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Music Piracy Is Back, Baby (gizmodo.com)

submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by flintheart_glomgold to c/technology

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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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[–] XeroxCool 3 points 10 months ago

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