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> > Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy, which was inevitable too at the time > Spotify adopted the ec

> > Spotify basically killed any money coming from the physical distribution - Worse than piracy, which was inevitable too at the time > Spotify adopted the economics of piracy and stamped them with the false veneer of legitimacy. As a side note, in the beginning Spotify used pirated music off The Piratebay without asking for permission from the copyright holders.

pdntspa 3y ago
It was employees' personal MP3 collections that seeded their library, so while that statement is true it is a little disingenuous without further context There are lots of other examples of this happening too... I believe some of the early nintendo retro releases were emulators running pirated roms
- ben_w 3y ago
  > It was employees' personal MP3 collections that seeded their library, so while that statement is true it is a little disingenuous without further context If anything, that feels even worse. > I believe some of the early nintendo retro releases were emulators running pirated roms If Nintendo has a licence for the game that the ROM was an unlicensed pirate of, while that's weird, it doesn't seem fishy in the same way.
- digging 3y ago
  That is not at all better.
  - pdntspa 3y ago
    I don't understand how employees contributing their personal collections is somehow worse than company agents trolling torrent sites specifically to stream. Like, every nerd from the era has an mp3 collection. Mine is literally the only data that I have that's been around since I was 15 and survived multiple HD crashes. How are you going to get the streaming business up and running without some seed data? Are you also mad at Uber and Lyft?
    - digging 3y ago
      > Like, every nerd from the era has an mp3 collection. Yes, and much of it is pirated. We all know that. > How are you going to get the streaming business up and running without some seed data? Pay money for streaming rights, probably. You're suggesting the only way to start a streaming service is to do so illegally? > Are you also mad at Uber and Lyft? Yes
      - pdntspa 3y ago
        The music industry wasn't just handing out blanket streaming rights until Spotify showed up. All the other services of the era sucked -- their libraries were patchy and music streaming looked very much like TV streaming is today where every show lives under a different provider. It took freaking Apple to convince the music industry to allow single track sales and thats why we were in that state until the mid 2010's when Spotify came in and started to clean house. The music industry was not looking to break the stranglehold they had on CD sales. Someone had to come in with a 'shoot first ask questions later' attitude to get to where we are today. Uber and Lyft did what they did for the same reason -- the (oftentimes mafia-backed) taxi cartels had a monopoly on pricing and taxi medallions and the only realistic way to break that was to operate illegally. I think you will find that the law (and copyright) to be extremely overrated. Copyright, in particular, should not exist in its current form, especially with digital data that is not bound by the laws of physics or physicality, to say nothing of the various entities which have carved out most of the royalties that an artist can make for themselves.
        digging 3y ago
        I'm probably more on your side that you think WRT the law and copyright law but let's not pretend Spotify, Uber, and Lyft are doing some social good. They're greed-driven corporations (a bit redundant, but it's especially true for them). They may have partially broken up the walls around their particular industries, but not to democratize them, just to take ownership of whatever they can grab. And in doing so, each has failed to realize better solutions for people. Uber & Lyft have increased our dependence on wasteful, dangerous, expensive personal vehicles. Spotify is a worse model than Bandcamp for indie artists. It's also a worse model than pretty much every other streaming service in that it pays so little to artists. So, yeah I don't like it when rich people break the law to get more rich at society's expense. We should be breaking the law to make society better.
patwolf 3y ago
I used to purchase mp3s from Amazon, and there was one song that had a glitch in it, like it was a bad rip. I always wondered if they were using pirated copies as well. I just re-downloaded for fun and the glitch is still there.
- rightbyte 3y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me if e.g. people at Microsoft ran pirated copies of Office or whatever. Or like Photoshop at Adobe. Getting hold of licenses can be a nightmare, and Microsoft products more so in the past. Nowadays, every Microsoft license seems handled by some enterprise admin account.
  - dharmab 3y ago
    I can speak for Adobe- Adobe employees have work accounts with full access to the Adobe suite, an internal web portal to get annual free licenses for their personal accounts, and an internal web store to purchase heavily discounted licenses to gift to friends and family. No one within Adobe is pirating Photoshop. Anecdotally, I had a friend at Microsoft hook me up with discount Windows OEM licenses for my PC builds and it seemed similarly easy to get licenses.

pdntspa 3y ago

It was employees' personal MP3 collections that seeded their library, so while that statement is true it is a little disingenuous without further context There are lots of other examples of this happening too... I believe some of the early nintendo retro releases were emulators running pirated roms

ben_w 3y ago
> It was employees' personal MP3 collections that seeded their library, so while that statement is true it is a little disingenuous without further context If anything, that feels even worse. > I believe some of the early nintendo retro releases were emulators running pirated roms If Nintendo has a licence for the game that the ROM was an unlicensed pirate of, while that's weird, it doesn't seem fishy in the same way.
digging 3y ago
That is not at all better.
- pdntspa 3y ago
  I don't understand how employees contributing their personal collections is somehow worse than company agents trolling torrent sites specifically to stream. Like, every nerd from the era has an mp3 collection. Mine is literally the only data that I have that's been around since I was 15 and survived multiple HD crashes. How are you going to get the streaming business up and running without some seed data? Are you also mad at Uber and Lyft?
  - digging 3y ago
    > Like, every nerd from the era has an mp3 collection. Yes, and much of it is pirated. We all know that. > How are you going to get the streaming business up and running without some seed data? Pay money for streaming rights, probably. You're suggesting the only way to start a streaming service is to do so illegally? > Are you also mad at Uber and Lyft? Yes
    - pdntspa 3y ago
      The music industry wasn't just handing out blanket streaming rights until Spotify showed up. All the other services of the era sucked -- their libraries were patchy and music streaming looked very much like TV streaming is today where every show lives under a different provider. It took freaking Apple to convince the music industry to allow single track sales and thats why we were in that state until the mid 2010's when Spotify came in and started to clean house. The music industry was not looking to break the stranglehold they had on CD sales. Someone had to come in with a 'shoot first ask questions later' attitude to get to where we are today. Uber and Lyft did what they did for the same reason -- the (oftentimes mafia-backed) taxi cartels had a monopoly on pricing and taxi medallions and the only realistic way to break that was to operate illegally. I think you will find that the law (and copyright) to be extremely overrated. Copyright, in particular, should not exist in its current form, especially with digital data that is not bound by the laws of physics or physicality, to say nothing of the various entities which have carved out most of the royalties that an artist can make for themselves.
      - digging 3y ago
        I'm probably more on your side that you think WRT the law and copyright law but let's not pretend Spotify, Uber, and Lyft are doing some social good. They're greed-driven corporations (a bit redundant, but it's especially true for them). They may have partially broken up the walls around their particular industries, but not to democratize them, just to take ownership of whatever they can grab. And in doing so, each has failed to realize better solutions for people. Uber & Lyft have increased our dependence on wasteful, dangerous, expensive personal vehicles. Spotify is a worse model than Bandcamp for indie artists. It's also a worse model than pretty much every other streaming service in that it pays so little to artists. So, yeah I don't like it when rich people break the law to get more rich at society's expense. We should be breaking the law to make society better.

patwolf 3y ago

I used to purchase mp3s from Amazon, and there was one song that had a glitch in it, like it was a bad rip. I always wondered if they were using pirated copies as well. I just re-downloaded for fun and the glitch is still there.

rightbyte 3y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if e.g. people at Microsoft ran pirated copies of Office or whatever. Or like Photoshop at Adobe. Getting hold of licenses can be a nightmare, and Microsoft products more so in the past. Nowadays, every Microsoft license seems handled by some enterprise admin account.
- dharmab 3y ago
  I can speak for Adobe- Adobe employees have work accounts with full access to the Adobe suite, an internal web portal to get annual free licenses for their personal accounts, and an internal web store to purchase heavily discounted licenses to gift to friends and family. No one within Adobe is pirating Photoshop. Anecdotally, I had a friend at Microsoft hook me up with discount Windows OEM licenses for my PC builds and it seemed similarly easy to get licenses.