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Do people really pirate music much anymore? It feels that Spotify and similar services won over piracy except in a few edge cases.
by cc81 7y ago
Do people really pirate music much anymore? It feels that Spotify and similar services won over piracy except in a few edge cases.
- mruts 7y agoIf you deeply care about music and are an audiophile you do. I was on what.cd before it closed are really appreciated being able to get flac rips of original release vinyl, sometimes dating back 60-70 years. Example first pressings I have in flac: velvet underground, the doors, led zeppelin, etc
- TylerE 7y agoEh, you can stream Flac from Tidal and their catalog is basically as big as Spotify.
- mruts 7y agoSpotify’s collection is nowhere close to what what.cd used to have before it got shutdown.
- crtasm 7y agoI've heard there are multiple successors e.g. https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html https://interviewfor.red/en/index.html
- turrini 7y agoSometimes these streams aren't available due to contract changes
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- handedness 7y agoWhich is often audibly watermarked: https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermark https://www.mattmontag.com/music/universals-audible-watermar...
- mustacheemperor 7y agoLike Spotify, is their catalog often arbitrarily populated with whatever the most recent remaster is, or some other random release? There is value to having a lossless rip of a specific pressing of a given album. Especially with the case of albums that were mangled with limiters etc during their "remasters."
- whenchamenia 7y agoThe number of albums I cannot find un-remastered is infuriating. I want the version I remember, not this years overcompressed mixing style squashing the dynamics while the singer autotunes out those 'bad notes'.
- xvector 7y ago> If you deeply care about music and are an audiophile you do FLAC has no benefit over traditional 16/24 encoded content. https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/Digital_Show_and_Tell https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/Digital_Show_and_Tell.
- sneak 7y ago.Zip also has no benefit over .exe, .dmg none over .app. It’s just a codec. It makes it smaller. Unless you mean “lossy” by “traditional”, in which case, yes, lossless codecs have a lot of benefit over lossy ones. A perfect example is when sampling or beatmixing; if the final product will be played on youtube or streamed on digital radio or compressed lossily in any form, you will have incurred two lossy compression steps if your source material is lossy. This is akin to subsequent generations of dubbing analog media; the quality degrades quickly with each generation.
- bscphil 7y ago>FLAC has no benefit over traditional 16/24 encoded content. You seem to have misunderstood FLAC with the sample rate / bit depth of a file. The vast majority of FLAC files are regular old 16 bit 44.1 kHz, and nobody is claiming that 24 bit 192 kHz (or whatever) files are better. FLAC is a codec: simply a way to take all the audio on a CD and have it preserved indefinitely, without "generational" loss (where a mp3 is encoded from another mp3, and so on).
- xvector 7y agoYou're totally right. Complete brain blank. I don't know what I was thinking - think I subconsciously mixed my frustration over Tidal's 192/24 marketing with the concept of FLAC.
- mo5 7y agowill be a flac version of a track sound better than a mp3 that was converted from a m4a ? or am I just missing the whole point of FLAC.
- 7y ago
- soulofmischief 7y agoHave you not been able to gain access to what's successors?
- mruts 7y agoI do, but on what.cd I had 2TB of upload buffer. I'm in the process of building up my ratio with a seedbox on redacted.ch.
- soulofmischief 7y agoGlad to hear it. There's still a lot to be done catching RED up to what's former glory so it won't be hard. Happy sailing.
- tudorconstantin 7y agoI personally am not a big music listener, but when I want music, I start YouTube and do it there, for free, with uBlok installed, which is the same thing. And that seems to work for artists and YouTube too. When I was a teenager (20 years ago), this wasn't possible and we torrented whole albums like hell. Some people got in jail back then, or had to pay huge fines for "unrealized profits", which was absurd.
- avip 7y agoIf ytdl-ing playlists is considered pirating - yep, for sure. Personally, I do it because youtube has the most complete, without any close competition, music collection (in varying quality).
- kinleyd 7y agoPlaying music off youtube is now the norm in my circle. It's definitely going to dent sales. I don't like spotify and similar services, and try to buy my favorite music online if I can, but invariably am forced to torrents because it's hard to get where I am. I'm amazed the music and movie business is finding it so hard to adapt.
- CydeWeys 7y agoI tend to just listen to music on YouTube these days. For the most part, what I want to listen to is available on there, albeit probably not with the consent of the copyright holder. Does that count as piracy?
- theturtletalks 7y agoI mean this worked for a while, but many songs now are distorted or slowed down so they're not detected by Youtube copyright bots.
- CydeWeys 7y agoIt still works just fine for the kind of music I listen to, no distortion involved.
- cwkoss 7y ago"I for one prefer the dmca evasion remix..."
- userbinator 7y agoMany songs are sped up, and the discovery that this often has the effect of making them sound better than the original may have created a whole new "genre" of music --- nightcore. I've come across some very pleasing "nightcore'd" songs, and listened to the original, but still think the sped-up and higher-pitched version sounds better. It's an interesting psychological effect. ...and I've also noticed the content ID system still detects them, but they probably remain because the IP holders are content to monetise those videos and reap the profits rather than getting them taken down (and earning nothing.) That turns the question into "is adblocking piracy?" and that's a whole different can of worms...
- beenBoutIT 7y agoYoutube-dl can turn the YouTube videos into audio tracks for you, at least a few steps closer to piracy.
- 7y ago
- jforberg 7y agoSpotify did it right; they managed to put together a service that is actually better than piracy in the ways that matter to a typical consumer. The movie and TV industry have instead put great effort into building services that are significantly worse than piracy. And nobody can understand why movie piracy is still rampant, while music piracy is receding.
- Nition 7y agoThere still isn't a movie streaming service with as much selection as an old video store. Meanwhile Spotify has just about everything.
- pmtarantino 7y agoThe problem for me isn't the old ones - is the new ones. I want to see the new movies at my house. Yeah, there are films that I'd like to see at the cinema, but those are less than 5 per year. But if I could pay to watch a new film in the comfort of my home, I'd do it. As I can't, I'll probably download it for free.
- nine_k 7y agoWould you pay for it as much as a movie ticket costs? The movie industry goal is to improve box office, not your experience, but these two are linked.
- chupasaurus 7y agoSame thing was with music industry and guess what? Their revenue from streaming is way lower.
- lagadu 7y agoAt this point is feels like their goal is to get me to pirate as much as possible, lets see my anecdotal data point: Music - Tidal covers about >95% of my music consumption. TV shows - I have netflix and and prime, these cover maybe 75% of my tv consumption. Films - Going to the cinema covers 10-20% maybe? I go to the cinema about 5-10 times a year and I pirate the rest because I don't have a good enough service to get those from legally.
- rodolphoarruda 7y agoI do pirate movies. Old ones I can't find in any vendor, e.g. old Woody Allen movies. I also realized that some titles do exist in vendor's catalog, but are not available in my region for some reason.
- xfitm3 7y agoYes. Lots.
- o10449366 7y agoNot since what.cd was killed.
- ngcc_hk 7y agoPay for the hbo mobile version but can’t watch GoT you know. I think music well pass the stage - got both itune music and spotify. But what they should do is to have a non-Priatebay p2p services. Would pay. Really. Have paid in fact. just the broadcasting model is not working. Many got GBit network at home. Cover those first. Not give them dark screen is a good start. P2P
- flukus 7y agoYes, pirated music doesn't waste mobile bandwidth, doesn't get interrupted when I lose my mobile collection, is much quicker to copy between devices, integrates better with music from local artists and gives me many much better music players to choose from.
- beanland 7y agoMost streaming services let you download the media to save on bandwidth. My entire music library on Spotify is downloaded so I don't have to worry about connectivity issues. You can do similar things with Netflix. It's also easier for me to move to different devices, because all I have to do is sign into Spotify. Manually transferring songs like I used to with an iPod is something I don't want to have to go back to.
- flukus 7y agoI can't speak for spotify, but last time I tried with google music the player still used a lot of bandwidth for whatever reason when playing only cached songs. There were also bugs like pressing next twice in quick succession having non-deterministic behavior, possibly due to network requests. > Manually transferring songs like I used to with an iPod is something I don't want to have to go back to. A minor price to pay for not being tethered to an inferior proprietary music player.
- dmitriid 7y ago> the player still used a lot of bandwidth for whatever reason when playing only cached songs Reporting listening statistics for royalty payouts.
- soulofmischief 7y agoBuying a t-shirt gives more money to an artist than several years' worth of you streaming their music online. Spotify started off great but is now a total ripoff to artists since it got in bed with the major labels, trading stock for a larger cut of ad and subscription revenue. You aren't any better for using Spotify and not torrenting. Make sure to support your favorite artists when they perform near you, and buy merch. Support small-time and local artists. That is the best thing you can do for the music industry.
- JudgeWapner 7y agoI have terabytes of pirated music....that I hardly ever listen to because it's too much work to load up the player and find something to play. I much prefer google play, with their algorithms for finding new music for me, instead of me having to hunt for it. Looking at multi-terabyte directories and trying to decide what to listen to is just overwhelming. Google Play has introduced me to several new artists and a couple entire genre's of music that I would have never otherwise found, and $15/mo is well worth it.
- PorterDuff 7y agoIt's funny how quantity has a lack of quality all it's own. My own take for getting surprised is to check out (usually) European jazz radio stations on internet radio.
- JudgeWapner 7y agoexactly. Before I had google play I'd end up playing from the same set or leaving off with the same directory that I had listened to before. I'm also a fan of XM radio because while driving it's too much work to pull up the phone and start a playlist, and to an extent I do like the (one-sided) human "contact" of having the DJ announce the songs and make occasional chatter (even if I begrudgingly complain about it sometimes). I tried Radio Garden [1] but found myself still listening to top-40 adult contemporary crap. [1] https://radio.garden/ https://radio.garden/
- kinleyd 7y agoIt's a pain if it isn't organized well. When it is organized well, it's the best. I have mpd+emms set up with an always on emms playlist window and dedicated dired window for my music collection. I can't say the same for my book collection though. I tried calibre but didn't like it. Been experimenting with some custom scripts that work but are in dire need of indexing and optimization.
- rlue 7y agoRun a Plex server, and you can stream your own library of music from anywhere (one-time $5 purchase for your mobile app). Of course, this doesn't solve the issue of recommendations, but I personally see discovery and collection as two different roles which can be filled by two different models/services.
- whenchamenia 7y agoAs an artist, who collects royalties, go on and torrent it. We see virtually nothing from the likes of spotify thanks to backroom deals selling us out. Come see the show, buy merch, the music is for better or worse, free.
- dmitriid 7y ago> We see virtually nothing from the likes of spotify thanks to backroom deals selling us out. Blame your publishers and companies you sell your rights to: Warner Music, Sony etc. They demand up to 70% of revenue from “the likes of Spotify” in royalties.
- fruffy 7y agoI have a Spotify subscription but still download music because I prefer owning a library instead of just renting it. However, pirating is becoming harder and harder. Because of Spotify and other service participaton in piracy has declined substantially. File hosting is almost gone, all I see is dead links. What.cd, the greatest archive in the world has been taken down, such a pity. I think a lot of people have moved to soulseek or rutracker, but in general the Internet seems to be cleaning up.
- munmaek 7y agoOnly for tracks and albums I like very much, that I would be very sad if they were go to away. Spotify just makes it so easy– click on "offline download", boom, done.