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Music Piracy Is Back, Baby (gizmodo.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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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[–] veng 8 points 9 months ago (2 children)

The main issue to solve is kids not having access to a computer at home, whether it be lack of incentive or money. Most people don't even own a laptop anymore, so the only computer time they get is in a school setting.

Once the majority of schools have a system in place for most homework to be done on a PC, then there may be some creative ways to incentivise more PC adoption... again. It's like we've gone back to the early 90s again where only kids who were really interested in computing knew anything about it.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I think the solutions comes not from adopting older tech, but making newer tech fairer and freer. As in not locking down phones and tablets as much as they do.

Because eventually the form factor of mobiles will replace say laptops and PCs, but they are essentially just regular computers but limited on purpose to be dumber and less open. Android is Linux ffs!

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago (2 children)

What do they have if not a laptop? How would they even do homework? What about coursework at uni? Applying for jobs?

[–] veng 7 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

iPad / tablet, and applying for jobs can easily be done on a phone. My wife works at a high school - half the kids can't even use a mouse properly,and don't understand minimizing a window etc.

She had to teach someone what the enter button did yesterday..... They were using space bar to get to a new line. I shit you not.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

My school has a program where they lend students laptops free of charge, along with 13gb of data to use with. The generosity is kind of abused at times, but it's still really nice to have.