Music Piracy Is Back, Baby

Submitted ⁨⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨flintheart_glomgold@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨technology@lemmy.world⁩

https://gizmodo.com/music-piracy-is-back-baby-1851218401

“Muso, a research firm that studies piracy, concluded that the high prices of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are pushing people back towards illegal downloads. Spotify raised its prices by one dollar last year to $10.99 a month, the same price as Apple Music. Instead of coughing up $132 a year, more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

Roughly 40% of the music piracy Muso tracked was from these “YouTube-to-MP3” sites. The original YouTube-to-MP3 site died from a record label lawsuit, but other copycats do the same thing. A simple Google search yields dozens of blue links to these sites, and they’re, by far, the largest form of audio piracy on the internet.”

The problem isn’t price. People just don’t want to pay for a bad experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is that their software is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying user-hostile design. Plus Steve Jobs himself said it back in 2007: “people want to own their music.” Having it, organizing it, curating it is half the fun. Not fun is pressing play one day and finding a big chunk of your carefully constructed playlist is “no longer in your library.” Screw that.

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RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
But YT audio quality is pretty shit most of the time. There’s plenty of sites that will strip the audio for you from a video and IIRC a couple browser plugins, too. I guess if you really want the song you’ll have it, but it’s not going to sound great.

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- linearchaos@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  We used to record shit off broadcast radio. DJ’s talking up to the post, tiny little bit of static in the mix. Maybe even a crossfade into the next song if you’re unlucky. We’d put it in the mixtapes and give copies of it to our friends. This copies would have about a 5 to 10% further degradation unless you have professional equipment.
  
  There’s plenty of people out there that’ll enjoy relatively bad copies of music as long as it’s not too complicated and free.
  
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  - buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    You are saying things that audiophiles just cannot comprehend. The fact that most people just don’t give a shit that the audio quality of a recording is sub par is mind boggling to them.
    
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  - RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    A clear radio broadcast recorded on a decent analog cassette is pretty damn good compared to a ripped mp3 with a shitty bit rate, warbling and hissing.
    
    I, too, recorded off the radio, or off CDs, onto mixtapes, not that this history has anything to do with what we’re talking about here.
    
    I’m not an audiophile, but I can’t stand low-quality mp3 rips. If people are happy with those rips, great, but that doesn’t make them good copies which is the point of what I said.
    
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- sebinspace@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I got ChatGPT to write a Python script that lets me choose between stripping the audio or taking the whole video from the highest quality of that video available.
  
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- NickwithaC@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  It all sounds the same coming out of someone’s shitty Bluetooth speaker.
  
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Trollception@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“The problem isn’t price. People just don’t want to pay for a bad experience.”

The experience using a paid service is way better than pirating, let’s be honest here. The problem for some people is price.

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- altec@midwest.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  For music, I think yes. For other forms of media, not so much.
  
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  - Lifter@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Music is getting worse though. Spotify is bloating all searches with stuff you don’t want. The “Artist top songs” is rarely the most popular songs and is limited to 10 song. In the beginning you could list all the songs from an artist and sort it on “Plays”.
    
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  - aesthelete@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I’m willing to say that this is probably true for most, but not for all.
    
    If you run your own music streaming server, in some cases it’s better than streaming services.
    
    This isn’t sour grapes either. I had Google music for a couple of years, and I currently have a ninety day trial of Spotify unlimited…these services might be better for most, but if you care about the things I do they’re worse.
    
    I haven’t really even used my Spotify trial because my streaming setup is so much better in a variety of ways.
    
    All that said, I’m an album listener, an older cat, and borderline music obsessive. I’m likely a dying breed. But I find music streaming services much worse.
    
    I honestly think it’s much easier to have a catalog of music than, for instance, TV shows. I listen to the same albums over and over again, but I’m not nearly as keen on rewatching the same shows or watching the same movie more than even once.
    
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- gian@lemmy.grys.it ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I would not be so sure about that.
  
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Hiro8811@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
OK so they didn’t find the other sites. Good good

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rjthyen@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
So what is the best way to actually own music? I miss having a physical file I could put wherever and listen to anywhere, but haven’t resorted to pirating anything since limewire

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Bandcamp first, if you can pay for what you want and then, surprisingly, still Soulseek.
  
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  - IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I started using Soulseek nearly 20 years ago. Throughout my life I have seen p2p sharing platforms disappear one by one. But Soulseek? I’m amazed every day that I use it and discover that it’s still alive. It is the eternal soldier that continues the fight to this day.
    
    Amusingly there are a few search terms which come up blank, but just throw in alternative key words and all is fine. I discovered this when searching Franz Ferdinand came up with none of their music!
    
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  - Deceptichum@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Bandcamp was sold out. I stopped buying off them on that day.
    
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- StrawberryPigtails@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  For obtaining music, I check Bandcamp, then Amazon (they have drm free mp3s of most music and cds for everything else), then the artist site if available, then finally I look in the seas.
  
  As for the best way to store and play the music back, I’ve put everything on my Jellyfin instance and then stream the media to my devices. On iOS, FinAmp is a decent music player for this setup.
  
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Kid_Thunder@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Yeah.... How many times does the lesson need to be learned? The worse deal the consumer is give, the more likely they'll just pirate instead. This is in both price and usability/frustration level.

I still remember when Sirius/xm was actually popular. Ad free good quality radio where you could tune in to specialized stuff for a good price.You could generally get it for around $6/7 per mo/device. At the time I was going to buy a new stereo head just for better navigation of my flash drive with my music (I was already off of burned discs). But Sirius/xm was so cheap and it had an added bonus of some discovery and stuff that why bother? I'll just primarily use that!

The prices raised a couple of bucks and commercials for their top 10 channels but they are very quick.

Then prices raised and it was commercials for every channel and so on. I cancelled when it was $18/mo/device with commercials everywhere long enough that it wasn't as bad but close enough to being as bad as radio, except I'm paying for it. My friends told me "yeah but you just call them when your time is up and they'll always make it like $12/mo/device for the first year and sometimes if you complain after it runs out they'll do it the second year too.

But why bother when by then you had great alternatives like Pandora and then Spotify and so-on. You get the same experience as Sirius/xm but it is free. Don't want ads? It's just a few bucks a month!

Now streaming music is going down the same road that every popular service of everything always does. Worse experience and ad revenue. The price point for the pay options rise and won't atop. It won't be but maybe a decade until you can't pay for no ads. You'll pay to be able to pick exactly what you want to play and to decrease ad time I'm sure.

In the background as the deal gets worse and there is no alternative offering a good deal with a good consumer experience then piracy rises. It always does. Companies will always complain piracy hurts them and the artists but all they have to do is be more reasonable.

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- cosmic_slate@dmv.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Fun info on the SiriusXM thing: if you cancel and wait a few months, now they’ll give you an offer for a multi-year plan for $5/mo. If you are a current customer and you have a history of threatening to cancel to get promos, supposedly they’re just giving up and locking people into the same $5-6 plan for life.
  
  If they did this normally (or at least let you bundle radios for dirt cheap), I would’ve happily subscribed for the last 15 years.
  
  $6/mo is solidly in “cheap enough to forget to cancel” territory. I’m not hurting financially, but after something costs more than $10/mo I start thinking “do I need this?”
  
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- flintheart_glomgold@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  In the background as the deal gets worse and there is no alternative offering a good deal with a good consumer experience then piracy rises. It always does. Companies will always complain piracy hurts them and the artists but all they have to do is be more reasonable.
  
  100% this
  
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PanArab@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Anghami is $2.99 per month or $24.99 per year. It is the only subscription service I use and I’m happy with it. $10.99 per month is excessive.

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- TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Do they actually have the same selection as Spotify and Apple music? I checked their website, and it appears to be catered to Arabic listeners, but I saw one of the pictures at least has Taylor Swift on there. I listen to a lot of niche stuff, though, and I don’t feel like downloading the app just to see if it’s there.
  
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  - PanArab@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Their international selection is small, if you primarily listen to English songs and podcasts it will not be sufficient. I think they still offer a free trial.
    
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JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I’m not even able to put music on my watch unless it’s a mp3, so paying to stream music is out of the question.

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snownyte@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

Noobs...

The other thing with Spotify is that it bullies you into it's subcription. Limited Skips. Ad bombardment (ads are still on podcasts so why even pay a subscription?). The app on mobile is abysmally slow with connection issues.

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Rolando@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I really miss iTunes circa 2007 (I think?) before it got enshittified. I had it running on a Windows machine with my carefully-curated music library until the machine died. I got the music files off but had to reinstall iTunes and by that time it was a bloated piece of crap. I haven’t found the equivalent since!

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- AlexWIWA@lemmy.ml ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Winamp hasn’t changed. In this instance, I consider that a good thing
  
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  - Shurimal@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Winamp hasn't changed, but Foobar2000 and its plugins have only got better over the years.
    
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  - Bonehead@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Does it still really whip the llamas ass?
    
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- prettybunnys@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I can’t ever remember a time that iTunes as a music player wasn’t a shitty product, especially on windows.
  
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  - The_v@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    At my last job all the default company phones where iPhones. So all the windows laptops had iTunes pre-installed by IT on them.
    
    Having refused apple products due to poverty and being forced to use a Mac desktop at a previous job (clusterfuck) I had not seen it in years.
    
    It’s one of the the most poorly designed, confusing dumpster fires of a program around. The company of “it just works” my ass.
    
    I swear it was like 4 different uninstalls to get rid of it. Only to restart and see another mysterious program appear. I have gotten malware that was easier to get rid of.
    
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- SwampYankee@mander.xyz ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I was in the same boat as you about 5 years ago - I had been stubbornly using iTunes, but it was so slow and the store was just an annoyance, it was getting in the way of me actually listening to my music. I ended up choosing MusicBee over Winamp or foobar2000 because it has all the library management stuff (even a sync to mobile device function) and a great interface right out of the box.
  
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- flintheart_glomgold@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Yah, and before that SoundJam, an indy app which Apple bought and re-skinned into iTunes.
  
  At the time it was all wonderful and intuitive. Drag and drop everything, beautifully curated collections, simple and dependable, and sitting right there on your hard drive / iPod so you always had everything.
  
  Now it’s all a sewer of bullshit, annoying and alienating to use, it makes music a miserable experience. They wonder why people don’t want to pay for it. And use the law to beat us over the head until we submit to our own misery.
  
  We really gotta update consumer laws for the digital age so there’s a reasonable balance between corporations and consumers again.
  
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Apollo2323@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Nicotine+ is the way to go for this.

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- damienallbran@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  God bless soulseek
  
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buddascrayon@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

Spotify raised its prices by one dollar last year to $10.99 a month, the same price as Apple Music.

Meanwhile I’ve been paying the same $4.99 for Pandora’s simple commercial free service for the last 10 years. I can’t select individual songs to play, it just plays random songs based on my channel choices, but it works fine for me. Anything I specifically want to listen to I’ll just look up on YouTube.

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banneryear1868@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Always has been

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paddirn@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Did it ever go away?

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- GeekFTW@kbin.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Not in the slightest.
  
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ominouslemon@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
They don’t want a bad experience so they use shady websites to download music in the shittiest possibile quality? I don’t buy it.

People are just not able to afford what they want, that’s it

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- flintheart_glomgold@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  shady websites
  
  There are no innocents here. There’ s a case to be made that nothing is more shady for consumers than the mass data harvesting, profiling, brokering and content shaping that flows from using Facebook, Twitter, Amazon or TikTok
  
  shittiest possible quality
  
  You’re doing it wrong
  
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- EtherWhack@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The quality is much better than you think. Most people also don’t have the acute hearing of audio technologist to determine if a song is 192kbps or FLAC without hearing them back-to-back repeatedly or would care much. It’s also why terrestrial radio is still a thing. People tend to either want full control of their library or just want something to listen to all without having to deal with an unfriendly interface.
  
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- MajorHavoc@programming.dev ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  People tend to respond to whether something is getting better or worse, more than whether it’s objectively good.
  
  Like virtually any community software, the piracy experience is getting better, but usually quite slowly.
  
  But thanks to needless DRM, price hikes, and skimping on mobile app development, streaming services are actually somehow getting worse.
  
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Zuberi@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Never left

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clif@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
“when pigs fly: the death of oink, the birth of dissent, and a brief history of record industry suicide”

Look it up if you haven’t read it, I never miss an opportunity to post it but it looks like the original demonbaby host is now offline. The are mirrors though.

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autotldr@lemmings.world [bot] ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
This is the best summary I could come up with:

Last year, over 17 billion visits were made to music piracy websites around the world, first reported by Wired.

We’ve come a long way since Napster, but people are once again using the internet to illegally download their favorite songs in a major way.

Muso, a research firm that studies piracy, concluded that the high prices of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are pushing people back towards illegal downloads.

Instead of coughing up $132 a year, more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

A simple Google search yields dozens of blue links to these sites, and they’re, by far, the largest form of audio piracy on the internet.

Google has hardline policies against copyright infringement in its terms of service but seems to let these music piracy sites scootch by.

The original article contains 379 words, the summary contains 147 words. Saved 61%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!

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VampyreOfNazareth@lemm.ee ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Bandcamp ftw

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fne8w2ah@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Family sharing is the way to go for me.

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LSNLDN@slrpnk.net ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
If there was soulseek on an iOS app I think I’d go fully back to piracy. Never gotten over Apple Music ruining all my playlists, just want to go back to basics

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trslim@pawb.social ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Me, still using youtube-mp3 website

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Mango@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Fuck YouTube rips. V0 for life!

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- GreatBlueHeron@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  I’m in the process of replacing all my mp3 (including a lot of V0 and 320) with FLAC. I know that most of the time I can’t tell the difference, but I did some testing and in some scenarios with some music I could tell. And, at the size of music files, disk is cheap.
  
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  - IndiBrony@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    To me, using FLAC files is like using a bay leaf in cooking. You can’t always tell the difference, but you can always FEEL the difference.
    
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virtueisdead@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
certifiable

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