"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.
“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.
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”.
Spotify needs to connect to network to play songs, and there is no option to not play on metered network. So I sometime would play songs that Spotify mysteriously deleted from downloads, and lose a month of data.
Now, I mostly get my music from bandcamp and only listen to couple classical album on spotify, since there is no good place to buy them.
The day that Spotify pull a Netflix on their family plan is the day I leave Spotify.
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.
The problem isn’t is price. “People just don’t want to pay for a bad their software is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is that user-hostile design. Plus Steve Jobs himself said it back in 2007: “people want to Own their music (reuters.com).” Having it, organizing it, curating it is half the fun.”
Fixed the post for you. I am not trying to be an ass and stated this in a previous post but people’s push to piracy is almost always to obtain what is believed to be what is becoming or is unobtainable. Price is and availability is almost always the driving force of piracy because price plays a part in availability.
I was all on board with the post until I saw, “people just don’t want to pay for a bad software that is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is the user-hostile design.” This to me is so far from the truth that I like to call statements like this the Lemmy or FOSS mentality that I see on here and it isn’t meant to be insulting. I have defined it that way because I think Lemmy users get just as wrapped up in their own opinions and personal belief system that they forget they are also in a bubble and their opinions steer far off course to justify some personal idea or hope about what is actually pushing “mainstream” people to make choices that just aren’t why average consumers are making choices.
People will 100% buy and use bad products user experience does only go so far though. I would say Spotify is as popular as it is because of its design as well as Apple Music. The features and design layout are what make their music services easier to use for most consumers that and they are popular services by word of mouth and are commonly used on the most popular devices because they are pre installed. Why have 5 music apps on an iPhone when Apple makes a music app that is already there. Point being design isn’t the issue. The issue is competition, choice, and price. There really aren’t a whole lot of options, popularity wise, outside of Apple Music, Spotify, or YouTube music. These users aren’t flocking to open source apps they are going straight to Piracy by ripping the content from YouTube directly and it is absolutely almost in direct relation with the increase in price increase. The “mainstream” user which I call the average consumer isn’t worried about Spotify’s design they want it to just function and play their music and be available and popular by design.
Over 20 years ago, the internet was revolutionized through free music file sharing. Today, Napster’s legacy lives on through websites that rip YouTube’s audio.
Is this guy a boomer or a zoomer? It sure seems like he doesn’t know that what made Napster great wasn’t really the downloading so much as how it facilitated discovering new music. Looking through other people’s collections while the thing you came for downloaded was amazing.
Edit: I looked it up, Zoomer
Napster was not great for discovery. These were the days of 56k modems. Even with 128k mp3s it took a while to download a song. Idk, maybe I used it differently, but Napster was definitely a “look for specific song” application.
Discovery came later with Kazaa and DC++ and the beginnings of broadband.
Once you found the song and started downloading it you had plenty of time to browse the rest of the library of the person you were downloading from. That could lead to finding stuff you never heard of that you would like. The only catch was that you couldn’t listen to it immediately, but you could Google what you found to get an idea of what it was and go from there.
Google was not really popular in 99-01, nor did modems have the bandwidth to do two things at once effectively. How would you “get an idea”? Streaming audio barely existed outside of some RealPlayer things.
If your comment was about Kazaa, I’d agree. It’s about Napster which puts it about 5 years off imo.
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
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.
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
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.
I wanna know what is so different from my experience with Spotify. Because as far as enshittification goes, it hasn’t really changed since I first began using it almost a decade ago aside from the price going up a little last year. I mean, I constantly see people saying it has ads even with premium but I have not once ever heard a single ad for anything, even for Spotify’s own services on the platform, that was put there by Spotify and not simply already in a podcast that would be there from any source of listening to said podcast.
Maybe it’s because most of the artists I like are fuckin dead so their shit never gets removed 🤷🏻♂️
Agreed. I’m a frequent sailor of the high seas with TV and movies but I actually pay for a Spotify family plan because it’s so convenient and I love the features they have like being able to use my phone app to cast music to any available nearby source or having a party and allowing multiple people to input songs to a shared playlist. I do encounter frequent bugs with all their updates but that hasn’t risen above the level of mild annoyance yet.
Pirating music is such a pain in the ass these days since there is no standard naming conventions like with TV and movies and there can be multiple sources for the same song (single, album, compilation album, web rip, etc) so even tools like Lidarr don’t make it easy and most public/private torrent trackers are pretty sparse when it comes to music outside of the most mainstream of mainstream albums.
Yes, pretty much everywhere which is why you see files named something like: Forrest.Gump.1994.1080p.Bluray.DTS-MA.5.1.mkv. Movies and TV have databases like TVDB and TMDB which don’t really exist for music. There are things like MusicBrainz but it’s a crapshoot in my experience.
I mean, you just have to learn everything mp3 formats and go pass the What.cd test and you’re good.
Pirating music is such a pain in the ass these days since there is no standard naming conventions like with TV and movies
Things haven’t changed much since the days of Limewire and Kazaa in that regard. I remember when System of a Down did that Zelda song! 😂
Back in those days there was a lot of options which meant you could typically find what you’re looking for with the right search terms and knowing what to avoid so you didn’t download an MP3 of Bill Clinton talking about Lewinski. Its definitely a lot more challenging these days since the quantity of files is lower while naming hasn’t gotten any better.
I haven’t enjoyed possessing music since my phone replaced my ipod. Maybe I didn’t try hard enough, but the seamless* updating of my library and playlists on iTunes and iPod was great. The poor format of the music I did pirate off limewire wasn’t as big a deal - partly from the smooth UI of iTunes, partly due to lower music acquisition. I say seamless* because it was problematic when my iPods got full, having to cull the library, but I do beleive it was simple enough to drag selections and individual playlists.
But now what? I don’t have a program to load my pc and phone, I never liked what I found for music management on windows, as you said formatting isn’t consistent on torrents, and my phones fill with pictures faster than music. So, in comes Spotify. Anything I want on a whim, shared playlists, I do enjoy not storing music myself, the social aspect of public playlists, and an option to store things offline. It’s similar reasons Netflix curtailed my pirating. But, as a warning to Spotify, if music streaming services break up content like Netflix, I won’t wait to cancel my subscription. That’ll be my push to start whatever suggestions I imagine I’ll get here in the replies
Spotify was OK back when I used it after Google Music died. YouTube Music’s algorithm sucked so I used Spotify for about a year. Then I installed Plex for movies and TV but also found it was also great at streaming music. PlexAmp gives me access to a good suggestion algorithm. I made the decision to give them my $$ instead. Now with lidarr+scripts I can have any music I want with almost zero effort. Plus, as the OP said, I get the fun little side hobby of music curation.
I’m curious about where you find your music. When I looked into an indexer for music ~3 years ago, it was slim pickings. I recently found that there a method to download from Spotify, but haven’t had a chance to try it out
Not sure if you mean find recommendations of new stuff to listen to, or the download source? Recommendations from Last.fm Download source is currently Deezer. Lidarr+ scripts has a bit of a learning curve https://github.com/RandomNinjaAtk/arr-scripts
Yeah I’ve been using Spotify for about 15 years now, since i first had to pretend I was German to access it. It along with Steam have always been the only two services I’m happy to pay for with zero issues.
As far as my experience has gone, nothing has changed for the worse in all that time.
Really? Their made-for-you playlists are nowhere near as good as they used to be. The discover playlist is now ass. Radio plays the same 20 songs over and over and over again.
Right now the app is suggesting a Classical Piano playlist to me. I have never listened to classical piano. Ever. Most recently I’ve listened to Tool, Rage Against the Machine and a 90’s metal playlist (I’m on a 90’s kick). Why on earth would it think I want classical piano?
Possibly because some of those bands are influenced by classical music (though I mean it’s rather broad; you could probably trace most musical influences back to the classical period).
I listen to the same kinda shit as your most recent stuff and I don’t have much issue with most suggestions. I don’t really like the modern pop stuff, but I still get why it serves it up (most of the best 90’s alternative stuff was technically pop and I like one Taylor Swift song).
If only it were that clever. I think it’s because their algorithm sees: person listens to 90’s music so person = old, old people like classical piano.
In the same way that I very occasionally play Jason Isbell and after I do so it starts throwing yeehaw-big trucks-and-gurls-in-cutoff-shorts country music at me for months afterwards.
"Radio plays the same 20 songs over and over and over again. "
So just like traditional radio stations then. ☹️
I swear, we are stuck in a loop where shitty solutions just get reinvented over and over again. And most times when sometime comes up with a genuine improvement, those in power say “oh no no no! That won’t do!” and kill it. I’m Gen-X and it’s been this way all my life. And probably for many generations before that too.
