Comment on Amazon is changing what is written in books
Swarfega@lemm.ee 2 months ago
It’s kinda odd that all these years later, you’re still better off pirating than paying for anything digital. All these services solved piracy but we’ve now gone full circle.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Piracy was, is and remains a service problem, as Gabe Newell of Valve (Steam) once stated. Most people are perfectly content to pay a reasonable price to get access to the things they want. But if you make that impossible, they’ll find other options.
Take anime for example: even if yoy subscribed to every streaming service out there, you still wouldn’t be able to see everything you wanted. Some things aren’t streamable or sold ANYWHERE, or only on a service that’s actively blocked in your region. Which means there is simply no legal way for you at all to get that content.
Music in the other hand solved that dilemma. You can use Spotify, YT Music, Apple Music or a host of other options. You pay a flat fee and you can listen to pretty much every song you want, as often as you want. Nobody’s pirating MP3’s these days, because nobody needs to. It’s now more convenient to just stream it.
I’d really like to see someone do the same for books. An unlimited digital library that lets you download anything you want for a flat subscription fee. I’d pay 10 bucks a month for that for sure. Because that would make it more convenient than pirating is right now, with a more consistent experience.
ellisk@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
Music is definitely not a solved problem. About 30% of my favorite older tunes aren’t available on streaming at all, as I discovered when I tried to find a way to casually share with some friends.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Sure, no platform will have everything. But for me personally, on YouTube Music, I’ve always been able to find what I was looking for. But I’m admittedly not what you’d call a music aficionado.
EngineerGaming@feddit.nl 2 months ago
Interestingly, I am now going through some album series that are not on Youtube, but are on Spotify. It is frustrating because I can’t use Spotify on my phone (browser is incompatible), but I can Youtube, so music discovery is desktop-only. Good thing all of them are on Soulseek, though.
liquidthex@reddthat.com 2 months ago
There’s a problem with this “give them what they want and they won’t pirate” when it comes to Spotify, yt music, etc: They can change the terms at any moment. AKA enshittification.
If you downloaded it or bought a CD? Ain’t no enshittification.
tamal3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They also treat artists like shit. I switched over to Tidal simply to get access to Joanna Newsom’s music, as she won’t tolerate Spotify’s terms. Tidal isn’t much better, but it is slightly.
I was looking forward to blockchain cutting out the middle man in paying artists. Too bad it has so far not happened that way.
CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 2 months ago
Block chain was ruined by the early adopters.
I really like Tidals algorithm for new music. I struggle to find new music I like so find it immensely helpful and it is much better than spotifys.
tomkatt@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Music is absolutely solved.
Screw streaming. Local is always better. Purchase and/or download FLAC. I’ve got nearly 1 TB of music on my NAS and my collection is regularly growing. From Qobuz and Bandcamp, anything you purchase is owned, and DRM free.
agent_nycto@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Bruv real libraries will let you download books for free
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yes, a lot of them do. But their digital selection often is pretty limited and comes with restrictions.
For example: our Dutch national online library lets you ‘borrow’ 10 e-books at a time. You get 21 days to read a book, but you can extend that one time by another three weeks. After that, you have to ‘return’ and ‘check them out again’ if you want to continue reading. With my particular reading habits, that’s a hassle and wouldn’t work for me.
But the biggest issue is: they only offer a limited selection. Basically, NONE of the books I’m reading now are available through that system.
I want to be able to read every book I want, no time restriction. And that’s not possible with the current digital library system they offer.
balder1991@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Like… if the book is digital, why do you have to borrow and return? This makes no sense. They want to replicate a bad experience that doesn’t need to exist, what’s the point of that?
TseseJuer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
ever heard of zlibrary?
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I am, yes. It’s not the book download site that I use personally, but you can never have enough options.
TseseJuer@lemmy.world 2 months ago
which do you use?
UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2 months ago
That’s a sliding scale, though. Streaming comes at a fixed price.
Swarfega@lemm.ee 2 months ago
WB/Discovery+ just screwed people in the UK for watching cycling. It was £7 a month to watch before, which I was happy to pay. They just put an end to that and now bundled the cycling with their premium sports service for £29. I’m not paying all that when I only want cycling and none of their other content.
I cancelled my subscription, asked them to delete my account, purchased a fire stick and now paying for some dodgy IPTV service to watch it there for a fraction of the price.
OutlierBlue@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
A library? We solved that centuries ago.
FinishingDutch@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Except a physical library can only hold so many books, they don’t have most of the books I want and you need to return them. A physical library is not useful to me.
rottingleaf@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yes, about service problems and Steam - I understand why it happened, but sanctions on Russia causing my inability to not buy, but even find in store some games kinda affect it. One small nuance is that family members of those, well, making decisions in Russia are often in the western countries feeling themselves very well (including Steam games), and those who are not do not, I think, have problems dealing with this. And, btw, topping up your Steam wallet is possible, just via intermediaries with some additional expense.
OK, this is not about Steam, this is about sanctions efficiency.