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 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?
I don't listen to nearly as much music these days, YouTube music is so ass, I really miss gpm. YouTube can't even get notifications right, like I get a notification that a band I like released a new album or something so I tap it........ and it just fuckin opens the home page of the app??? EVERY SINGLE TIME. How do you fuck up even the most basic feature of the notifications?!?!
The "radio" always brings me back to the same shit that's playing on the actual radio, regardless of me playing the radio based off of bluegrass or fuckin clown techno idfk it will play imagine dragons and blinding lights shit eventually, guaranteed. The algorithms are actually dumpster fires.
Probably around 60% of the roughly 20,000 songs I uploaded (I think that was the limit) didn't get transferred over and are just gone. Thanks Google.
Also even though the notifications don't work, it is nice to know when your favorite artists release something new. Gpm was great about this, ytm seems to think I want the hottest vevo shit
Also who the fuck ever thought it was a good idea to use the music video versions for songs instead of the song version, when we're in the music app, should be fired into the sun. They're probably the same person that originally synced your video and music "histories," skewing your YouTube algorithm entirely so your homepage would suggest nothing but music videos
Seriously, what a shitshow of an app, but that's where most of Google is headed these days
Agreed, this is infuriating. I'm in the music app, searching for a piece of music by it's exact name and artist, and I know that it's available on YouTube Music.
Here's a lyric video uploaded to some random asshole's YouTube channel. Or maybe you want this awful cover version from this other asshole on YouTube. Oh, my mistake, you wanted it as performed by the actual band? That you included in your search? How about this phone camera recording of a live show.
It's compete garbage. Made even worse when you're searching by voice command while driving and can't just quickly correct bad results by looking through the list yourself.
I still use YTM (don't judge me 😛) and it actually defaults to the audio version instead of the video version. They just give you an option to switch to video if you wanted to.
I still use it because I will not give Spotify money, and Apple Music is SUPER Caucasian and repetitive, I still like YTM the best, but it is way shitty. I hate the video function.
The fun part is, before it was Google play music it was another service by another company that I can't even remember now. Google bought it, then fiddled with it for a few years before shit canning it.
I miss the original app, it was wonderful for just throwing music on based on your mood.
I think what you're describing is Songza and it was great as a service. 8Tracks has been pretty decent as well.
I just always figured they canned it once they bought YouTube and started YouTube Music. I never got into Google Play music, but I use YouTube music, and it don't do everything I am seeing Google play music did.
I remember that app! Can't think of the name.
But it is a good example of inconvenience. One day they decided well, we're closing shop. And that made it pretty clear for users that they didn't own the music.
Google lets you download your music files that you previously uploaded. The method isn't intuitive but it's not difficult. I don't know if the option is still offered but I would guess it is since they still have YouTube Music.
I used to have a big CD collection. Ripped it all off the CDs and uploaded the files to GPM. I was able to download it all.
It is still available. My collection of some 20,000 digital vinyl tracks are streamable for me. Google is evil, but that is nice.
I bought a lot of music through Artist Hub. It kind of was the best of both worlds for me, I'd try an album streaming, love it and buy it.
I never liked suggestions/radios on any streaming platform - GPM, Apple, Deezer, Spotify, they're all shit.
I use streaming platforms solely for checking out new music that picked my interest on sites like RYM, albumoftheyear, anydecentmusic, Quietus, Picthfork, etc. If I like what I hear, I acquire it either on Bandcamp or on Soulseek and into Plex it goes.
Sad about what happened to Pitchfork.
what happened to pitchfork?
Got sold to GQ and it's assumed that'll kill it off.
Ahh got it. I don't use it as regularly as I did 10-20 years ago but I'd still miss it being around.
Have you used Jamendo radios?
No, I don't think so. Should I? I have a vague memory about seeing Jamendo in Rhythmbox when it shipped in Ubuntu by default. It was a long time ago, I didn't even know it was still a thing.
It still works. No famous groups in there but it works.
I used to use Google Play music back in the day. It was also nice to upload your own music and then be able to stream it anywhere.
Now I use Plex with Plexamp which works almost as well.
Plex is not great for privacy or ownership these days. Jellyfin or Kodi are much better.
Does their music player compare to Plexamp at all?
Best alternative to plexamp I've found is Symfonium. It supports plex, jellyfin, subsonic and possibly others.
Oh my god you've literally just recommended me a dream app. PlexAmp has so many annoying usability issues and symfonium seems to have solved all of them, I can't thank you enough.
Just what I've been looking for, it supports offline playing!
Thanks!
And to buy music!
I liked the fact that I could take my Google survey money and buy albums on that service. It's pretty irksome that they cancelled it.
Loved that part! I bought many records that way. And when we went to YouTube music one of the records I bought disappeared from my uploaded music too.
Yeah, that's why I made sure to download every single album I bought. Digital rights are a joke.
Not exactly Google Music, but I recently started working on a Funkwhale instance where people can have up to 250GB of space for their personal music collection and where I am planning to have a store front for musicians who'd like to sell/promote their own songs as well. 29€/year if you go to https://communick.com/packages/access. Sounds reasonable?
It does but I can't seem to get into Funkwhale, I've tried a few times!
The app doesn't allow me to login.
What do you mean? Are you talking about the software in general or that can't login into my instance specifically?