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Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwi
by pavlov 2y ago
Indeed. Many of these pirates are the most devoted fans of the music they store and distribute. They go to gigs, buy merchandise and vinyl editions, and otherwise support the artists directly.
In contrast companies like Spotify don’t care about the music at all. They would just as well sell you white noise if it would somehow give them the slightest improvement in growth or margins.
Daniel Ek, CEO of Spotify, regularly makes statements that suggest he’d rather see professional musicians disappear. Most recently:
https://www.nme.com/news/music/music-fans-and-artists-hit-back-as-spotify-ceo-claims-the-cost-of-creating-content-is-close-to-zero-3761004 https://www.nme.com/news/music/music-fans-and-artists-hit-ba...
- listenallyall 2y ago[flagged]
- rickdicker 2y agoPresumably if you're pirating music you aren't "completely detached" from the music - otherwise why would you do it?
- ineptech 2y agoIn the early 80s, the local pirate scene in my hometown revolved around a guy who I'll call George. George's entire basement was devoted to boxes full of diskettes (5 1/4" in those days) of pirated software and photocopied documentation. All kinds of software - games, office apps, scientific stuff, you name it. Some was downloaded from BBS's but the majority of it was shipped USPS from god knows who. Thing is, he used virtually none of it. He collected software for the sake of collecting it. He didn't even play video games, just loaded them up once to make sure they ran. He was a hoarder basically, who had stumbled into a niche hobby, and like most hobbyists he would happily share it with anyone who asked. I'm not saying every pirate is like that, or even most, but I am saying, I don't think the pirate scene works without people like that. The music fans are spokes, but people who do it for the sake of doing it are the hubs.
- al_borland 2y agoFor the hoarders that don’t share, I don’t really see much of an issue. Sure, they have all that stuff, but they would have never bought it. It’s not actually a lost sale.
- afavour 2y agoHoarding. I’m half joking but all these tools to automatically download TVs and movies has absolutely led to this class of user that habitually downloads stuff just for the sake of doing it. Terabytes of movies they have no interest in. The psychology of it fascinates me.
- zenoprax 2y agoThe answers for content for which I have interest revolve around cost, availability, quality, and convenience. For everything else (a minority): an excuse to play with my servers, cosplaying as an archivist, and "number must go up" for NAS size :)
- anal_reactor 2y agoThese two are not mutually exclusive
- dasil003 2y agoWait, what? There are so many assumptions packed into this statement. Why should we view things through the lens of whether we are glorifying pirates or not? Is your assertion we should be condemning them? Why? Is it because they are taking bread out of the mouths of musicians? Is it equally bad if Spotify uses their leverage to commoditize and devalue music so musicians can no longer make meaningful money from recorded music? What about music labels who structure deals so they get the bulk of the money for a fraction of the work? I'm curious to understand the principles you hold that give you such a black and white view on piracy.
- listenallyall 2y agoFirst, when someone uses "many" and "most", it indicates they are avoiding "a black and white view," by acknowledging there are some exceptions. As to the main point, no individual has the right to take someone else's intellectual property (such as songs, movies, books, etc that were often created by large teams of people over months or years) and, without asking any permission, "liberate" that content so that it can be freely copied and consumed by virtually anyone, anywhere, around the world, without recognition or attribution. The question isn't whether distribution of the work ultimately does or does not benefit the creator(s), which it often does. It's that the "pirate" has no right to independently make the irreversible decision to freely distribute the content.
- MrVandemar 2y agoCopyright impedes accessibility, an important human right. The “pirates” sometimes “liberate” content that has no hope of being released due to a snarl of copyright and artificial regional restrictions. For example: audio description. Audio description is an accessibility technology that allows people who are blind or low vision to watch films, essentially by providing an extra soundtrack with a narrator concisely providing context for what's going on that can't be accounted for by dialogue or sound effects. I have owned, in my life, 5 copies of the film Alien. None of those versions are audio described. Up until last year there was no way to hear a described version without resorting to “piracy”. The only way to hear a (mediocre version with a synth voice instead of an expressive human one) described version is to pretend to be in Canada, or attend a theatre capable of delivering AD with the new re-release. It's not a world-wide release. So, sitting here in a cow-paddock in rural Western Australia, I still have no legal way to watch the audio described version of an oscar-winning film over 40 years old. Having paid 5 times for it, damn right I pirate that. And while I am not vision impaired, there are many others who are who depend on AD to participate in culture, and when they find barriers to that, they pirate that content too. I have films on DVD I paid for, but cannot legally watch because I'm too many kilometers from some notional border or other. Damn right I “pirated” those! As to your main point, you note that no individual has the right to take someone else's intellectual property. I presume you are giving your ethical blessing and a free pass to OpenAI and Midjourney et. al. who have provably leveraged a pirated corpus into highly profitable products?
- buildsjets 2y agoFor indie artists, the vinyl release frequently comes with a download code for a digital version. Some bands even include lossless versions.
- cortesoft 2y agoSpotify might not care as much about the music and the artists as pirates, but they sure pay the artists more.
- AlexandrB 2y agoBarely. Some artists outright tell you to pirate their music since most of their money comes from touring/merch.
- ugjka 2y agoI discover stuff on Spotify more than i would ever from pirating and only then i can go watch their live stuff and buy their merch. If I want a Flac i go to Bandcamp though
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoMakes me wonder if artists would see the same benefit then if piracy were legal and someone made a nice Spotify-like frontend for it. I think about how places like library genesis have to be so weirdly arranged because of how illegal they are.
- ShroudedNight 2y agoWasn't that essentially what Grooveshark was?
- TaylorAlexander 2y agoOoh possibly! The name is familiar but I’ve forgotten entirely what it was like.
- bigfatfrock 2y agoSpotify is a prime example of an amazing service (yet still no FLAC equivalent) offering with a highly developed customer base ruined by the love of money.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoSpotify loves money so much it has yet to show a profit in almost 20 years.
- musicale 2y agoSpotify posted €168M in profit for Q1 2024. But executives loving money is a separate issue from whether the company is profitable or not. Daniel Ek takes no salary but has filed to sell €165M in stock so far in 2024.
- lotsofpulp 2y agoExecutive compensation is part of a business’s expense, so it is not a separate issue from profit, since profit = revenue minus expense. Also, Ek could have sold his equity years ago and made more money with less risk by sticking it in SP500. If he really loved money, wouldn’t he have gotten rid of stock in a business losing money and stuck it into something less risky? My point is to say that Spotify is obviously in a difficult business, given the vendors it has to negotiate with, the competitors it has to compete with, and the customers it has to sell to. It is not some conspiracy or excess short term greed by executives that is hampering its success or ability to pay artists.
- kristiandupont 2y ago>Executive compensation is part of a business’s expense [...] Right. So when you said this.. >Spotify loves money so much it has yet to show a profit in almost 20 years. ..was your point that Spotify, the company, doesn't love money, even if the executives might?
- FireBeyond 2y agoFor sure, I mean to me, what.cd was the ultimate intersection of musicphiles (as opposed to audiophiles, though there's an overlap) and torrenters.