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>As a musician, fuck everything about this Pretty wild to include a comment like this in the testimonials. Sure, you can disagree with the musician on philoso

by slg 1y ago

>As a musician, fuck everything about this Pretty wild to include a comment like this in the testimonials. Sure, you can disagree with the musician on philosophical terms over IP laws and many consumers will always prefer "free", but to put this in your testimonials shows that the developers take pride in the act of pissing off musicians. That just rubs me the wrong way.

toomuchtodo 1y ago
Musicians are not the consumers, users are the consumers. Some musicians will always be unhappy, this is unavoidable due to complex issues around IP rights, compensation for art, and the length of time it takes to make changes to these systems (not to mention simply how much existing content is out there new and current artists are competing against, attention economy and all that). n=1, I am optimizing for access to as much content as possible while providing as little economic benefit to corporations as possible (ie Spotify) while still supporting the artists I enjoy (whether that's via venmo, paypal, buying their vinyl, buying their digital versions from bandcamp, etc). I also enjoy cheeky devs/builders, can't take any of this too seriously, we're all dead eventually.
- slg 1y ago
  Musicians are not the consumers, but it's their work being consumed and this software would have no purpose without them. And to be clear, my problem isn't that this software upset some musicians. It's that the developers highlighting that fact as part of their marketing suggests they take pride in angering musicians. That is a level of disrespect that goes way beyond the sort of passive consumer level disrespect of wanting something for free. It's active hostility compared to mild selfishness.
  - bigyabai 1y ago
    > It's active hostility Not really? If the testimonials are true, then simply making the app itself is an act of hostility. The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop uploading digital copies of your work. There is no honor system in music or data and there never will be.
    - slg 1y ago
      >The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop uploading digital copies of your work. There is no honor system in music or data and there never will be. I'm just tired of this technolibertarian mindset of "it's not wrong because no one is stopping me from doing it". There is no "honor system" in life either and if you see that as permission to be an asshole, that just makes you an asshole. And if your best defense against being accused of being an asshole is some form of "they couldn't stop me", then you're tacitly admitting to being an asshole.
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        Then maybe we'll never see eye-to-eye. I grew up with an iTunes account, but I never spent my money on music. Some weeks my family lived paycheck-to-paycheck, some nights skipping dinner. I downloaded my music off YouTube to my 2005 HP Compaq, put it on my iTunes library and synced it to my iPod Shuffle. Didn't weigh on my conscience when I pirated video games or FL Studio either, not then and not now. If that made me an asshole, then 11-year-old me was a supervillain bumping Aphex Twin. Oftentimes I think HN forgets to consider the 99% when contemplating ethics over sous-vide.
        slg 1y ago
        [flagged]
        bigyabai 1y ago
        You actually don't understand the consumer desire for free, if you necessarily conflate it with class warfare and moral grandstanding. It seems to be a karma sink insisting upon this, but this is the hacker ethos. Nobody lords information over anyone, any paywall you erect will eventually fall. For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Draw out this line of reasoning long enough, and one could argue that Richard Stallman is the worst human alive for "moral grandstanding" the software industry and taking glee in destroying software jobs with copyleft licensing. But more accurately, he ushered in the information age for everyone and prevented it from being cordoned-off behind a proprietary paywall. Yes, he predicated Napster and ThePirateBay and 4chan and all the horrible examples you're apt to draw upon. But he also invariably pushed technology forward - we're better people, that we aren't slaving away remaking the Cairo library for the 30,000th time. Common access to at least some information enables a great deal of art and provides countless value to would-be artists. I'd like to think that the entire human race is bettered with access to information. It would certainly be idyllic if we could compensate artists, authors and scientists along the way, but humanity would be ruined if all information came at-cost. I am willing to fight for a world where individuals have free access to information, and I reckon my tools are more powerful than the publishers who seek to thwart me. I won't stop when the musicians scream out bloody murder, and if you think that's the most immoral thing imaginable then don't ask how 15-year-old me found the money to afford Jimmy John's.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - ada1981 1y ago
    I think it’s just funny to post bad reviews.
  - lukan 1y ago
    It is one musician whose negative comment is displayed along with people complaining that the whole thing is slow garbage. You might be reading too much into it.
    - partomniscient 1y ago
      One musician can be ripped off and not compensated and have to take the 'big guys' to court on the off-chance they find out about their work being used despite the (fucked up) copyright laws [0]. It is a massive problem. It's the rich poor divide with propoganda fucking over the genuine little people in favour of the richer/established/more connected people. Human life is like this. Call it out if you see it if you value truth over greed. The future is built on the past. Claimed "Ownership" of the past fucks up the present for the established powers over creativity (e.g. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act). AI just takes it to a whole 'nother level. [0] https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/unauthorized-rap-samples/ https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/unauthorized-rap-samples/
  - protocolture 1y ago
    I am kind of sick of Musicians complaining that culture is so accessible. Its truly the case that if it wasnt for radio and the legal frameworks developed to deliver radio we would probably be looking at incredibly heavy gatekeeping for music. Humans in general are better off with tools like this. And I for one am glad that these developers are showing off who is angry. Heck things could be a lot better right now if it wasnt for Metallica.
    - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
      I like Pete Seeger’s paraphrase of his father: “Plagiarism is basic to all culture”. I think we underestimate the damage to society at large when “remixing” the work of others is legally fraught. The mere reproduction of a previous performance is not additional work for the artist and so does not require compensation: to demand royalties undermines the fundamental structure of art for most of history.
      - AlecSchueler 1y ago
        As a musician: that's totally fine, we can argue the philosophy of it all day and what the law should or shouldn't be. But right now it is what it is and people are basing their careers off that status quo. There should be some respect for that, no?
        welferkj 1y ago
        Sure, and "piracy" is part of the status quo. Show some respect for my total disrespect of IP laws and your livelihood.
        AlecSchueler 1y ago
        Do you feel that putting the quote from the musician in the testimonials was respectful?
        protocolture 1y ago
- sweeter 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - deejaaymac 1y ago
    Comparing copying data to battery/assault is wild
    - GlacierFox 1y ago
      I've copied your sensitive product source code before leaving for lunch then released it to the public for free. Why are you mad? We all die eventually...
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - jazzyjackson 1y ago
        Release your source code under GPL and stop taking life so seriously
      - Uehreka 1y ago
        Idk if I’ve ever seen an HN thread dunk on nihilists this hard. It warms my heart.
        bigyabai 1y ago
        It's an AGPL project that seems to be doing fine for itself. The dogpile dunking reflects HN's own purity spiral, if anything.
      - 1gn15 1y ago
        Yes, we can share, thank you
    - 1y ago
- elliotec 1y ago
  This is a really shitty take. „Can’t please everyone, might as well piss off the creators and show it as a badge of pride!“ Personally I will never use this software and would actively advocate against it if only to counter the attitude you’re presenting. But mainly because artists should be able to make a living and it’s already hard enough with the meager pennies or less they get from current PAID streaming services.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Artists making a living will in no way be impacted by the use of this software. The only way for artists to make a living through their art would be changes through IP/copyright reform (politics and policy, which will take years if not decades) and the operation of platforms where they can get a more fair share of compensation [1] [2]. One can think a musician's response to this software is absurd and still believe they should be able to live comfortably and with dignity while creating art. Pay these folks UBI if we have to, but the problem is not this software is my point. [1] Spotify Alternatives That Pay Artists... - https://cutoffthespigot.substack.com/p/spotify-alternatives-that-pay-artists https://cutoffthespigot.substack.com/p/spotify-alternatives-... [2] How To Support Artists As They Withdraw From Spotify - https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/delete-spotify-alternatives-guide https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/delete-spotify-alternati...
    - atoav 1y ago
      One can be angry for symbolic reasons as well. If your CEO told you to "Get your code on github, it is free", you would probably rightfully question whether they understood the reasons why people develope and maintain open source software in the first place. Similarly here. It is not about the act of people listening to the music for free. If this was a problem, a musician would just restrict access to those tracks. It is about a spirit of taking without giving back, which could be understood as: "Haha you idiots, thanks for providing it for free, I am not paying then". A bit like stopping to watch a street performer, and instead of clapping and (eventually) tossing a coin going like: "We are in a public space, I don't need to pay, idiot. Your own fault!". Technically correct, but ethically wrong and shows they don't value the work of artists. This is just about words and showing some respect, not about money. And since words and showing respect literally cost nothing this makes the insult even greater.
- atoav 1y ago
  Your app is living off the work of artists and making it in a way that gives them a way to profit from it costs you nothing, so it is the right thing to do. Show some merch buying options or display a button that allows you to pay for the music as a thank you to the artists or something. Makes you appear better in front of the crowd that would use bandcamp/soundcloud in the first place (so your core demographic) and supports the artists. I am listening to music on bandcamp/soundcloud because I love music and this is a place where you can find new interesting music — not because it is free there. And in my experience as someone who sells on bandcamp many listeners share that spirit.
  - prmoustache 1y ago
    > Your app is living off the work of artists and making it in a way that gives them a way to profit from it costs you nothing, so it is the right thing to do. The app just find the music on free sources, probably published by the artists themselves or their agents. How is that living off their work and where do the nuclear developer receive money from the nuclear app users in the process?
    - atoav 1y ago
      You read "living of" as a monetary value, that isn't what I meant. That particular app is useless without musicians that upload stuff for free, meaning the fact that musicians do that is of existential importance for it. And that means such an app enters a certain relationship with these musicians. This relationship can be symbiotic (good) or parasitic (bad).
- AlecSchueler 1y ago
  > Musicians are not the consumers, users are the consumers Yeah but if you want to sell cheese it's probably a good idea to maintain a good relationship with farmers.
  - account42 1y ago
    Not if the cheese can be copied at no cost and there are already more cheese varieties around than anyone could eat in a lifetime. In that word, farmers should have no say in who does and doesn't get to eat cheese or extract a tax from cheese consumption.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      > there are already more cheese varieties around than anyone could eat in a lifetime. If that's what you think then why don't we just close down all the studios and instrument shops. We've got enough, no need to keep producing it? You can copy and distributed the cheese freely but the farmer still has to spend money taking care of and housing the cows, milking the cows, going through the whole processes of churning and pasteurising and everything else, then packaging it and disturbing it to where you can initially find it. Now after all that you come along and make your perfect atomic copy and walk away saying "Well screw you, you should have no say in any of this..." Then what? What's the incentive to produce and distribute new cheese? You really think it doesn't matter because you already have cheese from the past? Because there's a lot to be said about cheese that captures the spirit of the zeitgeist...(Ok that last bit didn't work in the metaphor)
      - account42 1y ago
        There is nothing wrong with people creating new music, either out of passion or because they have some way to get paid for it (patronage, crowdfunding, live performances). But as abundance of available creative works increases we need to re-evaluate what cost we should pay as a society in order to incentivize it. IMO we are at a point where no incentive via copyright is needed and the cost copyright imposes on everyone is way too high. The world only works as well as it does because most people routinely ignore copyright already. And no, in this analogy the farmer doesn't have to keep working for us to have enough cheese - only if someone specifically wants a new kind of cheese. We don't need to bend reality in order to make information scarce for that.
30minAdayHN 1y ago
Probably they are employing rage marketing? I used to follow this hotel in Ireland, I think, that used to post very aggressive comments against the reviews. It became a thing and people used to stay there just for it. I think there is a TV series recently in the same vein.
- baq 1y ago
  Take a look at Ryanair’s X profile. There’s gold over there.
  - 30minAdayHN 1y ago
    damn - they are brutal and fun! they have already won me as a customer.
pxoe 1y ago
It's completely understandable not just for the usual streaming services (like youtube, etc.) and the grievances there (payouts per play, whichever way it goes, be it that artists getting stiffed or people refusing to come up with even a fraction of a cent), but for something like bandcamp as well, which is kind of 'almost but not quite a streaming service' and more accurately described in a literal way like 'it lets you play music and buy it', from which apps like this just remove the 'buying music' portion completely. For something like youtube, there's hardly any qualms whether it's ethical or exploitative to sidestep that whole thing and whatever else artists may put out around their music (even something like links in video descriptions), because it is just a mess and people just roll with it anyway. But for bandcamp it leans a bit more towards 'taking it for a ride', when an app like this completely removes the aspect of buying music. Perhaps some people might not even get a slightest clue that's even possible cause there is just no such suggestion in the app at all. And if you wanted to get there, it kind of makes it harder to do so, because there's no prominent links to the original pages of songs and albums in the app. Finding or copying a link is a bit non-trivial because there's no such option in album view or track items, there is in playing queue but it's also kinda buried there. It's just the way that something like this completely obscures the fact that you could buy music from bandcamp, or sometimes even download it for free (depending on what artists have set up). It's one of the better platforms for artists, so it's kind of odd to see this 'fuck you got mine' approach to it. It's also kind of just crummy and shoddily made, so even bandcamp webpages seem like a better browsing and listening experience. Bandcamp website isn't the worst for finding and playing music (it may be plain but it's snappy, and their discovery tools are pretty nice), but it's remarkable to make something that works even worse, perhaps just because bandcamp doesn't even have that much going on.
- charcircuit 1y ago
  This bypasses the ads of YouTube Music which means that artists are not being compensated for their work.
  - lelandbatey 1y ago
    That is a detail which is the responsibility of the artist as a businessperson. If you give away pizza with a big stack of ad flyers, no one would complain when that business doesn't make that much money because no one reads the ad flyers all they do is eat the pizza and toss the ads. We live in a world where said pizza shops want to force you to look at each flyer in the ad stack, but for years they didn't sit you down and make you look with your eyes, instead they just let you take the ads and the pizza and leave. They're trying to crank up the pressure to watch saying "the cooks deserve to be paid" and "you have to let us watch you look at the flyers to eat the pizza, or else you can't leave with the pizza." Don't be fooled, if the musicians didn't want folks to listen on YouTube then they wouldn't put their music there. If you can find a way to look away from the flyers while still eating the pizza, you are not the bad person. Eat and weep for a world where we can't just exchange money for food.
fsniper 1y ago
When I read the testimonials, my take was the developers are not taking themselves too seriously. It felt well for me. They are not trying to sell one perspective, and not hiding what haters tell too. I suppose I find this refreshing.
- indigodaddy 1y ago
  That's my impression as well. It doesn't exactly seem like bragging nor "oh look what we are doing and we don't give af"
smcleod 1y ago
Fairly sure it's just a joke. Who takes testimonials on a products website seriously anyway?
lukan 1y ago
Have you checked the other comments?
fredsmith219 1y ago
If a musician doesn’t want them to do this, why do they upload their music to the free site?
3RTB297 1y ago
Most of the "testimonials" I'm seeing are actually negative. >I used nuclear and had a horrible experience with it. It looks bad, you wait for 1 minute to play a 3 minute song, it's slow as fuck. Probably it's because of Electron, but it is used by so many people that I started cringing. Uh.....what? I get trying to lean into being edgy, but a bad user experience? No thanks.
atoav 1y ago
You can limit the number of possible listens without buying on Bandcamp if you prefer people who actually consider paying for artists. But yeah marketing an app as "this is free, we are great, while some musician didn't like it, but fuck them" may not be the cool humorous power move they thought it might be. As a musician and open source programmer myself I don't feel I am automatically entitled to people's money for stuff I put out there. But while my Open source software is about giving back, I actually want people to value my music and pay for it (if they can and like it enough). So the tiniest bit of sensibility towards people who produce those things, often in their spare time, would help and costs exactly nothing. If this was framed more like: "Discover music that is actually new for free and get in contact with the artists directly" that would be a different story. This may turn out to be a good way to discover new music. And the bandcamp/soundcloud crowd tends to be after new unknown and good music anyways, so that should align with their ways of discovering music and make for a much better elevator pitch than the current one.
guappa 1y ago
I mean, if people like these hate it, it must be really good.
- jamespo 1y ago
  nah, it's crap
raffraffraff 1y ago
They aren't testimonials. Couldn't be. Nobody would put mostly negative comments on their page like that. Some aren't remotely positive in any way (not even in a "hahaha, fuck the artists, get music for free" way). Maybe they're coming from a comment feed somewhere?
- graynk 1y ago
  I am very certain this is intentional. Sorta "look how much we don't care" bravado.
  - raffraffraff 1y ago
    Why would they not care if people were saying that the product itself was complete trash
    - graynk 1y ago
      Because they are confident that it's not
bfg_9k 1y ago
Funny because it made me feel the opposite way! I'll be giving this a spin.

by slg 1y ago

toomuchtodo 1y ago

Musicians are not the consumers, users are the consumers. Some musicians will always be unhappy, this is unavoidable due to complex issues around IP rights, compensation for art, and the length of time it takes to make changes to these systems (not to mention simply how much existing content is out there new and current artists are competing against, attention economy and all that). n=1, I am optimizing for access to as much content as possible while providing as little economic benefit to corporations as possible (ie Spotify) while still supporting the artists I enjoy (whether that's via venmo, paypal, buying their vinyl, buying their digital versions from bandcamp, etc). I also enjoy cheeky devs/builders, can't take any of this too seriously, we're all dead eventually.

slg 1y ago
Musicians are not the consumers, but it's their work being consumed and this software would have no purpose without them. And to be clear, my problem isn't that this software upset some musicians. It's that the developers highlighting that fact as part of their marketing suggests they take pride in angering musicians. That is a level of disrespect that goes way beyond the sort of passive consumer level disrespect of wanting something for free. It's active hostility compared to mild selfishness.
- bigyabai 1y ago
  > It's active hostility Not really? If the testimonials are true, then simply making the app itself is an act of hostility. The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop uploading digital copies of your work. There is no honor system in music or data and there never will be.
  - slg 1y ago
    >The parent comment is putting it as nicely as it can be put. If you don't want people to pirate your music, your only path of recourse as a musician is to stop uploading digital copies of your work. There is no honor system in music or data and there never will be. I'm just tired of this technolibertarian mindset of "it's not wrong because no one is stopping me from doing it". There is no "honor system" in life either and if you see that as permission to be an asshole, that just makes you an asshole. And if your best defense against being accused of being an asshole is some form of "they couldn't stop me", then you're tacitly admitting to being an asshole.
    - bigyabai 1y ago
      Then maybe we'll never see eye-to-eye. I grew up with an iTunes account, but I never spent my money on music. Some weeks my family lived paycheck-to-paycheck, some nights skipping dinner. I downloaded my music off YouTube to my 2005 HP Compaq, put it on my iTunes library and synced it to my iPod Shuffle. Didn't weigh on my conscience when I pirated video games or FL Studio either, not then and not now. If that made me an asshole, then 11-year-old me was a supervillain bumping Aphex Twin. Oftentimes I think HN forgets to consider the 99% when contemplating ethics over sous-vide.
      - slg 1y ago
        [flagged]
        bigyabai 1y ago
        You actually don't understand the consumer desire for free, if you necessarily conflate it with class warfare and moral grandstanding. It seems to be a karma sink insisting upon this, but this is the hacker ethos. Nobody lords information over anyone, any paywall you erect will eventually fall. For fuck's sake, children are being firebombed in Gaza right now, and this is the imperative ethical hill you choose to die on? Draw out this line of reasoning long enough, and one could argue that Richard Stallman is the worst human alive for "moral grandstanding" the software industry and taking glee in destroying software jobs with copyleft licensing. But more accurately, he ushered in the information age for everyone and prevented it from being cordoned-off behind a proprietary paywall. Yes, he predicated Napster and ThePirateBay and 4chan and all the horrible examples you're apt to draw upon. But he also invariably pushed technology forward - we're better people, that we aren't slaving away remaking the Cairo library for the 30,000th time. Common access to at least some information enables a great deal of art and provides countless value to would-be artists. I'd like to think that the entire human race is bettered with access to information. It would certainly be idyllic if we could compensate artists, authors and scientists along the way, but humanity would be ruined if all information came at-cost. I am willing to fight for a world where individuals have free access to information, and I reckon my tools are more powerful than the publishers who seek to thwart me. I won't stop when the musicians scream out bloody murder, and if you think that's the most immoral thing imaginable then don't ask how 15-year-old me found the money to afford Jimmy John's.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- ada1981 1y ago
  I think it’s just funny to post bad reviews.
- lukan 1y ago
  It is one musician whose negative comment is displayed along with people complaining that the whole thing is slow garbage. You might be reading too much into it.
  - partomniscient 1y ago
    One musician can be ripped off and not compensated and have to take the 'big guys' to court on the off-chance they find out about their work being used despite the (fucked up) copyright laws [0]. It is a massive problem. It's the rich poor divide with propoganda fucking over the genuine little people in favour of the richer/established/more connected people. Human life is like this. Call it out if you see it if you value truth over greed. The future is built on the past. Claimed "Ownership" of the past fucks up the present for the established powers over creativity (e.g. The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act). AI just takes it to a whole 'nother level. [0] https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/unauthorized-rap-samples/ https://www.highsnobiety.com/p/unauthorized-rap-samples/
- protocolture 1y ago
  I am kind of sick of Musicians complaining that culture is so accessible. Its truly the case that if it wasnt for radio and the legal frameworks developed to deliver radio we would probably be looking at incredibly heavy gatekeeping for music. Humans in general are better off with tools like this. And I for one am glad that these developers are showing off who is angry. Heck things could be a lot better right now if it wasnt for Metallica.
  - fiddlerwoaroof 1y ago
    I like Pete Seeger’s paraphrase of his father: “Plagiarism is basic to all culture”. I think we underestimate the damage to society at large when “remixing” the work of others is legally fraught. The mere reproduction of a previous performance is not additional work for the artist and so does not require compensation: to demand royalties undermines the fundamental structure of art for most of history.
    - AlecSchueler 1y ago
      As a musician: that's totally fine, we can argue the philosophy of it all day and what the law should or shouldn't be. But right now it is what it is and people are basing their careers off that status quo. There should be some respect for that, no?
      - welferkj 1y ago
        Sure, and "piracy" is part of the status quo. Show some respect for my total disrespect of IP laws and your livelihood.
        AlecSchueler 1y ago
        Do you feel that putting the quote from the musician in the testimonials was respectful?
        protocolture 1y ago
sweeter 1y ago
[flagged]
- deejaaymac 1y ago
  Comparing copying data to battery/assault is wild
  - GlacierFox 1y ago
    I've copied your sensitive product source code before leaving for lunch then released it to the public for free. Why are you mad? We all die eventually...
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - jazzyjackson 1y ago
      Release your source code under GPL and stop taking life so seriously
    - Uehreka 1y ago
      Idk if I’ve ever seen an HN thread dunk on nihilists this hard. It warms my heart.
      - bigyabai 1y ago
        It's an AGPL project that seems to be doing fine for itself. The dogpile dunking reflects HN's own purity spiral, if anything.
    - 1gn15 1y ago
      Yes, we can share, thank you
  - 1y ago
elliotec 1y ago
This is a really shitty take. „Can’t please everyone, might as well piss off the creators and show it as a badge of pride!“ Personally I will never use this software and would actively advocate against it if only to counter the attitude you’re presenting. But mainly because artists should be able to make a living and it’s already hard enough with the meager pennies or less they get from current PAID streaming services.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Artists making a living will in no way be impacted by the use of this software. The only way for artists to make a living through their art would be changes through IP/copyright reform (politics and policy, which will take years if not decades) and the operation of platforms where they can get a more fair share of compensation [1] [2]. One can think a musician's response to this software is absurd and still believe they should be able to live comfortably and with dignity while creating art. Pay these folks UBI if we have to, but the problem is not this software is my point. [1] Spotify Alternatives That Pay Artists... - https://cutoffthespigot.substack.com/p/spotify-alternatives-that-pay-artists https://cutoffthespigot.substack.com/p/spotify-alternatives-... [2] How To Support Artists As They Withdraw From Spotify - https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/delete-spotify-alternatives-guide https://www.nylon.com/entertainment/delete-spotify-alternati...
  - atoav 1y ago
    One can be angry for symbolic reasons as well. If your CEO told you to "Get your code on github, it is free", you would probably rightfully question whether they understood the reasons why people develope and maintain open source software in the first place. Similarly here. It is not about the act of people listening to the music for free. If this was a problem, a musician would just restrict access to those tracks. It is about a spirit of taking without giving back, which could be understood as: "Haha you idiots, thanks for providing it for free, I am not paying then". A bit like stopping to watch a street performer, and instead of clapping and (eventually) tossing a coin going like: "We are in a public space, I don't need to pay, idiot. Your own fault!". Technically correct, but ethically wrong and shows they don't value the work of artists. This is just about words and showing some respect, not about money. And since words and showing respect literally cost nothing this makes the insult even greater.
atoav 1y ago
Your app is living off the work of artists and making it in a way that gives them a way to profit from it costs you nothing, so it is the right thing to do. Show some merch buying options or display a button that allows you to pay for the music as a thank you to the artists or something. Makes you appear better in front of the crowd that would use bandcamp/soundcloud in the first place (so your core demographic) and supports the artists. I am listening to music on bandcamp/soundcloud because I love music and this is a place where you can find new interesting music — not because it is free there. And in my experience as someone who sells on bandcamp many listeners share that spirit.
- prmoustache 1y ago
  > Your app is living off the work of artists and making it in a way that gives them a way to profit from it costs you nothing, so it is the right thing to do. The app just find the music on free sources, probably published by the artists themselves or their agents. How is that living off their work and where do the nuclear developer receive money from the nuclear app users in the process?
  - atoav 1y ago
    You read "living of" as a monetary value, that isn't what I meant. That particular app is useless without musicians that upload stuff for free, meaning the fact that musicians do that is of existential importance for it. And that means such an app enters a certain relationship with these musicians. This relationship can be symbiotic (good) or parasitic (bad).
AlecSchueler 1y ago
> Musicians are not the consumers, users are the consumers Yeah but if you want to sell cheese it's probably a good idea to maintain a good relationship with farmers.
- account42 1y ago
  Not if the cheese can be copied at no cost and there are already more cheese varieties around than anyone could eat in a lifetime. In that word, farmers should have no say in who does and doesn't get to eat cheese or extract a tax from cheese consumption.
  - AlecSchueler 1y ago
    > there are already more cheese varieties around than anyone could eat in a lifetime. If that's what you think then why don't we just close down all the studios and instrument shops. We've got enough, no need to keep producing it? You can copy and distributed the cheese freely but the farmer still has to spend money taking care of and housing the cows, milking the cows, going through the whole processes of churning and pasteurising and everything else, then packaging it and disturbing it to where you can initially find it. Now after all that you come along and make your perfect atomic copy and walk away saying "Well screw you, you should have no say in any of this..." Then what? What's the incentive to produce and distribute new cheese? You really think it doesn't matter because you already have cheese from the past? Because there's a lot to be said about cheese that captures the spirit of the zeitgeist...(Ok that last bit didn't work in the metaphor)
    - account42 1y ago
      There is nothing wrong with people creating new music, either out of passion or because they have some way to get paid for it (patronage, crowdfunding, live performances). But as abundance of available creative works increases we need to re-evaluate what cost we should pay as a society in order to incentivize it. IMO we are at a point where no incentive via copyright is needed and the cost copyright imposes on everyone is way too high. The world only works as well as it does because most people routinely ignore copyright already. And no, in this analogy the farmer doesn't have to keep working for us to have enough cheese - only if someone specifically wants a new kind of cheese. We don't need to bend reality in order to make information scarce for that.

30minAdayHN 1y ago

Probably they are employing rage marketing? I used to follow this hotel in Ireland, I think, that used to post very aggressive comments against the reviews. It became a thing and people used to stay there just for it. I think there is a TV series recently in the same vein.

baq 1y ago
Take a look at Ryanair’s X profile. There’s gold over there.
- 30minAdayHN 1y ago
  damn - they are brutal and fun! they have already won me as a customer.

pxoe 1y ago

It's completely understandable not just for the usual streaming services (like youtube, etc.) and the grievances there (payouts per play, whichever way it goes, be it that artists getting stiffed or people refusing to come up with even a fraction of a cent), but for something like bandcamp as well, which is kind of 'almost but not quite a streaming service' and more accurately described in a literal way like 'it lets you play music and buy it', from which apps like this just remove the 'buying music' portion completely. For something like youtube, there's hardly any qualms whether it's ethical or exploitative to sidestep that whole thing and whatever else artists may put out around their music (even something like links in video descriptions), because it is just a mess and people just roll with it anyway. But for bandcamp it leans a bit more towards 'taking it for a ride', when an app like this completely removes the aspect of buying music. Perhaps some people might not even get a slightest clue that's even possible cause there is just no such suggestion in the app at all. And if you wanted to get there, it kind of makes it harder to do so, because there's no prominent links to the original pages of songs and albums in the app. Finding or copying a link is a bit non-trivial because there's no such option in album view or track items, there is in playing queue but it's also kinda buried there. It's just the way that something like this completely obscures the fact that you could buy music from bandcamp, or sometimes even download it for free (depending on what artists have set up). It's one of the better platforms for artists, so it's kind of odd to see this 'fuck you got mine' approach to it. It's also kind of just crummy and shoddily made, so even bandcamp webpages seem like a better browsing and listening experience. Bandcamp website isn't the worst for finding and playing music (it may be plain but it's snappy, and their discovery tools are pretty nice), but it's remarkable to make something that works even worse, perhaps just because bandcamp doesn't even have that much going on.

charcircuit 1y ago
This bypasses the ads of YouTube Music which means that artists are not being compensated for their work.
- lelandbatey 1y ago
  That is a detail which is the responsibility of the artist as a businessperson. If you give away pizza with a big stack of ad flyers, no one would complain when that business doesn't make that much money because no one reads the ad flyers all they do is eat the pizza and toss the ads. We live in a world where said pizza shops want to force you to look at each flyer in the ad stack, but for years they didn't sit you down and make you look with your eyes, instead they just let you take the ads and the pizza and leave. They're trying to crank up the pressure to watch saying "the cooks deserve to be paid" and "you have to let us watch you look at the flyers to eat the pizza, or else you can't leave with the pizza." Don't be fooled, if the musicians didn't want folks to listen on YouTube then they wouldn't put their music there. If you can find a way to look away from the flyers while still eating the pizza, you are not the bad person. Eat and weep for a world where we can't just exchange money for food.

fsniper 1y ago

When I read the testimonials, my take was the developers are not taking themselves too seriously. It felt well for me. They are not trying to sell one perspective, and not hiding what haters tell too. I suppose I find this refreshing.

indigodaddy 1y ago
That's my impression as well. It doesn't exactly seem like bragging nor "oh look what we are doing and we don't give af"

smcleod 1y ago

Fairly sure it's just a joke. Who takes testimonials on a products website seriously anyway?

lukan 1y ago

Have you checked the other comments?

fredsmith219 1y ago

If a musician doesn’t want them to do this, why do they upload their music to the free site?

3RTB297 1y ago

Most of the "testimonials" I'm seeing are actually negative. >I used nuclear and had a horrible experience with it. It looks bad, you wait for 1 minute to play a 3 minute song, it's slow as fuck. Probably it's because of Electron, but it is used by so many people that I started cringing. Uh.....what? I get trying to lean into being edgy, but a bad user experience? No thanks.

atoav 1y ago

You can limit the number of possible listens without buying on Bandcamp if you prefer people who actually consider paying for artists. But yeah marketing an app as "this is free, we are great, while some musician didn't like it, but fuck them" may not be the cool humorous power move they thought it might be. As a musician and open source programmer myself I don't feel I am automatically entitled to people's money for stuff I put out there. But while my Open source software is about giving back, I actually want people to value my music and pay for it (if they can and like it enough). So the tiniest bit of sensibility towards people who produce those things, often in their spare time, would help and costs exactly nothing. If this was framed more like: "Discover music that is actually new for free and get in contact with the artists directly" that would be a different story. This may turn out to be a good way to discover new music. And the bandcamp/soundcloud crowd tends to be after new unknown and good music anyways, so that should align with their ways of discovering music and make for a much better elevator pitch than the current one.

guappa 1y ago

I mean, if people like these hate it, it must be really good.

jamespo 1y ago
nah, it's crap

raffraffraff 1y ago

They aren't testimonials. Couldn't be. Nobody would put mostly negative comments on their page like that. Some aren't remotely positive in any way (not even in a "hahaha, fuck the artists, get music for free" way). Maybe they're coming from a comment feed somewhere?

graynk 1y ago
I am very certain this is intentional. Sorta "look how much we don't care" bravado.
- raffraffraff 1y ago
  Why would they not care if people were saying that the product itself was complete trash
  - graynk 1y ago
    Because they are confident that it's not

bfg_9k 1y ago

Funny because it made me feel the opposite way! I'll be giving this a spin.