out

BigPotato ,

Even the Spotify downloaders are meh. I get so many errors on the few I've tried.

If you get any good recommendations, let me know.

nevetsg ,

Not sure if you mean find recommendations of new stuff to listen to, or the download source?
Recommendations from Last.fm
Download source is currently Deezer. Lidarr+ scripts has a bit of a learning curve
https://github.com/RandomNinjaAtk/arr-scripts

LainTrain ,

Man piracy is so complex nowadays with this script and Plex stuff, all I know is downloading .flac of albums from rutracker haha no docker container home server required

Black_Gulaman ,
@Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

I second this. Once I see plex and lidar and self hosting . My attention wanders. Then snap back and my mind says "torrents, got it. Thanks"

nevetsg ,

Torrents are all well and good until you want an album from more than a couple of years ago.

My current workflow. Find a band that I like. Add it to lidarr. Wait 10min. All of their albums are in Plex and can be streamed from anywhere in the world.

Spuddlesv2 ,

Really? Their made-for-you playlists are nowhere near as good as they used to be. The discover playlist is now ass. Radio plays the same 20 songs over and over and over again.

Right now the app is suggesting a Classical Piano playlist to me. I have never listened to classical piano. Ever. Most recently I’ve listened to Tool, Rage Against the Machine and a 90’s metal playlist (I’m on a 90’s kick). Why on earth would it think I want classical piano?

Proof! https://imgur.com/gallery/e0N5sE3

Kolanaki ,
@Kolanaki@yiffit.net avatar

Possibly because some of those bands are influenced by classical music (though I mean it's rather broad; you could probably trace most musical influences back to the classical period).

I listen to the same kinda shit as your most recent stuff and I don't have much issue with most suggestions. I don't really like the modern pop stuff, but I still get why it serves it up (most of the best 90's alternative stuff was technically pop and I like one Taylor Swift song).

Spuddlesv2 ,

If only it were that clever. I think it’s because their algorithm sees: person listens to 90’s music so person = old, old people like classical piano.

In the same way that I very occasionally play Jason Isbell and after I do so it starts throwing yeehaw-big trucks-and-gurls-in-cutoff-shorts country music at me for months afterwards.

Passerby6497 ,

person listens to 90’s music so person = old, old people like classical piano.

Oh fuck my hip, 90s is old now?

Spuddlesv2 ,

I died inside when I saw stuff I listened to in high school on “classic rock” playlists.

raynethackery ,

Wait until it hits "soft rock."

Plopp ,

I died when I saw my old video game console in a museum.

ThePowerOfGeek ,
@ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world avatar

"Radio plays the same 20 songs over and over and over again. "

So just like traditional radio stations then. ☹️

I swear, we are stuck in a loop where shitty solutions just get reinvented over and over again. And most times when sometime comes up with a genuine improvement, those in power say "oh no no no! That won't do!" and kill it. I'm Gen-X and it's been this way all my life. And probably for many generations before that too.

mint_tamas ,

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).

AVengefulAxolotl ,

I still use spotify as well. It works for me, i just found like 10 new songs last week. At the same time, last year i listened 2hrs/day on average.

BUT at the same time, every few months i export my whole playlists, just in case, using this site.

criticalimpact ,

I think it was maybe 4 or 5 years ago I started noticing the greying out in spotify
Minute that happened it was back to the high seas

Garbanzo ,

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

RobotToaster ,
@RobotToaster@mander.xyz avatar

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.

Like most journalists, probably a millennial former spoiled rich kid.

deranger ,

Napster was not great for discovery. These were the days of 56k modems. Even with 128k mp3s it took a while to download a song. Idk, maybe I used it differently, but Napster was definitely a “look for specific song” application.

Discovery came later with Kazaa and DC++ and the beginnings of broadband.

bilb ,
@bilb@lem.monster avatar

The way I remember "discovery" working on Napster was when someone incorrectly labeled unrelated music as by an artist you searched for. Wow, new music!

Garbanzo ,

Once you found the song and started downloading it you had plenty of time to browse the rest of the library of the person you were downloading from. That could lead to finding stuff you never heard of that you would like. The only catch was that you couldn't listen to it immediately, but you could Google what you found to get an idea of what it was and go from there.

deranger , (edited )

Google was not really popular in 99-01, nor did modems have the bandwidth to do two things at once effectively. How would you “get an idea”? Streaming audio barely existed outside of some RealPlayer things.

If your comment was about Kazaa, I’d agree. It’s about Napster which puts it about 5 years off imo.

Garbanzo ,

Nah, Google was a thing by the time Napster was around. If you were hip enough to know about one you probably knew about the other. You'd get an idea by figuring out what genre the artist was, reading reviews, just seeing where discussion was taking place. Not by listening to it, you'd have to queue it up to download and wait while hoping your source didn't go offline before it downloaded. And yes, even at 56k you could load and read text while downloading MP3s, it was just slow.

deranger , (edited )

I dunno, I was active in piracy at this time and many, many more people knew about Napster than Google. Napster was news worthy in 1999; Google was not. Google is much more of a 00s phenomenon. You’ve got 9/11 between the two. Napster happened before all that.

It could be all in how I used it, but I’d herald the beginning of discovery right there with the widespread availability of 5Mbps cable broadband in the US, so early 00s, right there with the rise of Google. Napster is a bit early for that IMO. I understand you could but most people didn’t as 56k speeds really limited discovery by library browsing, not to mention poor tagging / file name etiquette.

By the time DC++ had risen in popularity, around 03-04, this was prime time library browsing piracy times.

Eh, whether or not we agree or disagree, it was fun to recall the early days of my journey. Have a good one.

HipHoboHarold ,

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.

Wasabi ,

Just a small tip with yt music if you are not aware, you can upload your own mp3s (50k files iirc).
It's the main reason I use it since so much dnb is missing from all the streaming platforms.

HipHoboHarold ,

Oh shit. I didn't know that. Might be able to get some other albums on there then. Thanks for the heads up.

Wasabi ,

No problems, it's the only reason I stuck to yt music when Google play music died.

v4ld1z ,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

What DnB artists/tracks are we talking about here?

Wasabi ,

A large portion of the metalheadz back catalogue is missing, and also an absolute shitload of jungle is absent

v4ld1z ,
@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip avatar

I also thought that jungle was a tad lacking on Spotify, but overall, I've been happy with it thus far. Definitely enough to not have to listen to the same 5-10 songs on repeat lol

anarchy79 ,
@anarchy79@lemmy.world avatar

It's a whole torrent of alternatives, that's for sure.

jack , (edited )
@jack@water.house avatar

@HipHoboHarold @flintheart_glomgold

Yes, I have noticed a trend of homelab hobbyists going back to something like this:

  1. Soulseek -> Nicotine+ for plentiful, lossless content
  2. Jellyfin for self-hosting
  3. Infuse for streaming the content remotely to save storage on your phone.

I don't endorse piracy for ethical reasons, but I get why this is trending up:
-Increasingly aggressive pricing models
-Service quality and content accessibility going down

Really makes it hard for consumers...

SnotFlickerman ,
@SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone avatar

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.

BustinJiber ,

And Bandcamp Friday is today.

CosmicTurtle ,

For those who are unfamiliar with both Bandcamp and Bandcamp Friday, can you ELI5?

otterpop ,

You can buy music without DRM on Bandcamp, and on Bandcamp Friday a larger share goes directly to the creator. It's a great way to support your favorite artists.

deranger ,

They waive the 20% fee on bandcamp friday, all money goes to the artist.

BustinJiber ,

isitbandcampfriday.com

Fluid ,
@Fluid@aussie.zone avatar

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.

archchan ,
@archchan@lemmy.ml avatar

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

Fluid ,
@Fluid@aussie.zone avatar

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.

anivia ,

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

zarkony ,

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.

Black_Gulaman ,
@Black_Gulaman@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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.

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

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.

Limit ,

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..

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

Qobuz ... check it out

Emerald ,

how does qobuz pay artists? does it much at all?

Dark_Arc ,
@Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg avatar

For streaming they pay out the most of anybody last I checked.

For DRM free purchases I'm not sure, but it's almost certain the lions share goes to the record labels and then goes to the artist (or directly to the artist if there's no "record label").

Trollception ,

"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.

altec ,

For music, I think yes. For other forms of media, not so much.

Lifter ,

Music is getting worse though. Spotify is bloating all searches with stuff you don't want. The "Artist top songs" is rarely the most popular songs and is limited to 10 song. In the beginning you could list all the songs from an artist and sort it on "Plays".

baseless_discourse , (edited )

Spotify needs to connect to network to play songs, and there is no option to not play on metered network. So I sometime would play songs that Spotify mysteriously deleted from downloads, and lose a month of data.

Now, I mostly get my music from bandcamp and only listen to couple classical album on spotify, since there is no good place to buy them.

The day that Spotify pull a Netflix on their family plan is the day I leave Spotify.

aesthelete ,

I’m willing to say that this is probably true for most, but not for all.

If you run your own music streaming server, in some cases it’s better than streaming services.

This isn’t sour grapes either. I had Google music for a couple of years, and I currently have a ninety day trial of Spotify unlimited…these services might be better for most, but if you care about the things I do they’re worse.

I haven’t really even used my Spotify trial because my streaming setup is so much better in a variety of ways.

All that said, I’m an album listener, an older cat, and borderline music obsessive. I’m likely a dying breed. But I find music streaming services much worse.

I honestly think it's much easier to have a catalog of music than, for instance, TV shows. I listen to the same albums over and over again, but I'm not nearly as keen on rewatching the same shows or watching the same movie more than even once.

gian ,

I would not be so sure about that.

hushable ,

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

Potatisen ,

All of those things are 100% legitimate criticisms, I want to add that the UX experience has become more and more horrible. They've regressed terribly in most aspects of their apps, wether PC or Mobile. Absolutely unbelievable, this is the thing I see from Google search where marketing takes over from engineering/customer needs/market reality/I don't know what. Stop shoving shit into the services. You beat piracy for a minute, you can keep that lead, you're slowly losing it.

Honestly, if this was any other product this would be unacceptable. It'd be like all books went back to only black and white, all movies were only 480p, all music was only mono.

AlexWIWA ,

They keep trying to reinvent the library UI, as does Apple. But neither will ever be able to top the way the iOS music app was organized, pre-Apple-music. Every attempt to innovate has been worse

hushable ,

The fact that they changed the default library view from playlists to a random mix of playlist, artists, albums and podcasts without the option to choose just one category is baffling. I'm all for user options, but not by taking user choice away

Speculater ,
@Speculater@lemmy.world avatar

Like making it impossible to just "play all songs" of a given artist. Seems like it would be simple.

ramblinguy ,

At first I was confused about the books comment, since most books are just black text on white paper, but then I realized you were probably including comic books and manga in that too (and probably textbooks that include a lot of graphics)

dinckelman ,

I'm paying for a family plan, for my family and two friends. The day this plan goes away, or they actively prevent sharing like this, I'm done paying for music. All alternative services are considerably more expensive, and also have a much more limited library. My favorite artists get less than pennies on a dollar from this anyway. No wonder they have to sell 85$ hoodies at concerts

IrateAnteater ,

And if you have a poor internet connection, the app is near unusable

This is an issue I've been noticing across more and more apps and operating systems. It seems like there's no developers out there even willing to consider how their software operates under non-ideal conditions.

theneverfox ,

It's not developers, it's management. We know how to make it better, but that's extra complexity. Meaning extra developer time (higher cost and longer turn around) to better support a small fraction of normal use, added on every time that part of the system is changed

It's more profitable and faster to say "forget those users" now that they're a smaller and smaller part of the customer base

nullPointer ,

I got caught in a crazy loop of Spotify resetting my password once a week. they offered no help except telling me my 40 char generated password was not secure enough. so I cancelled and deleted the account. the seas are a much more friendly place.

Jknaraa ,

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

banneryear1868 ,

Always has been

Underwaterbob ,

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!

EngineerGaming ,
@EngineerGaming@feddit.nl avatar

I lost mine several times - I didn't always use to have backups. Two were on MP3 players that stopped working. One was on an old smartphone, which worked but which I just didn't bother copying most of the data from. Once I just wiped it accidentally. In hindsight - I don't mind, that would've got cleaned up anyway.

Underwaterbob ,

I kinda wish I'd lost mine once or twice.

Rawdogthatexe ,

Every few years I just create a new folder of the artists that I actively listen to and keep the older stuff out of my library but still in storage.

Underwaterbob ,

Sounds better than my method of having the first ten-fifteen years of collecting arranged neatly by artist names in folders labeled alphabetically followed by a few different folders labeled by the year I downloaded (not the year of release), a few genre folders, and a a few, uhh, folders sorted by how I acquired the music torrented or through Soulseekqt. Yeah, mine is a complete mess. Pulsar player for Android makes it incredibly easy to sort through stuff anyway. I did conveniently fail to put a lot of the stuff I rarely listen to on my current phone anyway. I'm not too egregiously awful. I do at least listen to everything I download at least once or twice. I had a friend in the 00s who just downloaded everything whether he listened or not. Yeah, I'll keep comparing myself to his 20+ year old standard of digital hording.

Qvest ,

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

WHYAREWEALLCAPS ,

I get your anger, but if they no longer have the license to play the song, they cannot allow you to play it, even if the file is on your device. I don't find it scummy in the least. You didn't own the file, you were renting it from Spotify.

AnAngryAlpaca ,

Yeah, I get what you are saying, but then it's imho dishonest Marketing, and the user expected something different when they signed up for the paid service. I think "renting" movies, tv shows or music is not something the user expects.

If they would advertise it as "pay us 20 Dollarinos a month, and you can listen to your favorite music for as long as we allow it and don't take it away from you!" they surely would never be popular...

Halcyon ,
@Halcyon@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

But that's what they advertise. Everybody knows that streaming music from Spotify doesn't mean owning the music there.

AnAngryAlpaca ,

Well if i would ask my boomer-parents or non-technical people, they would tell me that spotify is just like collecting CDs, and that you keep the stuff you paid for.

yamanii ,
@yamanii@lemmy.world avatar

Whatever you say lawyer, now he's a pirate, nobody cares about the technicality.

Qvest ,

That's fair, but at least they could say something like "you can download our songs for as long as we allow it" and not "you can download your favourite songs and listen to them any time, anywhere" when that is only partially true, since, if someone has a playlist downloaded (still talking about personal experience) and they go offline for a long period of time, they can no longer play the songs and are required to get an internet connection only for spotify to audit and say "yeah you still have a valid subscription, you can still listen offline". It's not truly offline if I have to connect to the internet every once in a while.

Again, it's completely fair, but they could at least tell more than half-truths

LSNLDN ,

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

Prethoryn , (edited )
@Prethoryn@lemmy.world avatar

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.

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