Technology

59534 readers

3195 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

1085

Music Piracy Is Back, Baby (gizmodo.com)

submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by flintheart_glomgold@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

342 comments fedilink hide all child comments

"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.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 3 points 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!