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.
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 🤷🏻♂️
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.
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! 😂
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.
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.
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
I mean, you just have to learn everything mp3 formats and go pass the What.cd test and you're good.
What.cd shut down almost a decade ago.
Getting back to CDs after about 10 year hiatus.
Discogs is usually very neat.
Are there standard naming conventions for movies and TV? Where?
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.
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.
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
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
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
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"
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.
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.
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
"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.
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).
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.
Oh fuck my hip, 90s is old now?
I died inside when I saw stuff I listened to in high school on “classic rock” playlists.
Wait until it hits "soft rock."
I died when I saw my old video game console in a museum.
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.