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The lengths that literal engineers will go to to not have to pay $10/mo for music or $3 to rent a movie in 4k immediately. Can't believe I have adult friends w

• znpy 3y ago
  To be honest if i was making $300k/year i’d be pirating even more… i could spend a lot more on hard drives!
• molave 3y ago
  It's like the Matrix. In my opinion, there's 1%-2% of the entire population that pirate out of principle or "cost savings"
• 4gotunameagain 3y ago
  I think a lot of it also has to do with the ethics of music distribution and the fact that spotify pays the actual artists almost nothing. p.s. probably not engineers in the literal sense ;)
  • code_runner 3y ago
    This is a label and industry problem not specific to any one streamer.
• pyeri 3y ago
  >> I write software. I want to get paid too, right? Why shouldn't they? The way ruthless capitalism works in today's age, the software writer barely gets peanuts, bulk is taken away by the management, CEO and shareholders.
  • 4gotunameagain 3y ago
    I agree with the sentiment, but let's not pretend that software writers are victims of capitalism. Based on the reward/effort ratio, software devs are one of the most privileged groups that have ever existed. You can make more money writing javascript that you learned on udemy and youtube than a firefighter or a doctor. It is absurd.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
  • gruez 3y ago
    Maybe if you subscribe to labor theory of value. Most people wouldn't consider someone making 6 figures as earning "peanuts" because the company they work for is making even more money from their labor.
• someotherperson 3y ago
  Piracy is largely a convenience issue, not just a financial issue. When Netflix's streaming platform rolled around people were largely happy to stop pirating, when Netflix's catalog fragmented across two dozen different services that forbid account sharing then piracy became a thing again for many people who stopped pirating. I had a Paramount+ subscription (alongside Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV) and wanted to watch a certain TV show on my device. Oops, my device was out of date so I couldn't download the app. No problems, I'll update it. Oops, my account is set to an overseas address so I can't download the app. No problems, I'll change my account settings. Oops, the app won't log in because my DNS blocks ads. No problems, I'll add a bypass for this app. Oops, the app sucks and crashes when I navigate through the catalog too quickly. No problems, I'll make my search more specific. Oops, the buffering speed is horrendous and scrubbing through the video crashes the app. Guess what I did? Uninstalled the app and searched for a pirated version of the TV show. A minute later it was streaming fine on my device.
  • kamikaz1k 3y ago
    Might be “largely” true but ignore the existence of just cheap people who will not pay for anything unless they have to.
    • swozey 3y ago
      Yeah, I'm on a discord for tracking 4090 prices/stock. So it's a lot of gamers who can afford a $2k video card. I'd say 70% of the people in that discord pirate everything.
    • gchamonlive 3y ago
      With the planet getting warmer and warmer, it must be nice to have a little cool breeze from that moral high ground.
  • jvanderbot 3y ago
    This has not been my 99% experience. I'm sure one or two of those stories are handy to have to justify a lifetime of unnecessary theft, but the bottom line for me is that I don't mind playing by their system on principle. This is how the artists asked us to do it, by selling their rights to distributors. Similarly with Spotify. I'd love to pay more to artists, I do go buy songs when I love them, and I'm happy to pay for a family Spotify account because Spotify has brought an amazing amount of positive to our house. Bottom line I'm actually willing to endure a small amount of inconvenience in 1% so that my happy path still supports artists and yes industries that have brought so much good to me.
• theappsecguy 3y ago
  70-300k is a crazy wide range to lump together. Quality of life and flexibility to pay for things is extremely different across it. That said, the reason is simple, there’s no good product out there so people pirate. I haven’t pirated music in ages because Spotify solved that industry with a single reasonably priced offering. On the other hand the dozens of streaming services have gotten out of hand by now. Same with renting movies, I’d rather enjoy in the cinema or torrent it, especially given how mediocre 95% of production has been in recent years.
  • ralusek 3y ago
    > especially given how mediocre 95% of production has been in recent years Okay, then don’t watch it. If you’re watching it, though, you should pay for it. Your logic is the equivalent of going out to restaurants to eat, and then not paying because “restaurants aren’t good these days.”
    • someotherperson 3y ago
      It's probably closer to having to pay a monthly subscription fee to eat at the restaurant. And you actually have to get six different subscriptions at different restaurants because each one has a different rotating menu. And you're not allowed to share your food with your friends because they don't live with you -- they each need their own subscription. And no to-go boxes, you gotta eat it right there at the restaurant since you're only allowed to eat the food while you have an active subscription, you know, just in case you cancel the subscription to that restaurant or try to share the food with your friends who don't have an active subscription.
      • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
        Also, you can't figure out what to eat because instead of being indexed by nutrition information or by whether it contains potential allergens it's always indexed at the top level by subscription so you have to do a little inner join there on your napkin before you can tell your kid what their options are.
      • 3y ago
• ekianjo 3y ago
  > I write software. I want to get paid too, right? Why shouldn't they? How about the Spotify client being crap? Can't believe this is the top comment on HN.
  • swozey 3y ago
    What does Spotify being crap have to do with a software engineer or musician being paid for their work? You think they shouldn't be paid because you don't like the company they work for?
    • latentcall 3y ago
      Quite a lot actually. If the software engineers write an app that’s a bloated buggy mess that inconveniences people, some people will look for other ways to listen to the music they want to hear. For musicians, they have other avenues (arguably better anyhow) such as Bandcamp. I’ve bought tons of vinyl albums, tapes, and even just digital releases from there.
      • swozey 3y ago
        Your first point is incredibly subjective. I love the spotify app aside from the fact they keep gutting its features. I've used almost every other music app in testing to potentially leave spotify. I've been a spotify member for 16 years and can't think of a single time I thought it was bloated. The spotify carplay/android apps absolutely DESTROY the other car apps. I hated every single other app. Quboz, Tidal, Apple, YT, Amazon.. Most of them were so featureless I felt like I was using Winamp. But some people do love that.
      • gtirloni 3y ago
        > some people will look for other ways to listen to the music they want to hear. Those ways probably should involve some sort of compensation to the artists. Is that happening?
    • prmoustache 3y ago
      If you actually clicked on the link, it says this in the readme file of the spotube project: ¹ It is still recommended to support the creators by watching/liking/subscribing to the artists' YouTube channels or liking their tracks on Spotify (or purchasing a Spotify Premium subscription too).
• andrepd 3y ago
  Give me a link to download your game without spyware and I pay for that. I buy games on gog. I buy games without drm on steam. I absolutely refuse to install ring 0 Internet-connected malware on my computer to play a fucking game.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• hattar 3y ago
  I pay and would still like an alternative client. The official one has several annoying deficiencies that are unlikely to ever be addressed. From a monetary standpoint, most companies would throw me into a wood chipper were it profitable. Hard to feel any sense of “fair behavior” is warranted when that’s the case.
• sumuyuda 3y ago
  There are other factors here besides price to choose this client. Privacy and no usage/analytics spyware are some big ones, as well as native apps on desktop.
• andrepd 3y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhv7bgmz64 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvhv7bgmz64
  • metadat 3y ago
    Great guide, this about sums it up.
  • nouryqt 3y ago
    In case anyone else wanted to check the Pokemon page. It's real https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-episodes-movies https://www.pokemon.com/us/animation/where-to-watch-pokemon-...
• maroonblazer 3y ago
  Kind of related to this mentality, perhaps: On Sam Harris's most recent episode of "Making Sense" with TED's Chris Anderson[0] he shared a Reddit conversation he came across where people were discussing whether or not they subscribe, i.e., pay, for his podcast: >> I spectated upon this [Reddit] thread, something around "Do you support Sam's podcast and and you if do, why or why not?" and someone said "Well I would support the podcast if I knew what he was going to do with the money" and another person said "Well I would support the podcast if I knew how much it cost to run a podcast" and another person said "I would support the podcast if I knew how much I thought a person should earn from a podcast" and I looked at those three statements and my head practically fell off my shoulders, because I realized at a glance there was something deeply wrong here because these are the kinds of considerations that would never have occurred to a person when they were thinking about buying my next book. I mean there's literally no person on Earth who's ever thought the thought "Well I would buy his next book if I knew how much I thought an author should make from writing books" or "I would buy his next book if I knew what he was going to do with the money." These are just not the kinds of thoughts people think. Either you want to read the book or you don't and you buy it or not. [1] [0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCl-5vC7aW8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCl-5vC7aW8 [1]https://youtu.be/cCl-5vC7aW8?si=CqRcQ-kLUF7JMyXg&t=3604 https://youtu.be/cCl-5vC7aW8?si=CqRcQ-kLUF7JMyXg&t=3604
  • swozey 3y ago
    What even is that? Just straight up entitlement? Ignorance to the situation? Just not caring? He has a great point, I can't think of any times I've ever asked those questions unless I thought the book author was grifting, where I'd go "Oh they're dog whistling to their flock for sales." I never thought "I hope mac miller doesn't use this $20 for drugs" buying mac miller albums..
    • jeegsy 3y ago
      That's the question isn't it? If its entitlement as you say, why feel it with a podcast and not books?
  • CoastalCoder 3y ago
• add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
  I used to pay for Spotify but canceled because the player experience was so bad, not because of the cost.
  • mattgreenrocks 3y ago
    I usually keep my opinions on software to myself, but I struggle to understand how the audio playback code path is not rock solid at this point. It's a state machine. That's it.
    • add-sub-mul-div 3y ago
      It's not audio quality or the specific playback experience I had a problem with. It's all the features around it. I'm used to players like Winamp, foobar2000. Real native applications that are responsive and customizable and feature rich.
    • empiricus 3y ago
      As some basic examples, the spotify app does not have a listening history, or at a minimum some counts and the most listened songs. Or the app on the samsung tv does not have any setting or information about the audio quality.
• seanthemon 3y ago
  My problem is region locking, if I can't access the content in any way without potentially purchasing a very expensive TV package, I'm left with only one choice. A lot of music on spotify can't be accessed in my region and same with movies/series.
  • CoastalCoder 3y ago
    > My problem is region locking, if I can't access the content in any way without potentially purchasing a very expensive TV package, I'm left with only one choice. Do you mean that literally? Because I'd think buying physical copies, or forgoing access, would also be options.
    • beej71 3y ago
      Some programs aren't available on DVD in my region. But I suppose DVD players are cheap, so people can just buy one per region. ... Or does piracy sound like a better experience?
      • CoastalCoder 3y ago
        It probably comes down one's personal ethics, views about civic virtue, etc. I want my neighbor's pile of firewood. They probably wouldn't miss one or two logs, but I have other reasons for not taking any. I'm not trying to persuade anyone that my view is correct, I'm just saying that I think this is one aspect of how different people approach the question of how to obtain digital entertainment.
        • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
          What does your personal ethics say about paying somebody to build a system that prohibits certain kinds of people from receiving certain kinds of information? Even if a trickle of that money makes it to the artist, doesn't that seems like a technology that's ripe for abuse?
        • beej71 3y ago
• paulcole 3y ago
  They refuse to say it’s about money. It’s some kind of mish-mash rationalization of sticking it to the man, convoluted technical explanations (they’re my HTTP requests you can just return a 403 error), and moral outrage.
• junon 3y ago
  Living in Germany, but I'm an american. Signed up for Crunchy Roll. Most the shows my friends are recommending are region locked. The remaining ones are mostly German-dubbed only, with no subtitles. Most don't have original Japanese either. Only a handful I want to watch actually have subs or English dubs. It's not like I don't want to pay for this stuff but when it's a huge conditional tree of if I'm going to have a good experience, with no other (non-pirate alternative), what do you do? Meanwhile, Spotify doesn't have this issue. Happily pay for that, despite not being a fan of how the company operates.
  • bowsamic 3y ago
    The anime situation in Germany is years behind. Germans are famously moralising against piracy but this seems to be a case where they do it anyway because it’s just impossible to find anime otherwise
  • jzb 3y ago
    Wouldn't a VPN solve this for you?
    • pokey00 3y ago
      Until they start blocking VPNs like other streaming services? Piracy is a solution that doesn't end up a cat and mouse game. Sounds like op is paying for the content but it's region locked, so the dumbest form of pushing your customers to piracy.
    • paulsen 3y ago
      The problem is that I have to pay for another thing just to watch the thing I was already paying for. Piracy almost always is caused by a lack of convenience, namely: "I get the service, have a (sometimes very) limited selection of stuff, and have to pay for it, and if I want that other thing I have to pay for another entirely different service" or "I get anything I want with a little hassle, but for free"
    • KptMarchewa 3y ago
      What's the difference with pirating then? I do pirate when media owners go to great length to make consuming it legally very hard.
• mattgreenrocks 3y ago
  I'm tempted to try if only because they might be more focused on music playback (the core value proposition of Spotify) than Spotify is at this point. Limitations of team size can be a blessing.
• justaj 3y ago
  Am I able to pay Spotify in cryptocurrency or a SEPA transaction? If not, then that's a big convenience issue for me and thus not worth it.
• cynicalsecurity 3y ago
  It's not about money, it's about freedom and independence. I don't want to lose access to my music and videos because some company decided to apply current idiotic understanding of morals or because of some temporary SJW craze. I don't want them to profile and spy on my tastes and preferences and then sell all of this information about me to any idiot out there with money. I don't want to rely on unstable internet connection or the silly "cache" the app offers. I don't want to use their bloated inconvenient app that needs constant internet connection when I can use a lightweight mp3 player app on my phone that I like and am used to. So no, it's not about the money. I don't want to use their service and support their business model. I don't think their business model is making the world a better place. I wouldn't subscribe even if the price was 10 cents. I buy CDs and support directly the artists and groups I love. On the end note. Think about, I'm paying 10 bucks a month, but the artists I love will get peanuts from it. The overall chunk will go to some over hyped nonsense like Taylor Swift, simply because she is getting more plays on their platform. Nope.
  • mock-possum 3y ago
    > some temporary SJW craze Sorry what?
    • ta988 3y ago
      Look at the history of posts of that person. They seem to be excited by triggering people.
      • cynicalsecurity 3y ago
        I'm sorry, what is exactly triggering in my comment?
• Arch-TK 3y ago
  I happily pay for anything I can get DRM free. Not interested in paying to rent access to something which requires giving shady companies like Netflix control over my graphics pipeline (which also prevents me from watching the thing I am renting on any device I want because, for example, my mediacentre PC is not blessed by the right big-corps to work with the intrusive DRM software). If movie publishers had an easy and convenient way to donate, I would probably donate an appropriate amount every time I pirate some of their media to allow me to watch it on my TV. You can argue "just buy the bluray and pirate it then" but I feel this just encourages these companies to continue relying on these intrusive DRM technologies. I know my boycott is insignificant but it's a matter of principles more than anything else.
  • prmoustache 3y ago
    https://us.7digital.com/ https://us.7digital.com/ (or any of its region specific stores) or https://bleep.com/ https://bleep.com/ for independent electronic music. There are probably other genre specific stores still alive.
    • Arch-TK 3y ago
      This is neat, thanks. Although while I appreciate that I left a comment on a post about Spotify, I don't maintain a music collection as I find it too difficult to remember what I like. I generally just listen to some playlists on youtube. I have bought music whenever I found an author I liked a lot though.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• voidwtf 3y ago
  Last night the family and I tried to watch Thor on Disney+. Everything appeared to be fine at first, but something was obviously off. The audio mix was screwed up really bad to where I could barely hear them speaking, and all the sound effects were basically non-existent, but the ambient music was extremely loud. I flipped over to Amazon Prime and rented it so we could continue our movie. I pay for Disney+, Disney got their money and if I’d decided to pirate it instead of the convenience of Prime video I wouldn’t have felt an ounce of guilt. I keep trying to do the right thing, and they keep moving the goal posts. Whether it be adding DRM that increasingly causes the media to be available on less devices, or adding yet another service I have to invest in. DRM doesn’t work and only diminishes the user experience. If you want my money meet me where I’m at. Stop forcing garbage down the pipeline.
  • linsomniac 3y ago
    I've heard that some of those problems are related to the audio settings; the video being configured for one of the surround sound formats that your audio system doesn't support. Not saying the audio wasn't jacked up, but just wanted to put it on your radar to go into the video settings (like where you set up captions I think) and try a different audio format.
  • gtirloni 3y ago
    > decided to pirate it instead of the convenience of Prime video I wouldn’t have felt an ounce of guilt. You shouldn't feel an ounce of guilty. Really. They've failed you and still got their money. You had to spent extra time to pirate so you'd get the level of service you already paid in the first place.
• zulban 3y ago
  I recently pirated James Bond because the streaming service we pay for screwed up the subtitles. So to be fair to your friends, they may also feel like they like pirating also because it is still more functional and customized. And streaming needs flawless internet while watching.
• GaryNumanVevo 3y ago
  This is an extremely half-baked take on piracy. The music piracy community are some of the best archivists of music history we have. What.cd had a wonderfully curated and deep archive of music. I discovered so many small punk groups that would drop an LP then vanish. Fortunately it's still relatively easy to support active bands directly via Bandcamp / physical media / tours. I cherish my personal collection, and it's all self-hosted on my NAS at home. As for movies, half the time features don't even get a Blu-ray release. Back in the day I had a region unlocked player that would allow me to watch my favorite Japanese directors (which never got a US region release) Streaming wise it's terrible, especially if you live outside of the US. A lot of films are not even available to "buy" via Amazon, etc. And even then services that do stream outside of the US have "4K" streams with low bitrates. It's not even funny how much better true 4k HDR remux's look when played back locally versus streaming it from HBO or something, even though it's the same source.
• guluarte 3y ago
  have you seen some apps? yt music is shit and already have yt-preimum, why would I pay for another music service?
• ponector 3y ago
  Spotify app is rubbish, and you cannot listen on different devices with the same account. Also Spotify have censorship issue, they are removing some songs. Other are not available due to copyright issues. If you don't want to listen playlists with new random music it is more convenient to have a local mp3 library.
• jokethrowaway 3y ago
  Why pay when I can access content for free? YouTube pays some cents to music labels, I can listen to music for free on YouTube and I can block ads. The only purchases I make are to reward creators, often only after I've enjoyed the goods. Copyright is highly immoral as I never got into any contract with anyone and yet I'm supposedly a criminal because I download pirated content. Whoever is sharing copyrighted content is breaching a contract and should be prosecutable. I sell software and it's nice to have passive income. I found a few communities who heavily pirated my code and I couldn't do jackshit because I don't make lawyer money and dmca does nothing but waste time. I think piracy is a natural tax imposed on the market: if you can't point to your customer who shared your property and sue him you are probably making some nice passive money. There's always going to be someone smarter than the average who will bypass your security. I don't mind pirates. The problem we have is with major publishers being rich enough they can bribe the government to do crap like dmca and infringe on our rights.
  • swozey 3y ago
    Because if everyone did what you did, the artists wouldn't make any money. And a lot of people already to pirate. I couldn't tell you what percentage of people pirate vs stream but at what point does the scale tip to the other side where piracy is actually causing a hugely negative affect to the artists income? You, and we, don't know if you're the 10,000th or the 100,000,000th pirate of whatever you pirate.
• demondemidi 3y ago
  And then complain that there isn't enough content they are two absolutely insatiable generations when it comes to content. Free free free more more more ... of course, that also describes the billionaire class and material goods. Ironic they both meet at greed. The Spotify macOS app constantly truncates classical titles, which I find infuriating. I subscribed to Apple Classical, which was phenomenal in its organization and catalogue, but I couldn't download and I fly a lot which is a dealbreaker.
• __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
  It's not about saving a few bucks, it's about taking responsibility for the consequences of your spending. If $1 out of $10 goes to supporting the artist and the other $9 goes towards stripping users of the ability to control their own devices, or towards other zero/negative sum games being played by the platform in the spirit of moat building, then paying for content through normal channels is doing more harm than good. If there was a way to configure my players to fingerprint the content and send money to the artist as I play it (or probably at the end of the month, so the total spend for that month is configurable) I'd use it. Payment should be irrespective of where you got the bits. I'm trying to build such a thing. But until a better way exists, I'm not going to feel bad about my occasional piracy in the meantime.
  • gtirloni 3y ago
    > If there was a way to configure my players to fingerprint the content and send money to the artist as I play it There isn't. I fail to see how piracy helps artists today.
    • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
      It drives movie and concert ticket sales. It could do more and we should fix that. Do you also fail to see how investment in technology that prevents certain groups from getting certain information harms everyone tomorrow? It's not like they'd have retool completely if they pivoted from censoring Finding Nemo because you're the wrong kind of customer to censoring political dissent because you're the wrong kind of citizen. The tech from the former can be reused in the latter and there's more money in the latter. That pivot hasn't happened yet because the DRM hooks aren't in deeply enough. People would work around it. Piracy helps because it creates a space for us to fight back against that sort of thing. It keeps the set of people who can circumvent censorship large and it keeps them in practice. At the end of the day, protecting an artist paycheck is just not as important as protecting user freedom. We can have both, but paying the streaming platforms and hoping they spend that money wisely is not the way to get there.
      • 3y ago
• asylteltine 3y ago
  Pirating at least on legitimate private trackers is about quality and availability. For example, you CANNOT stream certain episodes of South Park, always sunny, etc because of wrongthink. Some things are also unattainable like gravity Lux edition. But yes I agree otherwise, just buy stuff. I stopped pirating games when I got a real job.
• arthur_sav 3y ago
  Good luck finding your favorite movie on Netflix. And Spotify keeps taking songs off their catalogue which ruins my favorite playlists and saved songs. To be fair, streaming services are usually not at fault here. They have to negotiate with the content owners. But at the end of the day, I don't care. Piracy still has place and it's not a money issue.
  • thenoblesunfish 3y ago
    Exactly. This content is actually important to people, despite the common idea that culture, even purely entertainment culture, not to mention more artistic things, is a commodity.
  • __MatrixMan__ 3y ago
    > To be fair, streaming services are usually not at fault here. They have to negotiate with the content owners If their behavior has resulted in an ecosystem where the art doesn't reliably make it to the artists' audiences then perhaps they are a little bit at fault. That's their job and they're doing it poorly and they're big enough to influence the factors that constrain them if they cared about doing better.
• Brian_K_White 3y ago
  The entire list of features are all things the official clients don't offer. I DO pay for spotify and still want all those features. You attempt to critique other people's behavior, while completely failing at "be a good person" yourself. It is always that way. The person pointing the finger is the one most in need of a mirror.
• thenoblesunfish 3y ago
  Mostly agree, but I think that people have a reasonable desire to "own" the pieces of culture that are important to them. Especially with movies and TV, your access to the content, even if you "bought" it, is temporary. Where there is a fair way to purchase your own copy (e.g. Bandcamp for music, at the moment), that's great.
  • swozey 3y ago
    Oh I'm 100% for archiving and keeping the music around forever, even if the artist wants it gone honestly.
• alerighi 3y ago
  It's not the 10$ a month for Spotify: 10$ to Spotify, 10 to Netflix, another 10 to Disney+, to Now TV/SKY (in my country), to DAZN, to Prime Video, etc. If you sum all the services you have to pay you spend easily more than 100$ a month in streaming services, that is 1200$ a year that is for most person in my country a month of work! And the others would rather spend if for other things, such as a vacation. Finally pirating is most of the time more convenient, for example using these proprietary services on Linux or Raspberry Pi etc is not possibile, also they require internet and you can't just for example save the files on an USB stick or CD to play on the car stereo.
  • sudobash1 3y ago
    > using these proprietary services on Linux or Raspberry Pi etc is not possibile I can't speak to Raspberry Pi (and other non-x86 boards), but on my PC I can listen to Spotify just fine. I don't even have to use Chrome. It works as well on Firefox.
    • alerighi 3y ago
      On a PC, yes. But let's say that I want to listen to music in my car, and I have an old stereo (that I don't want to replace) that only has CD and/or USB input. I can't from Spotify just take the music and download it to an USB stick or burn a CD, even with premium (I can download it to play offline, but they are DRM protected and I can play only from the official player)
      • recursive 3y ago
        For most people, that's a solved problem with bluetooth.
        • alerighi 3y ago
          I get it, but if my car doesn't have it, and I don't want to buy a new stereo. Also, Bluetooth requires wasting my phone battery, and use either mobile data bandwidth or phone memory space, while I can load a 64Gb USB sticks of songs or burn a bunch of CDs and forget about it.
• traverseda 3y ago
  I still pirate TV and movies, and that is to the best of my knowledge legal in my district. I sometimes pirate console video games, but pretty much never do if they're available on steam. Piracy is a service problem, not a financial problem. I also do use patreon for some creators I enjoy.
• mock-possum 3y ago
  How long have you been using Spotify? It seems to me that at every opportunity, the team responsible for Spotify has made it worse. The UI is made significantly worse every major update. The only good thing I can think of that they’ve added over the past decade or so has been dark mode and I am not exaggerating. Have you seen the state of playlists and sorting/filtering options? You know, one of the most important things about music software? Literally the only reason I’m using (and paying for) Spotify now is that there isn’t a legitimate competitor to switch to. Spotify is not worthy of respect of loyalty and it’s certainly not deserving of not being pirated from.
  • swozey 3y ago
    I've used it since 2008 or 2009. You're not wrong. Their constant changes and removing features the last few years is frustrating. They just did that big recent UI update, I've barely used spotify since they did it so I can't tell if I like it or hate it yet but they constantly change it. It looks like it's missing things now but I'm not too sure.
• Bayart 3y ago
  I stopped pirating for a decade and started again when platforms became so fragmented and inconvenient that torrenting is the more convenient option again. On the other hand I buy a lot of records, both old and new, so I'm objectively spending more on music than I've ever been. MUBI is the only content subscription I still happily keep.
• MPSimmons 3y ago
  Agreed. I have bought many many things on Apple iTunes store, and I have an archive of MP3s that I've collected that I don't want to lose, and I also pay for Spotify because it's the most convenient service for listening to music and it'll probably the be last one I cancel before I move into a cardboard box.
• john-radio 3y ago
  Part of your point seems to be that the OP, being a software engineer, should not have to pirate Spotify since presumably they have access to money. But that's not really the case for all devs, and moreover, nobody who isn't a dev is able to make a tool like this in the first place.
• beeboobaa 3y ago
  Feel free to pay for my Spotify subscription if you feel so strongly.
• beej71 3y ago
  For me, it's not that I don't want artists to have money. (I just found an artist I liked who uploads all their live music--quality recordings!--to Internet Archive under a CC license. I went to their website and bought all their albums on the spot. They should arrive in a couple days, and then I'll rip them to FLAC and put them on my jellyfin server.) But questionably-ethical companies I try not to give money to, e.g. companies that only pay artists pennies, or might suddenly disappear music that I "bought". And that's on top of the fact that Spotify in particular actually kinda sucks at suggesting good music. I quit them in the middle of my free trial because I got tired of hitting "next". My friends are much, much better suggestion engines.
• digitalsin 3y ago
  It is not about the money for me, and also I'm happy to support the artists and regularly do by buying their vinyl when I can. It is about the fact at any time Spotify, Apple, etc can remove music from my playlist for any reason and at any time. It's about the fact they require me to use their invasive, spyware, data mining BS apps in order to listen to my music. It is about the fact that when I want to listen to music in my car, I have to listen to it using the way they say I can. I can't believe I have adult friends who really don't care about their personal privacy or freedoms and are ready to give it up at a moments notice for convenience.
• 0xEF 3y ago
  I can afford streaming services but I pirate anyway. Why? Ads. I'm not paying to watch ads. Simple as.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• ilrwbwrkhv 3y ago
  Piracy is a moral imperative. The internet was supposed to be free and break down barriers. Instead what we have now is a show available in the UK but not available in the US. This is not acceptable. This plus the fact that actual artists get a pittance, means the flag will fly high till companies learn. Also piracy has become much more reliable these days. There are systems which will make sure you get 4k streams based on any genre you enjoy. New shows from around the world. No need to wait for Netflix to add it to your countries playlist that to hidden behind garbage UX. At the end of the day it is about availability, user control, artist benefits and showing the middle finger to large corporations. That is the hacker mindset. That is what I grew up with in the early 2000s and it is substantially better than what we are "supposed" to do now. Hope that makes sense.