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I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobb

I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. I can see how it would be a fun hobby to curate your own collection, but for me it's really hard to beat services like Spotify, Steam, Netflix - DRM or not.

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago
I like Netflix and Spotify, but dislike Steam. I just find it different to rent me content transparently, eg Netflix and Spotify, versus rent-by-pretending-to-sell, eg Steam. If you sell me something, I should be able to use and transfer it at my discretion without your permission. Steam, instead, leases you something on no fixed term and presumably without any guaranteed lifetime.
- SteveNuts 10y ago
  Yeah I prefer the GOG model, if something ever happened to my Steam library I'd probably revert back to curating my own DRM free library. I'd be inconsolable for a few days though.
- shmerl 10y ago
  I don't see why music should be different than games in regards to DRM-free.
  - detaro 10y ago
    The parent doesn't seem to say that they should be different, just that they don't want DRM in "buy" models.
- guitarbill 10y ago
  By the time Steam goes out of business, several things might have happened: * I'll have stopped gaming * Most games need emulating because they won't run on our hardware in the future * The games are dirt cheap to buy on GOG * Someone will release a pirated collection most of them So I'm not too worried about my personal Steam collection. Preservation, that's a different story...
  - generj 10y ago
    Steam has also promised that they have emergency de-DRM code they can execute if the company ever goes bust.
- Freak_NL 10y ago
  Interesting. For me Netflix and Steam are completely acceptable(ish), but Spotify is right out. With Netflix the backlog situation (region blocks, limited catalogue) is pretty dismal, but with Netflix at least I know that a good part of my money goes to creating content. With Steam most of the money ends up with the developers, again supporting content creation. I do buy games if, and only if, I find the price is right for playing the game once (or for a couple of weeks, depending on the type of game). If my Steam library is still accessible in ten years time than that is an added bonus. I do admit that a lot of the games I buy come with a Steam key, but are purchased from DRM-free stores (e.g., Humble Store). But music is a completely different beast. If I like a song or an album, then there is a good chance that I will listen to it periodically for a good deal of my life. I buy music for keeps. With Spotify my money doesn't end with the content creators themselves for the most part, and I don't get to keep the music. It just doesn't work for me.
shmerl 10y ago
I buy in stores like Bandcamp which sell FLAC, and then encode in Opus for playback. Also, prospects of your collection evaporating because DRMed service could suddenly close down tomorrow don't sound good. Convenience or not, I prefer to back up what I paid for.
- pyromine 10y ago
  Talk about the freedoms you care about as much as you want, but at the end of the day the people who care about those things are such a small minority it has virtually no effect on the greater market. Yah there's enough of you to support some niche stores, but it's great this works for you, but it doesn't matter for most consumers.
  - shmerl 10y ago
    Small or not, Bandcamp noted gradual growth. Enough people care about it to make it work.
- SteveNuts 10y ago
  > DRMed service could suddenly close down tomorrow don't sound good I'm not worried about that - it's not my collection, it's Spotify's. I'm merely paying for the unlimited consumption of their collection on demand, not to purchase the songs and have them for life. It'd be a different story if I expected the songs I listen to on Spotify to be available forever, but I don't, and that's not what I'm paying for.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    You don't expect to be able to listen to the songs forever? Fair enough; I mean, you can always take another subscription service if Spotify would go out of business. But I've been there. When Grooveshark quit -- I was a paying member and had no up-front notice -- I lost my complete library. I've looked into making a back-up before and figured out some technical requirements for that (e.g. I cracked the "encrypted" cached files) but never really got around to it. A list of which songs were in my library and playlists would have been all I needed, but I had no such thing. Spotify doesn't offer this either. Like with Grooveshark, you can find technical ways of getting around it, but they're not jumping at the opportunity to provide a JSON export that you can import into another music service. The other side of the coin is that not all music is available. Even now on Spotify, if you enable "show unplayable songs" there are a lot that turn unavailable every month. I don't want to think of which part will not be available at a competitor's. For all these reasons, I agree with the person you're replying to. But I made the same decision as you -- i.e. I use and pay for Spotify -- because those indie stores just don't have enough music by a long shot to make it worth the trouble. Ideally it would be that way, though.
techsupporter 10y ago
> I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. This is what I do. I use Spotify as an on-demand radio. If I like an artist or album, I buy it in physical form. (Usually on record because why not? And it often comes with a download code.)
thirdsun 10y ago
I get that, but I think that convenience comes with a price: Missin gout on great music. Now or in the future. While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that. Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.
- Eridrus 10y ago
  I used to care about this, but I've come to believe music is somewhat fungible for many people. If you're really into music you probably disagree, but in the 5 years I've paid for Spotify, the fact that some artists/albums have been missing hasn't really been a big deal for me. The fact that lots of people listen(ed) to the radio is further evidence of this.
  - thirdsun 10y ago
    Sure, I understand that. Spotify is an excellent and criminally cheap solution for most people. I don't think it's good for artists, but that's another discussion. I just wanted to describe my point of view and as passionate music lover and collector Spotify alone wouldn't work at all for me. It's just too much music missing there, but that includes hard to find, rare stuff, vinyl-only releases and niche genres.
    - Eridrus 10y ago
      They're great value, but I'm not really convinced that they're bad from a total revenue perspective for artists: http://www.recode.net/2014/3/18/11624668/the-price-of-music http://www.recode.net/2014/3/18/11624668/the-price-of-music And digital has much lower distribution costs than CDs; you don't need to pay for physical CDs to be made, you don't need to pay for shipping, you don't need to deal with retail's huge markup. And on top of that Spotify's paying customers are paying 2-3x what average CD buyers were paying. There might be issues with the split of revenue between artists and studios or super popular artists vs long tail artists, but the actual revenue going to music license holders seems to be very healthy.
tomc1985 10y ago
That's would be great and all if Spotify had decent coverage of underground music scenes... but they don't. Still better to collect oneself. There's still a lot of stuff you can find on Beatport that you can't find on Spotify, for example, and most of the hipsters wouldn't even call Beatport "underground"

SomeStupidPoint 10y ago

I like Netflix and Spotify, but dislike Steam. I just find it different to rent me content transparently, eg Netflix and Spotify, versus rent-by-pretending-to-sell, eg Steam. If you sell me something, I should be able to use and transfer it at my discretion without your permission. Steam, instead, leases you something on no fixed term and presumably without any guaranteed lifetime.

SteveNuts 10y ago
Yeah I prefer the GOG model, if something ever happened to my Steam library I'd probably revert back to curating my own DRM free library. I'd be inconsolable for a few days though.
shmerl 10y ago
I don't see why music should be different than games in regards to DRM-free.
- detaro 10y ago
  The parent doesn't seem to say that they should be different, just that they don't want DRM in "buy" models.
guitarbill 10y ago
By the time Steam goes out of business, several things might have happened: * I'll have stopped gaming * Most games need emulating because they won't run on our hardware in the future * The games are dirt cheap to buy on GOG * Someone will release a pirated collection most of them So I'm not too worried about my personal Steam collection. Preservation, that's a different story...
- generj 10y ago
  Steam has also promised that they have emergency de-DRM code they can execute if the company ever goes bust.
Freak_NL 10y ago
Interesting. For me Netflix and Steam are completely acceptable(ish), but Spotify is right out. With Netflix the backlog situation (region blocks, limited catalogue) is pretty dismal, but with Netflix at least I know that a good part of my money goes to creating content. With Steam most of the money ends up with the developers, again supporting content creation. I do buy games if, and only if, I find the price is right for playing the game once (or for a couple of weeks, depending on the type of game). If my Steam library is still accessible in ten years time than that is an added bonus. I do admit that a lot of the games I buy come with a Steam key, but are purchased from DRM-free stores (e.g., Humble Store). But music is a completely different beast. If I like a song or an album, then there is a good chance that I will listen to it periodically for a good deal of my life. I buy music for keeps. With Spotify my money doesn't end with the content creators themselves for the most part, and I don't get to keep the music. It just doesn't work for me.

shmerl 10y ago

I buy in stores like Bandcamp which sell FLAC, and then encode in Opus for playback. Also, prospects of your collection evaporating because DRMed service could suddenly close down tomorrow don't sound good. Convenience or not, I prefer to back up what I paid for.

pyromine 10y ago
Talk about the freedoms you care about as much as you want, but at the end of the day the people who care about those things are such a small minority it has virtually no effect on the greater market. Yah there's enough of you to support some niche stores, but it's great this works for you, but it doesn't matter for most consumers.
- shmerl 10y ago
  Small or not, Bandcamp noted gradual growth. Enough people care about it to make it work.
SteveNuts 10y ago
> DRMed service could suddenly close down tomorrow don't sound good I'm not worried about that - it's not my collection, it's Spotify's. I'm merely paying for the unlimited consumption of their collection on demand, not to purchase the songs and have them for life. It'd be a different story if I expected the songs I listen to on Spotify to be available forever, but I don't, and that's not what I'm paying for.
- lucb1e 10y ago
  You don't expect to be able to listen to the songs forever? Fair enough; I mean, you can always take another subscription service if Spotify would go out of business. But I've been there. When Grooveshark quit -- I was a paying member and had no up-front notice -- I lost my complete library. I've looked into making a back-up before and figured out some technical requirements for that (e.g. I cracked the "encrypted" cached files) but never really got around to it. A list of which songs were in my library and playlists would have been all I needed, but I had no such thing. Spotify doesn't offer this either. Like with Grooveshark, you can find technical ways of getting around it, but they're not jumping at the opportunity to provide a JSON export that you can import into another music service. The other side of the coin is that not all music is available. Even now on Spotify, if you enable "show unplayable songs" there are a lot that turn unavailable every month. I don't want to think of which part will not be available at a competitor's. For all these reasons, I agree with the person you're replying to. But I made the same decision as you -- i.e. I use and pay for Spotify -- because those indie stores just don't have enough music by a long shot to make it worth the trouble. Ideally it would be that way, though.

techsupporter 10y ago

> I prefer the convenience of having access to an effectively unlimited music library, on demand, for a flat cost per month. This is what I do. I use Spotify as an on-demand radio. If I like an artist or album, I buy it in physical form. (Usually on record because why not? And it often comes with a download code.)

thirdsun 10y ago

I get that, but I think that convenience comes with a price: Missin gout on great music. Now or in the future. While I consider myself an enthusiast, I understand that people have different priorities and for many music may not be that important, but Spotify's library is anything but unlimited - there's just too much music not available on any streaming service. And more importantly you can lose access to music at any time - licensing deals end, labels and artists change their mind and suddenly your favorite album is gone. Netflix knows a thing or two about that. Renting music is not an option for me. While I use Spotify as a preview platform and for minor discovery (though it's mediocre for that), I prefer to buy and own my music losslessly.

Eridrus 10y ago
I used to care about this, but I've come to believe music is somewhat fungible for many people. If you're really into music you probably disagree, but in the 5 years I've paid for Spotify, the fact that some artists/albums have been missing hasn't really been a big deal for me. The fact that lots of people listen(ed) to the radio is further evidence of this.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  Sure, I understand that. Spotify is an excellent and criminally cheap solution for most people. I don't think it's good for artists, but that's another discussion. I just wanted to describe my point of view and as passionate music lover and collector Spotify alone wouldn't work at all for me. It's just too much music missing there, but that includes hard to find, rare stuff, vinyl-only releases and niche genres.
  - Eridrus 10y ago
    They're great value, but I'm not really convinced that they're bad from a total revenue perspective for artists: http://www.recode.net/2014/3/18/11624668/the-price-of-music http://www.recode.net/2014/3/18/11624668/the-price-of-music And digital has much lower distribution costs than CDs; you don't need to pay for physical CDs to be made, you don't need to pay for shipping, you don't need to deal with retail's huge markup. And on top of that Spotify's paying customers are paying 2-3x what average CD buyers were paying. There might be issues with the split of revenue between artists and studios or super popular artists vs long tail artists, but the actual revenue going to music license holders seems to be very healthy.

tomc1985 10y ago

That's would be great and all if Spotify had decent coverage of underground music scenes... but they don't. Still better to collect oneself. There's still a lot of stuff you can find on Beatport that you can't find on Spotify, for example, and most of the hipsters wouldn't even call Beatport "underground"