Music Streaming Service Exclusives Make Pirating Tempting Again (theverge.com)

The advent of online music streaming service has made it easier for millions of people worldwide to listen to all of their favorite songs, and convinced plenty to pay for music. But with the space of music streaming service getting increasingly crowded and artists beginning to do exclusive with select platforms, it has again become inconvenient for people to get everything they want with one subscription. The Verge's Ashley Carman writes that this is pushing many people to resort to piracy. Carman writes: Rampant piracy could make a comeback, solely because streaming service exclusives, and complete artist opt-outs, make it impossible to get all music in one place. Last week, Drake dropped two new singles off his upcoming album Views from the 6. The tracks are currently only available on Apple Music. Last month, Kanye West released his newest album The Life of Pablo on Tidal only. It came to Spotify this month after an estimated 500,000 people had already torrented it. Big Sean and Jhen's Aiko released their collaboration album TWENTY88 on only Tidal at first. Beyonce and Nicki Minaj released a Tidal-only music video for Feeling Myself. More than a million people signed up for Tidal over the course of a day just to get Kanye's new album, though it's assumed that most won't stick around. At what cost to listeners are these exclusives being made and where does it leave fans? If users wanted to subscribe to only one service, it would come out to approximately $120 per year. Two services will cost $240, and three services, say, Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, will cost $360, which will be a substantial cost to casual listeners.

Comments

Might?

[rockout]

When did pirating stop being tempting?

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

When did pirating stop being tempting?

When Spotify started to offer very convenient multi-device access to most music for very low price (or free with ads), all reports show that pirating has gone significantly down.

Re:Might?

[serviscope_minor]

Pirating stopped being especially tempting when the music industry realised that it ought to sell people what people wanted to buy, for a price they were prepared to pay and allow them to play their music whenever and whereever they liked without anything abusive.

Basically the various music stores, once they dropped DRM, did this. Hear a track, like it, buy it and play it back on anything, anywhere at any time. And the streaming internet radio only helped, since now there were nice options to listen to stuff more or less wherever you wanted.

But now, with exclusives, they're making it more awkward for people to get it through legitimate channels, so people go to the one channel which gives them the flexibility they want: piracy.

Here's the thing, most people aren't freeloading asshats. Most people are happy to pay a reasonable price for something they like, as long as they get something good in return. The "problem" with piracy is not that it was cheaper[*], the problem was it offered (and in the case of video still does) a *better* product.

You can play a pirated media file on any device. You never get unskippable ads with pirated media. With pirated media you don't have to connect your device to the internet because you tried to play the wrong kind of file. With pirated media, there are no DRM servers to be switched off rendering your collection worthless. And so on.

[*] Some people are freeloading asshats and will never pay anything. But you can't get money out of those people.

Re:Might?

[slaker]

This has been bothering me for a while, but why do people talk about Spotify like it solves a problem? It might be the genre of music I like, but when I look at what Spotify offers, I don't see how it's superior to Google Play Music (where I can upload 50,000 hourlong tracks and listen on 10 authorized devices, where Spotify only allows 3333 tracks and 3 devices) and see a streaming catalog that with poorly cataloged , mislabeled or missing content.

I like classical music, something that no streaming service handles well, but Google Music is free if you're just uploading stuff you already have. What's Spotify doing to make itself better than that?

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

To hell with the authoritarian gatekeepers and their rationing! Time for the buyers to set the rules for a change. Balance of power is a good thing, I say. You either release it, or you don't. Control is no longer yours.

Re:Might?

[suutar]

not really the best parallel. Perhaps more like "it's hard to find a car with all the features I want. I'll build my own and not bother to get it inspected or registered."

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, I didn't realize that people were torrenting their Reason, Logic Pro and Cubase so that they're making their own music instead of downloading it from others. At least they'd be something more than just endlessly entitled little consumers.

Re:Might?

[ArmoredDragon]

That's not a valid comparison.

The appeal of streaming services is that distribution is simplified to the point that you get everything under one roof. In order for shoplifting to be a valid comparison, you'd have to be able to shoplift just anything you could possibly desire from just one store, which you obviously can't do. Under a proper tracker (say what.cd in this case) you really do get everything from just one place.

This, by the way, is why a lot of people in other countries like to VPN to get US based Netflix instead of having to subscribe to multiple services in their own country to get the same content, which is still paying for (and not pirating) their content.

The fact that you have a job (or even no job at all) doesn't come into play.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, AC from the "debated-to-death" comment a bit down from here.

The answer to your question is: When Pandora and Spotify launched.

The reason for that doesn't even have to do with the usual arguments for piracy - availability (much larger library) and cost ($0 vs $n) - but with the main argument against piracy: convenience.

If there were a pirate equivalent of Pandora / Spotify that was reliable, ubquitously available (web, mobile apps, smart device apps) and wasn't under constant threat of getting shut down by the RIAA, it would similarly popular. Grooveshark almost hit that spot - except that some of the uploads were terrible quality, misleadingly titled (nothing like thinking you're about to listen to your favorite artist and instead getting a recording of a group of young teenagers having a screaming match in an FPS), and of course they did eventually get shut down (largely in thanks to Grooveshark's own preposterous legal slaloming).

As it is right now, if you just want to listen to some music, hitting up your favorite torrent / NZB / whatever site is very much an inconvenient and thus non-tempting proposition.

Non-offering of certain content, or exclusives, make it tempting again; even though for most music if you can't find it on Pandora/Spotify, there's usually YouTube.

Re:Might?

[AmiMoJo]

This is nothing like shoplifting. Music is given away for free all the time, on YouTube and Vimeo, on the radio and the TV. Downloading a copy doesn't deprive anyone of anything, except the existential concept of a potential lost sale.

Watching a music video and then changing the channel when the ads come on isn't stealing. Humming a tune you heard isn't theft. Downloading a digital copy is at worst copyright infringement. It's definitely not theft, and it's not even that hard to morally justify as at the prices being offered most of these kids weren't going to pay anyway, so not even a potential sale was lost.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd love to see how you can shoplift an intangible product. A bunch of sounds melded together does not a physically stealable product make.
You might want to read up exactly how much the artists actually make per download or CD sale as opposed to live gigs & merch. They product music as an advertisement to get people to come to live shows where they can actually make real money.
Only the really massive groups will see a decent return on music sales in which case them not getting a few cents from a music sale won't stop them affording another solid gold humvee.

One last example before i go. Taylor swift is worth between 200 & 240 million dollars with an approx income of 80 million a year. Should i feel guilty about pirating her music thus depriving her of a few cents because she took her music off free to listen streaming services in favor of making even more money?

Re:Might?

[war4peace]

Piracy stopped being tempting for me when my income became sufficient to allow subscribing to a music streaming service, buying a couple (okay, maybe 5) games a month, subscribing to Netflix from my country and subscribing to some SaaS offers (e.g. Adobe products) whenever needed.

Since then, I bought all the software I needed and I only visited torrent websites to download exactly 3 games, the reason being that watching "Let's play"s and trailers and screenshots as well as reading opinions came out inconclusive. With no demos available, it was the only way to make sure my money wasn't wasted. Turned out 2 of 3 games were actually shit, so it was a good choice. The third I bought after finding out I liked it.

Ten years ago I was pirating literally everything. Today I am pirating nothing - actually I am encouraging others to "buy that shit" instead of pirating it.

Re:Might?

[suutar]

It doesn't solve your problem, but it did mostly solve mine. I pretty much only listen to music while I'm driving, which comes out to a couple of hours a day. There's genres and artists that I like but they don't have, but they have enough that I stopped bothering with itunes. Uploading what I have and what I get in the future is more effort (especially when including the effort of getting stuff in the future) than I want to go to for just a couple of hours.

Your mileage may vary :)

Re:Might?

[Saint Fnordius]

It became inconvenient when services offered more comfort and better quality. The payment was offset by the convenience and the trust that you were getting the real deal, not some crappy rip. Yes, the biggest reason people pirated was because the music was unavailable.

If the nominal fee does not bring the wanted convenience, then I can see why people will start looking to BitTorrent, and it really is a case of the artists leaving money on the table that their fans would be more than happy to give them.

Re:Might?

[stealth_finger]

not really the best parallel. Perhaps more like "it's hard to find a car with all the features I want. I'll build my own and not bother to get it inspected or registered."

Nah that'd be closer to I cant get the music I want so I'll write my own.

Re:Might?

[stealth_finger]

This has been bothering me for a while, but why do people talk about Spotify like it solves a problem? It might be the genre of music I like, but when I look at what Spotify offers, I don't see how it's superior to Google Play Music (where I can upload 50,000 hourlong tracks and listen on 10 authorized devices, where Spotify only allows 3333 tracks and 3 devices) and see a streaming catalog that with poorly cataloged , mislabeled or missing content.

I like classical music, something that no streaming service handles well, but Google Music is free if you're just uploading stuff you already have. What's Spotify doing to make itself better than that?

I don't think people are referring to spotify specifically. It's just becoming the go to word for music streaming service, like google is for search engines, netflix for vid streaming, hoover for vacuum cleaners etc etc

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got into the habit of pirating everything when I was a poor teenager. Even though I have a high income now and could easily afford everything I want, I still pirate it all. I'm sure I save at least $2000/year. I can't imagine what would ever compel me to stop other than the threat of jail time.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Easily over a decade and a half now..

Re:Might?

[barc0001]

> Some people are freeloading asshats and will never pay anything. But you can't get money out of those people.

I would take some exception to this and say that some of those people are broke kids who have little or no money but scads of time on their hands that they use to track down things they want. Then those kids grow up as fans of the artists, get an income and shift to paying customers because they no longer have the time and energy to search things down like they used to. So you can get money out of them with time.

Personally I really like streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, but I'm starting to think that maybe having local copies of some things is a good thing as one of the problems with streaming services is the ephemeral nature of availability. For example I queued up Fringe a while back to watch when I got through some of my other backlog, and when I go to watch it, suddenly it's not part of the Netflix catalog for my country any longer (!). Or I made a playlist on Spotify for work and sometime in the last month or so a half dozen songs just vanished from it and only appear in the playlist greyed out if I activate the "show content no longer available" option.

Re:Might?

[gnupun]

"Let's play"s and trailers and screenshots as well as reading opinions came out inconclusive. With no demos available, it was the only way to make sure my money wasn't wasted. Turned out 2 of 3 games were actually shit, so it was a good choice.

You could not evaluate the game by watching it on twitch.tv before buying/pirating?

Re:Might?

[war4peace]

Not really.
I'm talking about Firewatch, Tharsis and Adr1ft. They're the kind of games you really need to play yourself to realize they're good for you or not.
On a more general note, all decision-heavy games mandate playing before buying. A demo would suffice. If you passively watch someone else make decisions to which you might disagree, you're following their path but you can't tell if the game's something you would enjoy for more than 15 minutes.
OK, Firewatch is a walking simulator but it has absolutely zero replayability, so after playing it for 10 minutes I uninstalled it, deleted the torrent and watched someone else play it.

Sure, I could have gone with the Steam Refund way, but as of now it's tedious and awkward. I really dislike when they need 5 seconds to take your money but 3 days to give them back.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think people are referring to spotify specifically. It's just becoming the go to word for music streaming service, like google is for search engines, netflix for vid streaming, hoover for vacuum cleaners etc etc

Indeed. I'm the OP who mentioned Spotify above here, and in discussions like this I mean it exactly like you say. They were the first to succeed in modernizing how music is offered, which was very badly needed. Yes, there were attempts at streaming before (I even worked for one), but the Spotify success formula was the combination of good UX, good (not perfect) music selection and good cross-device functionality, with both a free model and a reasonably priced option. The free option also very important to Spotify's social features/spreading, you could easily share a Spotify song/playlist with others and all could play it.

Myself I really do like Spotify as the best of the options still, but that wasn't the main point in this context. Also, to the poster complaining about streaming services not handling classical music well. It is not the streaming services, it is the publishers of your music who are still being the pricks all of the music publishers were some years ago.

Re:Might?

[war4peace]

To each his own. I'm thinking that my spent money allow content makers to produce even better content in the future.

Re:Might?

[serviscope_minor]

I would take some exception to this and say that some of those people are...

Yeah good point. It's hard to feel much of anything if a kid with no money pirates something. It's not sane to mark that up as a lost sale. I think rephrashing, that while people are in the pirating mode, you're not going to get more money out of them.

They can of course change with time but that's a long term thing. There's nothing you can do to your services to make a kid have more money to spend on them and less time to hunt down porated copies.

Re:Might?

[dogboi]

For me, if I like a song, I'm going to buy it, and while I subscribe to streaming services, exclusivity agreements don't mean much to me. I can hear anything I want on youtube first before deciding if I want to buy it. The reason I buy: because I can buy it DRM free and play it on any device I like. The same isn't true of TV and Movies, though, and I therefore refuse to give them a dime of my money unless I'm buying physical media which I immediately rip to make a DRM-free backup copy. I don't pirate music. I can buy it in a form I want. I don't buy movies and TV shows: I can't get them in a form I want. Simple as that.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Shoplifting stops someone who could have purchased what you shoplifted from being able to purchase it.

Re:Might?

[The-Ixian]

It's not just about the game visuals. It is about the game play, mechanics and key mappings.

For example, if I cannot remap all of the keys in the game, I will not play it. I don't care how good the graphics are.

As a matter of fact, graphics account for about 10% of the "is the game fun?" equation..

Re:Might?

[loonycyborg]

Which pretty much means that those work out to be voluntary donations and not purchases de facto. I think this should be enshrined de jure too.

Re: Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

If the business isn't busting shoplifters I don't see why you wouldn't. They bend the rules about taxes, I bend the rules about borrowing music. Sorry life isn't fair, lol.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

When Steam got its shit together, I mostly stopped pirating games. It was easier to just pay and download than to have to deal with a crack, possible virus infection, bugs that come from the crack (or not being able to update), lost save games, and all that shit.

When Grooveshark came out, I stopped pirating music. It was any song I wanted for a monthly fee. It's far easier to just type in a song, and hit play than it was to go hunting on Gnutella or in torrents for the song I was looking for.

I still pirate TV shows, even though I have cable. Better watching experience without the commercials.

I still pirate movies. There have been many times where the digital version of a movie cost more than buying the media and waiting for it to show up. Redbox rentals are by far the best deal, but I have to put on pants and drive to get to a Redbox. Make things easier to watch from your service than it is to download a torrent, and I'll switch. That includes a reasonable price.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

I buy when it's more convenient. I torrent when it's more convenient. It's damn convenient to be able to listen to any song I want, at any time, with a simple search rather than having to hunt down a torrent. I can buy any game I want, and be playing it within an hour. Completely good with this. Movies/video though? I almost exclusively pirate. None of the services have all the content I want. Not all seasons of what I want are available. It's just easier and more complete to pirate TV shows and movies at this time. When they put together a service that makes this easy, I'll stop pirating. Until it's easier to be legitimate though, I have no sympathy. They are doing this to themselves.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

I got into the habit of pirating everything when I was a poor teenager. Even though I have a high income now and could easily afford everything I want, I still pirate it all. I'm sure I save at least $2000/year. I can't imagine what would ever compel me to stop other than the threat of jail time.

You are the freeloader everyone wants busted

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

O look ... the bitch has money... now his morals are raised. Please fuck off with your shitty speech.

Re:Might?

[mark-t]

If your definition of theft includes intangible notions such as rights. permissions, etc, that can be effectively "taken" from someone, then I believe a pretty strong argument exists that copyright infringement is theft, actually. What is being stolen in the case of copyright infringement is a proportional measure of the copyright holder's exclusivity to control who may copy the work... By the very definition of "exclusive", which means that nobody else is doing it, when infringement occurs, that right which supposed to be wholly integral part of what copyright is in the first place is being deprived to what is otherwise the lawfully recognized right holder. One might try and make the argument that such loss is inconsequential to society or to the rights holder, but that does not mean that something is not being taken, and its measure of worth to one person may not be the same as to another. Whether this makes copyright infringement morally unacceptable or not probably depends on whether you ultimately believe that copyright as a concept is a good thing, and even if one has issues with copyright and its practical implementation in modern society but otherwise agrees with the general idea behind copyright, whether one advocates that being wronged should make it acceptable to reciprocate with additional wrong, as if that will somehow "balance the scales".

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Music is cheap. I don't pirate because I can easily afford whatever I want to listen to.

But I am not going to have a subscription service for listening to music. Sell me a CD I can have forever, or I record from the radio. (legal in my jurisdiction) No stupid subscription services that cause trouble as I replace phones/PCs.

I also understand that people like to use a streaming service, but don't want to subscribe to lots of them. CDs (and records) are made by many recording companies, but I can get them all in the same music shop. They'll even order it, if I want something they don't have in-house. No need to go to lots of shops, unless I want something immediately. The same is needed online. The artist may have an exclusive deal with some recording company - but that company should still make the music available anywhere. Making the sale is in their own interest, not just mine.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

This is pretty much exactly me.

I pirated all the time as a teen, but grew up and had an income.
Of what little it is, but I barely bought anything, done things optimally, never had heating on at high when I could just throw clothes on, etc

But the only reasons I do now are:
foreign subtitled content
trials for things without trials or demos of any kind.

Exclusive content is rarely worth a thing.
I hope all the online TV streaming services become more like music systems eventually.
I really hope they don't do the exclusive content crap, maybe exclusive EXTRAs, and general service and UI exclusive features, but the actual main content, I hope it becomes global. It would really improve online TV massively.

Re:Might?

[Rockoon]

I can't imagine what would ever compel me to stop other than the threat of jail time.

Probably an honest review of the value of your time will compel you.

If it takes me an hour to "do some pirating," then that pirating better save me more than just a few bucks.

For music its still probably in your interest to pirate...you can quickly get tons of music that you want.

For videos I bet you are beyond the tipping point due to how long it takes to find a *good* rip of a specific movie (yes, the blockbusters will be easily findable, but try to find a good rip of... say... "Better Off Dead"... yeah.. that will sink your time for quite awhile)

Re:Might?

[slaker]

Also, to the poster complaining about streaming services not handling classical music well. It is not the streaming services, it is the publishers of your music who are still being the pricks all of the music publishers were some years ago.

Unless you have some evidence to support that, I don't believe that is an accurate statement. My theory is that the schemas in use to underlie music database services are not built to properly accommodate classical music and that developers, while perhaps aware of the issues, are entirely too lazy to fix them.

In other words, they want to treat everything like singles-driven top 40, and when something doesn't match that behavior, it's easier to ignore it than to consider the more expansive view of data that's needed in order to handle it properly.

But sure, publishers are assholes.

Re:Might?

[Quirkz]

This, by the way, is why a lot of people in other countries like to VPN to get US based Netflix instead of having to subscribe to multiple services...

The first thing I thought of when reading this article was Netflix, and how it doesn't have everything, so we're also subscribing to Amazon Prime (mostly for the shipping, but also we've got access to movies) and Hulu Plus, and an additional Starz membership ... and we still don't have everything, or know where to find what. I have to ask my four-year-old which video service has the show she wants to watch.

The idea of inflicting the same issue on myself for music is unappealing, to say the least. If I like it, I'd still rather buy it and have it for keeps.

Re:Might?

[Grishnakh]

One last example before i go. Taylor swift is worth between 200 & 240 million dollars with an approx income of 80 million a year. Should i feel guilty about pirating her music thus depriving her of a few cents because she took her music off free to listen streaming services in favor of making even more money?

No, but you *should* feel guilty for willingly listening to her "music" in the first place.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example I queued up Fringe a while back to watch when I got through some of my other backlog, and when I go to watch it, suddenly it's not part of the Netflix catalog for my country any longer (!)

Had that happen to me last month. I'd scheduled a movie night party (I have a projector with 13 ft screen) with lots of friends coming over. The day before, I double-checked everything to make sure it was working and... the movie we had picked was no longer available from the streaming service it was on just a month prior.

I ended up pirating it. Party went off without a hitch.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems like you haven't pirated movies in a few years. The Pirate bay has a reputation system, movies marked with VIP or Trusted always work and are easy to find.

It took me about 20 seconds to find your movie

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

It sounds like you're saying that kids are freeloading asshats; some people grow up and others don't.
I think I could get behind that theory.

Re:Might?

[dwywit]

It stopped being tempting when I found Live365, sadly now defunct. It took a while, searching the various stations, but I eventually settled on a list of about 15 "favourites". Occasionally I might look for something different, but it worked well for me, and I was happy to pay subscription for a number of years. In fact, I would've been happy to pay more - they charged about USD$75/year, and I would have been happy to double that, it was worth that much to me. Free of ads, and supporting artists.

Then the copyright review board decided to increase royalties, and remove the subsidy/sharing scheme available to small broadcasters, some of whom I listened to. The owner of one of my favourite stations told me his charges had risen 5-fold. So, Live365 died earlier this year, my "favourites" are now either defunct, or spread around different sites, e.g. radionomy, radiojar, spotify, AccuRadio, Tunein, Radio Tunes, and I would have to pay multiple subscriptions just to hear those stations again without ads.

Not gonna happen.

So, artists, now that you're getting zero revenue from Live365, instead of some (admittedly small) revenue, how do you feel about the CRB acting in your interests? Maybe you should seek another business model? Something, something, negotiate and licence your music directly to streaming services, maybe?

I'm not going to pay any more subscriptions until I can find a service with everything that I want, or nearly everything, under one roof.

On another matter - Dear internet broadcasters, you don't need more than the occasional station ID call. I know it's tradition, but the days of twiddling a radio tuner to find a signal are long gone. When I click on a link to listen to your station IT TELLS ME RIGHT THERE WHO I'M LISTENING TO! So stop telling me who you are every second track, it's actually off-putting, and makes me go somewhere else. Thank you.

Re:Might?

[suutar]

how about "I'll build my own and not pay the patent owners"? (I'm thinking of car ~= playlist/service, feature ~= song)

Re:Might?

[ArmoredDragon]

I have netflix, which I use on occasion, and Amazon Prime, which I only use for shipping and find borderline worthless for video streaming. Why? Because virtually all of the good stuff they have is pay per screw. For everything else, there's SickRage, CouchPotato, and Plex. I'll very likely pick up HBO while Game of Thrones is on (I say while, because I'm jobless until early May.)

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

"I cant get the music I want so I'll write my own."

Which describes every driven musician ever...

Re:Might?

[Rockoon]

Seems like you haven't pirated movies in a few years. The Pirate bay has a reputation system, movies marked with VIP or Trusted always work and are easy to find.

Nobody said anything about "working" you dumbshit.

Wondering why I am being rude? here is why:

You dishonest fuck, you made sure not to link to an actual search on that site, because if you had done so then everyone would have seen that there are zero seeders, and zero leachers, making it in fact not available. That makes you a lying fuck.

Re:Might?

[ncc74656]

Personally I really like streaming services like Spotify and Netflix, but I'm starting to think that maybe having local copies of some things is a good thing as one of the problems with streaming services is the ephemeral nature of availability.

Connection outages can also be an issue, especially when you're on the road. I uploaded my music collection to Google Play a while back (and had it uploaded to iTunes Match before that), but when I had a road trip last weekend, I had my phone download a bunch of playlists. Cellphone service is spotty between Las Vegas and Phoenix, but the music kept playing because it was all cached on the phone beforehand. Can Spotify do that? I've never used it, so I don't know what features it offers.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be looking a bit too hard for systemic bias. There is very little classical music on FM radio as well but it's got nothing to do with schemas or laziness.

Pop music comes pre-optimised with short running times, uniform loudness and minimized dynamic range which hides the nasty compromises inherent in streaming. When you apply the same optimisation to classical music the experience is unsatisfactory. Classical is just consumed a little differently. It's fairly apparent that different forms of consumption are suited to different medium.

Re:Might?

[ncc74656]

try to find a good rip of... say... "Better Off Dead"... yeah.. that will sink your time for quite awhile)

http://btdigg.org/search?info_hash=&q=better+off+dead

That took maybe 10 seconds, and it looks like the first page of results has everything from a crappy SD Xvid AVI on up to an un-recompressed Blu-ray rip, with recompressed 720p and 1080p options in between.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

The movie DOES have seeders and IS available. If you do the actual search you'll find the top hit is the link that was offered. It couldn't take you more than 60 seconds. That makes you... just wrong.

Look, we can cherry-pick examples till the cows come home but the reality on the ground is that no legal service comes close to the range and service offered by torrent sites. Searching 6 different services for content that isn't available is hardly an efficient use of your valuable time.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, to the poster complaining about streaming services not handling classical music well. It is not the streaming services, it is the publishers of your music who are still being the pricks all of the music publishers were some years ago.

Unless you have some evidence to support that, I don't believe that is an accurate statement. My theory is that the schemas in use to underlie music database services are not built to properly accommodate classical music and that developers, while perhaps aware of the issues, are entirely too lazy to fix them.

In other words, they want to treat everything like singles-driven top 40, and when something doesn't match that behavior, it's easier to ignore it than to consider the more expansive view of data that's needed in order to handle it properly.

But sure, publishers are assholes.

As I said, I just to work for a streaming music company, before the record industry got their heads out of their behinds on digital delivery, so yeah, I'm biased. As I know the business and tech here I have no doubt about what is really limiting classical music selection on streaming services, but I'll agree that for both of us these are just opinions.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you really tempted to pirate garbage like Drake, Kanye West, "Big Sean", "Jehn" (whoever the fuck those two even are), Beyonce and Nicki Minaj?

Re:Might?

[barc0001]

The premium (pay) version of Spotify allows you to download playlists for offline play, yes. You just need to mark the list with a toggle to be available offline and it syncs it locally, and then once a month it asks you to go online to ensure you're still a paying member. I've got my own music uploaded to Play as well, and am thinking I might jump ship to Play for a few months on their streaming service to see how it is vs Spotify.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

The exception is I was a broke kid who just wanted the 8 cassettes for a penny from columbia house consequences be damned!

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

You might be looking a bit too hard for systemic bias. There is very little classical music on FM radio as well but it's got nothing to do with schemas or laziness.

Pop music comes pre-optimised with short running times, uniform loudness and minimized dynamic range which hides the nasty compromises inherent in streaming. When you apply the same optimisation to classical music the experience is unsatisfactory. Classical is just consumed a little differently. It's fairly apparent that different forms of consumption are suited to different medium.

I have no idea why short running time is important for streaming suitability, but please share. Uniform loudness is on most streaming services a feature the user can turn on and off, not needed on source. On dynamic range - yes, much pop music is compressed, but that started long ago unrelated to streaming.

I can't see any "nasty compromises inherent in streaming", but please enlighten me, starting with Tidal lossless Hi-Fi streaming, what are the nasty compromises inherent in their streaming? (and then I'd be happy to discuss how much more (or not) Spotify high bitrate 320kbps streaming has nasty compromises, but since we were talking about inherent in streaming in general, let's start with Tidal lossless - 44 kHz, 16bit, and 1411kbps)

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Morals are completely subjective, junior. I don't feel guilty in the slightest when I copy any data.

Your white knight post is a waste. Taylor Swift isn't going to see you defending her on the internet and come rushing over to your house, begging you to have sex with her.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

gog.com is the only place I will buy games from because like cracked games, I am guaranteed that they will all work anywhere, on any PC, whether I have an internet connection or not.

Steam is DRM infested crap that wastes system resources by needing to run constantly in the background.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Spotify Premium allows you to download tracks and playlists and save to your device for offline listening.

Re:Might?

[Anonymous Coward]

Or you could just not use use Amazon? Some people like them for video streaming, so stop whining and let them have it.

Not just music streaming...

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Dr Who got pulled from Netflix to be an Amazon Prime exclusive, I've been thinking about going to other places such that I need not pay for a second service.

Re:Not just music streaming...

[Big Hairy Ian]

Kodi is the answer

Re:Not just music streaming...

[slaker]

Well, not Kodi exactly. Kodi is just a presentation front-end for media playback. Since it's roughly as dubious that you have legally obtained content to play with Kodi (maybe video disc ripping is legal in your location, or you're one of the small number of people recording unencrpyted OTA TV signals) as it is that you're using torrents or NNTP for legal content, this might be a distinction without a difference, but in any case what you probably mean is "Kodi with the Fusion Addons installer and Genesis/IceFilms/AlluC/PopcornTime screen scrapers."

Which isn't quite the same thing. Kodi isn't really the tool that solves the problem. The questionably legal and dubious quality streaming sites you're accessing with Kodi addons are.

Screw the greedy artists

[Anonymous Coward]

When an artist goes exclusive with one streaming provider, they're doing so only to satisfy greed. If they actually cared about their fans, they would make their music available on as many streaming services as possible. This way, all their fans (or potential future fans) would have an equal opportunity to enjoy the music.

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[bferrell]

Hmmm... greed... some would call it "optimizing or maximizing their income".

Mostly their business managers

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[MikeQuickenton]

Most artists don't make dick with the "new music industry". Poor fans should listen to the radio and stop expecting to be handed our music.

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[Anonymous Coward]

Are even a decent percentage of the ones actually arranging these deals the "artists" (singers, songwriters, etc)? I would wager that a significant majority of the ones pushing for these deals are the Labels. While larger artists might have some sway over their Label, or might even be their own Label, smaller ones are pretty much at their mercy. Unfortunately even today a large percentage of the music industry (over 70% I believe) is controlled by a handful of holding companies.

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[Bugler412]

It's rarely the "artist's" decision, except for those very few pop stars who are more "media personality" than "artist". It's the media company's choice in nearly all cases, usually to some detriment of the actual originating artists, IE: business as usual in the media company world. Screw the originating artist in the name of the middlemen and distributors making a fraction of a penny more per stream.

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[suutar]

some would call "the primary goal is 'optimizing or maximizing their income'" a good definition of greed. Your mileage may vary.

Re:Screw the greedy artists

[Saint Fnordius]

Yeah, mostly their business managers. Piracy is often a case of the artist overshooting the sweet spot on the bell curve and leaving too many customers without legitimate access.

It is harder to find stuff in general...

[Anonymous Coward]

It used to be, just a few years ago, that one could find bands of choice on iTMS or other mainstream stores, and not just stream. However, it seems that in the past two years that a lot of European bands have just stopped offering new releases. I've wound up having to either import the CD, or hit torrents for more and more bands, and it seems that this is getting worse and worse.

I would say there is a pushback against streaming. Artists pretty much don't get paid for streamed songs, so losing revenue to piracy isn't an issue with them. This is why more artists are going to BandCamp or other places where people buy their stuff by the album.

Re:It is harder to find stuff in general...

[tnk1]

So... fuck albums.

I admit, an album can be a beautifully crafted work of art through proper song selection and a general mood that one wishes to convey.

Unfortunately, most albums are compilations of one or two singles, one, maybe two, non-singles that are decent and the rest is 10-12 tracks of shit. On some of the worst albums that actually sell, there is only the one hit single. And sometimes that filler shit is some random person talking or the sound of pigs fucking just so the album can sound edgy and not really require any studio time.

An album should not be the default unit of sale for music. It encourages the release of mediocrity. I'd rather pay more for one good song than be forced to pay for an album of shit. Perhaps they can figure out how to do that. I wish they would.

As far as low streaming prices, let's be honest. Music probably just isn't worth that much per unit. There is no reason that Music has to exist for everything and support the release of new groups every year. If people want to have variety they need to pay for it, but I think there has to be a different way than ramming out songs like they are industrial product and bundling them together.

I predict...

[jenningsthecat]

that Pirate Bay-like streaming services will arise, and will pwn all the legal streaming services that are being hobbled by legislation and fragmented by self-important artists.

Maybe they will even accept payment for the service of aggregating content from existing legal streaming services, for as long as said legal services last. Heck, there might even be a legal aggregator in our future - call it MetaStream.

Re:I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

that Pirate Bay-like streaming services will arise

Isn't that Popcorn Time?

Heck, there might even be a legal aggregator in our future - call it MetaStream.

Isn't that the Butter project?

Re:I predict...

[Anonymous Coward]

Then the *IAA will just step in and file lawsuits, a method which was effective in killing piracy previously:

1: With telemetry data slurped up by OS and app makers, it would be trivial for a copyright enforcement organization to subpoena Microsoft, Apple, and other places, to get lists of songs played on people's devices. Also easy to find traces where MP3 files came from.

2: IP addresses are proof of identity, and ISPs keep those records for decades.

There are so many ways that the *IAA could start enforcing copyright, and this time around, all it takes is evidence of -possessing- a song, not distributing it for them to start going after teenagers with multi-million dollar fines.

Re:I predict...

[tnk1]

Actually, at least in the US, IP addresses are *not* considered proof of identity, although that doesn't keep the enforcers from using that information any way they can.

And the telemetry data is a stretch as well. Even if they could subpoena it, that data isn't telling MS what songs you are playing, at most it is telling them what you have installed and maybe what files there are. MS gains no benefit from acting as a collector for content enforcers. They're trying to get ad revenue.

Video streaming

[Anonymous Coward]

The same goes for video streaming services now. :(

Exclusives Avoidance

[Anonymous Coward]

All these network exclusives which are not re-licensed and distributed make me pretend the product doesn't exist. Netflix, I'm not looking at you.

Wait...

[gander666]

500K people torrented Kanye? What the fuck is this world coming to.

Re:Wait...

[PhrostyMcByte]

500K people torrented Kanye? What the fuck is this world coming to.

Counter-culture is strong with Kanye. He's a dork as a person but his music isn't nearly as bad as everyone pretends it is. It's just popular to hate on him.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

My first thought was "Only 500k? I thought he was popular?". Popular anime series get like 100K+ downloads per episode (they are released in CR, so they are free after few days) and anime is a niche.

Re:Wait...

[CanadianMacFan]

Or go find some independent artists and listen to some truly talented musicians.

Re:Wait...

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just popular to hate on him.

I think you mean 'easy'.

They'll come to their senses

[Anonymous Coward]

Online streaming companies and especially copyright holders will have to balance the lost revenue from pirating against the value of an exclusivity contract. If they win on one front they will lose on the other. At some point they will maybe wake up and smell the coffee: you can't have it all.

I use Spotify and Netflix for what's available on them, and "free rental" services for when the guys have decided to go exclusive with a service I don't use...

Re:They'll come to their senses

[sims 2]

Like how cellphone companies still have exclusivity deals.

Nokia doesn't like to sell cellphones so they just take the bribes At&t gives them so they can greatly limit the market they sell to.

Lumia 1020 on Verizon? Almost 3 years later? Nope still exclusive.

This is exactly why

[Anonymous Coward]

I rarely pay for music. I only buy a couple of CDs per decade.
Online is even worse.
I might as well pirate it instead of paying for a service that can disappear at the drop of a hat.

Oh those poor things

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think any of the artists mentioned in TFA are ever going to run out of money unless they waste them away, so fuck them.

Crappy Music

[Great Big Bird]

I do not care, I only listen to the good stuff which is usually at least ten years old but more often older.

Re:Crappy Music

[LWATCDR]

And 10 years ago people said the same thing.
As an old guy I admit this does not affect me I find a lot of the music those artists perform to not match my taste in music.
It is like Prince not allowing his music videos on YouTube. I would watch them and he would get ad money. Now he gets nothing. If he offered streaming versions I would probably listen to them but now I just rip my old CDs and put them in the cloud.

Re:Crappy Music

[Freedom Bug]

"I do not care, I only listen to the good stuff which is usually at least ten years old but more often older."

You're falling prey to Sturgeon's law: "90% of everything is crap". It's just that with the old stuff, the crap has been rightfully forgotten. There's lots of good new music, you just need to find a good way to filter out the crap.

Re:Crappy Music

[Moof123]

Laziness and sloth have their advantages.

I really like discovering a new-to-me band, only to find out they have a half dozen album I can pick through and get 15-20 good tracks. I find it maddening when someone like Lorde comes along, and there are only about 3-4 songs that are worth grabbing, hardly seems worth waiting for more.

I really enjoy when I discover some group where I enjoy almost all their stuff and can load up. I ended up buying over a 100 tracks from Flogging Molly when I stumbled onto them a few years back. I still regularly listen to all of them as a shuffle. Pity my wife.

Re:Crappy Music

[Anonymous Coward]

"I do not care, I only listen to the good stuff which is usually at least ten years old but more often older."

You're falling prey to Sturgeon's law: "90% of everything is crap". It's just that with the old stuff, the crap has been rightfully forgotten. There's lots of good new music, you just need to find a good way to filter out the crap.

There is an element of truth to this one, where if you like certain genres of music there simply is nothing new in those areas. If you like electronic formula pop, you're in heaven today. If you like alternative music (i.e., punk, new wave, post-modern, alt-punk, alt-rock, industrial, old-school rap etc) you are in a world of hurt for the past decade or more. There just isn't a lot out there that's new. I tried Spotify, and Pandora came back with matches that I already had, except for a couple of bands from the 80s/90s that I had forgotten about, even when putting in the handful of new songs from the last 5 years I really liked as a seed. Maybe I should try again with a few bands and songs that came out this year, as 4 of them are new bands.

Re: Crappy Music

[TuringTest]

>>"I do not care, I only listen to the good stuff which is usually at least ten years old but more often older."

>There's lots of good new music, you just need to find a good way to filter out the crap.

I think the GP has found his method.

Re:Crappy Music

[Quirkz]

There's also this psychological tendency to discover a band and find that while you like everything in their current discography, all of their new music that comes out afterward just doesn't seem as good to you. So to get the most enjoyment, it only makes sense to discover bands after they've got a pretty hefty catalog, because once you do you're tarnishing their future releases.

Well, it's a crackpot theory, but I've heard too many people say it to dismiss it entirely.

Re:Crappy Music

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, no. From what I see, the music industry (in America at least) has fundamentally changed a lot over the last couple of decades in how they do business and find and promote musicians. Also, genres of music change over time. If you really like Big Band music or rockabilly or Motown or '80s hair metal, for instance, there isn't exactly a lot of that being made these days.

Re:Crappy Music

[Anonymous Coward]

That's simply not true. In the glory days of popular music, only around 85% of the music was crap. Now it's pegged at 99%. And even music that was considered crap then, like disco, is being viewed in a more favorable light today when compared with modern offerings.

Re:Crappy Music

[strikethree]

There's lots of good new music, you just need to find a good way to filter out the crap.

That is what a DJ is for. I remember back in the early 2000s when there were tons of Internet Radio Stations. I found one that I liked and found all sorts of new music that I liked. No garbage.

Now? No DJs. No new music for me. No money for the music industry. The last new music I found was some dubstep by following some guy named SaladUK (2011?) on Youtube... but then they banned his channel. These morons have no idea how to reach me and cut off every avenue that would reach me.

This Has Already Happened With Anime

[Anonymous Coward]

Not long ago most anime was available Crunchyroll, but more recently a lot of other streaming services have launched such as Funimation, TheAnimeNetwork, Daisuki and others. Netflix and Amazon are buying the rights for anime, so to watch everything you'd have to sign up to at least eight services, and some of those services are only available in the US or in a limited number of countries. This fragmentation has pushed many users towards piracy.

The matter is complicated further by varying standards in subtitle quality. Crunchyroll was generally aimed at anime fans so the subtitles presume a certain level of knowledge about anime, while Funimation's subtitles are heavily localised and utterly butcher the original content (if they can't think of a translation they'll just change the line entirely). Funimation's streams aren't even worth pirating so you have to hope a fansub group uploads an alternative translation, but fansubs mean no revenue for the anime producers.

Ultimately, exclusivity deals are bad for the anime producers and bad for customers. I'd much rather see streaming services compete on things like video quality, translation quality, typesetting, whether it has a dub etc.

Whether it's music, anime, console games or PC digital distribution services, exclusivity deals always harm the consumer.

They're all massive disservices

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody should use them. Those are rent-seeking confidence tricks ran by professional scammers. They're dysfunctional. Even if they were useful for anything (they're not; you can get the same functionality off youtube), paying for them is idiotic while they cannot be bothered to implement even the simplest functionalities. Of course, they're designed to draw you in and make you dependent on them, so there's no exporting your playlists, no clearing the play queue, no convenient way to manage playlists and tracks you want to listen, no api, no custom players are allowed. Everything designed with their profit in mind and none with your convenience. It's a giant money extortion scheme masquerading as a music streaming service.

Re:They're all massive disservices

[tnk1]

I would have to agree for the services that are set up to extract more money. And these exclusives are more of the same exclusionary rent seeking that I thought that we'd gotten beyond already. Looks like we only convinced their music business overlords, but not the artists that have their own labels and followings.

In the end, I guess I don't care. If Beyonce, Jay-Z, and Kanye want to extract even more money out of their audience, go for it. That's just one more reason they aren't on my playlist to begin with. There's other music out there for me. If they have a audience that will put up with that, good for them.

At the same time, when I think of starving artists, these aren't who I am thinking of. So, I don't shed even the tiniest of little tears for them if someone pirates them. That's just the cost of exclusion. I know it is upsetting that they might have to wait a month to buy another Bentley.

Don't pay the MAFIAA

[Anonymous Coward]

Those companies are will never get it and keep trying to ruin other industries. Remember, kids: Home Taping is Killing Music!

Piracy and greed

[QuietLagoon]

The amount of piracy seems increase or decrease in direct proportion with the greed of the media industry.

.
Now the music industry is trying to extract more money from its listeners via exclusive and expensive contracts. That increase in music industry greed is triggering an increase in piracy because the content looks over-priced.

Re:Piracy and greed

[Anonymous Coward]

The amount of piracy seems increase or decrease in direct proportion with the greed of the media industry.

Or they greed of their listeners who feel entitled to everything.

Re:Piracy and greed

[QuietLagoon]

Or they [sic] greed of their listeners...

Yes, there will always be some piracy, I don't deny that. However...

.
When the media industry has put reasonable pricing on content, the amount of piracy of that content has dropped significantly. Most people are honest and want to pay for product.

Piracy appears to flourish when content is not available legally, or when available content is priced unreasonably high.

It really is up to the media industry to find the right price for the content, a price that buyers are willing to pay.

It really is up to the media industry to stop the artificial shortages that are created via exclusive deals and such.

Re:Piracy and greed

[Anonymous Coward]

Meh.
If they didn't want me to listen to their music they shouldn't have made it.
It's not like me listening to it is making them poorer.

Re:Piracy and greed

[Simulant]

Oh look, an anonymous coward thinks that copyright holders deserve near perpetual rights to income from work done once.

It's the rest of us who are greedy.

Uh, piracy never left

[Anonymous Coward]

Rampant piracy could make a comeback, solely because streaming service exclusives, and complete artist opt-outs, make it impossible to get all music in one place.

Maybe there has been a small fraction of consumers who pirated material because there wasn't a commercial service that made the content they were looking for available at a reasonable price, but most people who pirate do so because they don't want to pay for anything (excluding bandwidth to pirate material). That's not gonna change no matter what streaming services do.

Re:Uh, piracy never left

[tnk1]

I think you are right for some people, but these are people who have less means who simply wouldn't be able to justify that expense to begin with. They will always be with us.

However, there are people who can budget for streaming, and I can tell you, piracy is free and a lot more convenient than it used to be, but it's still more work that I'd like to put into getting tracks. A streaming service with a reasonable cost and a wide selection means that someone like me can justify spending some money on the service. And I am happy to be paying a reasonable price for music itself. There is certainly work that goes into making it and if I can support that for a reasonable sum, I will.

Now that things are getting exclusionary again, they're again making it desirable for people to pirate. I mean, I can certainly justify paying one service, I cannot justify paying for two just to get one artist's exclusive. What is more, even if I switched for one exclusive, then tomorrow another artist is going to have an exclusive on the service that I just left. It's not really possible for me to win in that situation, and if the difference between the services is effectively 20-30 tracks out of thousands, there's no real incentive to want to move. At that point, you're simply going to shrug and get the tracks some other way.

Now you can argue, I have no inherent right to that person's music. And I agree. But that's not really going to be an argument that will sway very many downloaders.

I post this every time

[Anonymous Coward]

I post this every time the subject of music comes up. If you are an avid collector of music, forget about downloads and streaming (unless it's truly free of course). Instead, keep a running list of music you're interested in, and every so often, visit an online used cd store like secondspin.com (not affiliated) and order a handful of used cds to add to your collection. Limit your purchases to about $5 or $6 per album. When they arrive, record them to flac format and store the discs away. Now you have a master archive which you can convert to any lossy format at any time, while leaving the masters untouched. Chown the archive to root to ensure that it can't be touched by your rogue music player.

I have been doing this for almost 15 years, and have amassed a collection of hundreds of albums, and yet I still have a "wanted cds" list over 300 artists long. All of this is 100% legal, and you get the real deal (the original cd album), not some re-sampled mp3. Furthermore, you completely side-step the crooked music industry. (When I really want to support an artist, I buy tickets to the show.)

The only pitfall is that you won't find much new music at $5/cd. But that's OK, once you realize that the amount of new music coming out that's worth keeping is only a fraction of a percent.

Re:I post this every time

[Anonymous Coward]

When you say 100% legal - yes, your side of that transaction is absolutely 100% legal. The other side - the person selling the used CD to the used market - is likely not. Most of them have made a copy, ripped the CD, etc. and still have a copy of the music. So they likely violated copyright, although you certainly didn't. They probably used their "first sale doctrine" rights in an illegal manner, but of course you don't have any way to know that about any individual purchase.

Re:I post this every time

[Anonymous Coward]

I have several hundred CDs. I got about a quarter of a way through ripping them before I got bored of doing that. I may get back to it, doing a few every couple of days, but I now use a streaming service. I can download anything for local playback on my phone, and also randomly explore new stuff. It works for me, but if it went away it wouldn't matter too much. It'd be back to the CDs.

Re:I post this every time

[Anonymous Coward]

It just depends on how serious you are about your music. I guess you could call me "serious" in that I greatly value having my own personal collection at my disposal. Life would be missing something if I didn't have a personal collection. Not to say that I don't value streaming as well, because I do. However I'm much more into "online radio" (preferably actual FM radio stations that also stream) than the new-fangled "music services" like pandora. I'm also the type who wouldn't even consider paying for music that I don't get to keep.

What the flac archive gives you is a music "command center" that you can tailor to your own preferences. I have developed an entire scripting ecosystem around my archive, from organization to tagging to generating playlists. And I forgot to mention MPD -- if you haven't tried it, it's the shiz.

Re:I post this every time

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, talk about hearsay. You're nothing less than the wet dream of the music industry.

Conclusion for internet commerce is...

[grumpyman]

... non-value added things will be trumped. I.e. there's no 'value-add' for one streaming platform to another, other than exclusivity/access.

Shooting themselves in the foot.

[whoever57]

In the UK, music publishers got a ruling that ripping CDs is illegal. What is the likely outcome of that?

If I can't legally buy the CD, rip it and listen to the music on my devices, then I might as well fire up a torrent app and skip the whole "buy the CD" part.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[stealth_finger]

In the UK, music publishers got a ruling that ripping CDs is illegal. What is the likely outcome of that?

Oh shit, really? I did my whole collection. That's like 3400 songs off ~300 albums. Am I fucked? I hear sirens, they'll never take me alive and all that.

In all seriousness though I got to a point in my life, kinda mid university, that I just got bored of new music. None of the new bands really interested me and most of the bands I do like, their latest cds were shit. I have literally no desire for any music streaming service as I already have all the music I want/need. All I really wanted back then was a phone that could actually double as an mp3 player with enough storage and well, I've been taken care of in that regards for years now.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't rip CDs, I just backup the data in a compressed format. You never know when the media is going to go bad.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't live in the UK. I haven't bought a new music CD for more than 20 years. There are several reasons for this.
1 I got tired of buying expensive CDs to find that the one or two tracks that got played on radio stations were the only tracks I liked, and the rest was crap that should never have been recorded.

2 The music industry was at that time was competing to see who could produce the most over compressed (loud to the point of the music being distorted) CDs.

3 High and increasing prices of music CDs.

4 There really has not been much good music produced in the last 20 years...most of the pop music has been by people who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!

I don't like streaming music because it requires an Internet connection, and that is not always available. Also, I like to have local copies that I can play on any of my devices when I choose. What the RIAA, MPAA, and publishers really want is for us to have to pay a fee each time we play a music track, watch a movie or TV show, or read a book or ebook. As far as I am concerned, that is never gonna happen! And I don't rent ebooks, music, or video!! I buy a copy, and its mine to do with as I please!!!

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[Grishnakh]

In all seriousness though I got to a point in my life, kinda mid university, that I just got bored of new music. None of the new bands really interested me and most of the bands I do like, their latest cds were shit.

What year was that?

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[whoever57]

4 There really has not been much good music produced in the last 20 years...most of the pop music has been by people who couldn't carry a tune in a bucket!

So don't listen to pop music. After about 20 years of not listening to any new music, Pandora has found lots of new music for me: it's just not pop music: my tastes are rather less mainstream.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[stealth_finger]

Dunno, the process was probably complete by around '05

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[jabuzz]

In the UK ripping CD is illegal because there is no "fair use" exception in UK copyright law, so any rip of a CD is by default an unauthorised copy and thus illegal.

The government after a consultation decided this was silly, everyone was ripping CD's to MP3 and nobody had ever been prosecuted for doing so by a copyright holder.

Where it all went unstuck revolves around the method they used to make a change to the law. They used something called a Statutory Instrument.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

This is secondary legislation (aka not voted for in the Houses of Parliament). The music industry challenged the SI on the basis that the government had not followed proper procedure in making the SI, and go a super narrow judgement. Specifically the minister had failed to consider whether allowing people to rip CD's to MP3 legally would encourage illegal ripping.

The relevant minister has a number of options now. They could appeal the decision, they could take into account whether legally ripping CD's would encourage illegal ripping and come to the conclusion it does not and reimpose the SI, or he could introduce primary legislation with a vote in the house, which is basically impossible at this point for the music industry to challenge.

My guess is that option two is the approach being taken. Just takes a bit of time to commission a study to prove the music industries scaremongering is groundless.

That's todays lesson in the UK constitution for you.

Re:Shooting themselves in the foot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

The UK allows format shifting for personal use.

Also, fair dealing/fair use does exist there too.

Price ain't the problem

[pla]

three services, say, Apple Music, Tidal, and Spotify, will cost $360, which will be a substantial cost to casual listeners.

$360 per year comes out to 30-40 CDs back from the dark ages of music - Purely in terms of cost, a pittance, really.

The bigger issue here, and the reason people never stopped pirating music - control. I have absolutely zero faith in any streaming service that music by my favorite new artist today will continue to exist in their catalog a year, ten years, forty years from now.

I will still buy physical discs as an "archival copy", when available; but when publishers screw us all (artists included) with these service-exclusive deals, it leaves only one rational option.

Re:Price ain't the problem

[Anonymous Coward]

I will still buy physical discs as an "archival copy", when available; but when publishers screw us all (artists included) with these service-exclusive deals, it leaves only one rational option.

Not listening to that artist?

Re:Price ain't the problem

[Moof123]

"Purely in terms of cost, a pittance, really."

You sir, completely underestimate my cheapness. $360 a year is about 3x what I spend on music a year. I spend a decent amount of effort constantly shaving down costs, especially anything that is recurring. I have the cell bill down to $35 a month for 2 phones, and I buy those phones outright. Insurance gets re-quoted about every 2 years, and I have moved companies several times. Recurring charges are corrosive to your bank account. You quickly forget them, but they chew away, and chew away in perpetuity.

Re:Price ain't the problem

[R3d M3rcury]

I'd also argue that "casual listeners" don't really care.

I used to subscribe to HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, The Movie Channel, Starz, Encore, and Epix. Which meant wherever a particular movie ended up, I could watch it. Yeah, it cost a lot of money, but it was worth it to me. I want to be able to watch certain movies multiple times and pick up all the nuances.

I'm not what I would consider a "casual movie watcher."

So,yes, if I absolutely positively have to listen to the latest and greatest from a particular musician right now, it's worth it to subscribe to all of those services. However, if I'm a "casual listener," I probably don't care that much.

Re:Price ain't the problem

[Reapy]

As a casual listener I just gave up having time to even find new music. I basically go to youtube and type in some category of music, sometimes changing it based on auto complete (oh, what is this), and let 'up next' take me where ever the hell it wants to go.

False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting aside the debated-to-death difference between stealing and copyright infringement, your argument is based on another false equivalence;

I have a large choice of stores from which to purchase physical items. I may not be able to afford all the items that I want, but at the very least I do not have to pay $7.50/month in order to access WalMart, another $8.00/month in order to access Bed Bath & Beyond, and yet another $5.00/month to access my farmer's market - when I might only be interested in a few items from Bed Bath & Beyond that WalMart doesn't offer because WalMart doesn't like those things, and that one thing from the farmer's market because the vendor doesn't like WalMart. I can go to each one and pay piecemeal.

While understanding that streaming services have effectively brought the cost of music down to unprecedented levels, those services do have an upfront cost - and when you've got artists doing exclusives to services - where you cannot purchase this music piecemeal anymore - you're not at all being equivalent to stores.

Also, shoplifting isn't the same as copyright infringement. Thank you.

Re:False Equivalence

[secretsquirel]

"While understanding that streaming services have effectively brought the cost of music down to unprecedented levels"

Maybe, but I've also spent more in my first few months of Spotify than I had on recorded media in the last 15 years or more.

Re:False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

I may not be able to afford all the items that I want, but at the very least I do not have to pay $7.50/month in order to access WalMart, another $8.00/month in order to access Bed Bath & Beyond, and yet another $5.00/month to access my farmer's market

Your argument is bollocks. Complete bollocks. You don't pay a monthly fee to those places because that's not their business model. Those places DO have exclusivity contracts - and if you want to buy something that ONLY Wal-Mart sells, then you're forced to either:

1) Pay WalMart's quoted price;
2) Do without it;
3) Steal it from WalMart;

Only the first two of these are *ethical* solutions to your dilemma. Furthermore, there ARE stores that charge monthly or yearly fees - Amazon Prime, BJ's Wholesale, Sam's Clubs, and others charge monthly fees for the "privilege" of shopping there - and if you want BJ's brand stuff, you're going to have to shop at BJ's, and pay their membership fees.

Also, shoplifting isn't the same as copyright infringement. Thank you.

So what? Your argument is equivalent to saying "Shoplifting isn't the same as murder." They may not be the same, but that doesn't make either one of them moral, ethical acts. If you decide to take something that does not belong to you, which the owner has not consented to give to you, then you are engaged in a profoundly immoral activity. Your ethical choices, when presented with terms and prices which you object to for music are:

1) Pay the price the owner is asking for, and abide by the limits and restrictions they stipulate as part of the sale;
2) Negotiate with the owner for a better price, or fewer/no limits/restrictions as part of the sale;
3) Do without the music, and either make your own, or patronize other artists whose terms of sale are more palatable to you;

Notice there is no option that says, "take what you want, fuck the creator, he has no right to control the products of his labor."

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Try again, champ. Less ad hominem might make your argument more compelling.

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Too long/didn't read

Can't hear you over my free music anyways ;)

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

He may be a do gooder, but at least he's not a leech.

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

That's okay, I can't hear you over:

1) The massive amount of music whose creators I support by purchasing the products of their labor;
2) The deep sleep I get every night, knowing I'm not an immoral freeloader who thinks he's entitled to everything he wants whenever he wants it, regardless of the wishes of the owners of those things. :)

Re:False Equivalence

[TemporalBeing]

I may not be able to afford all the items that I want, but at the very least I do not have to pay $7.50/month in order to access WalMart, another $8.00/month in order to access Bed Bath & Beyond, and yet another $5.00/month to access my farmer's market

Your argument is bollocks. Complete bollocks. You don't pay a monthly fee to those places because that's not their business model. Those places DO have exclusivity contracts - and if you want to buy something that ONLY Wal-Mart sells, then you're forced to either:

1) Pay WalMart's quoted price; 2) Do without it; 3) Steal it from WalMart;

Unfortunately you're still wrong. Yes, WalMart/Target/etc do have exclusive contracts - but they're not really that exclusive. It may be for one particular line of Levi Jeans; but you can find a near identical pair at another store.

Only the first two of these are *ethical* solutions to your dilemma. Furthermore, there ARE stores that charge monthly or yearly fees - Amazon Prime, BJ's Wholesale, Sam's Clubs, and others charge monthly fees for the "privilege" of shopping there - and if you want BJ's brand stuff, you're going to have to shop at BJ's, and pay their membership fees.

Again, another false comparison. BJ's, Sam's, etc have a verify of memberships, and they'll even let you come in on a guest membership, but you pay a little more. (We did a guest membership at BJ's and you pay 5% more than members, at least at that time.) Typically though members pay annually, and it's in the range of $35-$40/yr - compared with $120/service/year in TFA. That's a big difference in itself; but then if you have a membership you also typically note what you save on what you're buying in bulk, which again you can buy anywhere else - and if you watch sales closely enough you can match the prices - so that membership fee becomes a savings point which they also highly advertise (buy X of Y over the year and save your membership fee).

The music services have no such equivalence.

Also, shoplifting isn't the same as copyright infringement. Thank you.

So what? Your argument is equivalent to saying "Shoplifting isn't the same as murder." They may not be the same, but that doesn't make either one of them moral, ethical acts. If you decide to take something that does not belong to you, which the owner has not consented to give to you, then you are engaged in a profoundly immoral activity. Your ethical choices, when presented with terms and prices which you object to for music are:

1) Pay the price the owner is asking for, and abide by the limits and restrictions they stipulate as part of the sale; 2) Negotiate with the owner for a better price, or fewer/no limits/restrictions as part of the sale; 3) Do without the music, and either make your own, or patronize other artists whose terms of sale are more palatable to you;

Notice there is no option that says, "take what you want, fuck the creator, he has no right to control the products of his labor."

And for me, I don't purchase any music subscriptions. I'll buy unregulated MP3's, and that's it. I'm in control, period.

Re:False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately you're still wrong. Yes, WalMart/Target/etc do have exclusive contracts - but they're not really that exclusive. It may be for one particular line of Levi Jeans; but you can find a near identical pair at another store.

And if T-Swift or Kanye are exclusive to some streaming service, you can find nearly identical music on the other stores. If you've got your heart set on those specially acid-washed Levis only available at Target, "near identical" may not cut it.

Again, another false comparison. BJ's, Sam's, etc have a verify of memberships, and they'll even let you come in on a guest membership, but you pay a little more.

First - how is that a false comparison? Because the price for a music service is different than the price for a retail store? They're completely different market segments - do you get outraged that a Maserati doesn't cost the same as a 5-pound bag of potatoes, too?

Second: Variety of plans:
- Apple Music gives you 3 months free upon signup. They then offer $9.99/month for an individual membership, and $14.99/month for a family membership.
- Tidal gives you a free 30 day trial, and offers $9.99/month for regular access, and $19.99/month for "Hi-Fi" access (purportedly, better sound quality). Discounts for paying 6 months up front.
- Spotify gives you 30 day free trial; $9.99/month for premium access, with discounts for "family plans" and "students."
If I go to the gym, I'm offered very similar terms, though the price naturally varies.

Typically though members pay annually, and it's in the range of $35-$40/yr - compared with $120/service/year in TFA.

Again, so what? The reason you pay less for the retail stores is because they expect you to come in and drop hundreds of dollars on merchandise, as well. Streaming services aren't making sales of goods - they're providing a service. I spend hundreds of dollars a year on a gym membership - they provide me a service for that fee. How is a music service any different? The point GGP was making was that "stores don't charge you a fee to shop there," - but SOME STORES DO. And service-based plans aren't charging you to "shop there," they're charging you for a service, like you pay for a gym, or regular haircuts, or anything else you spend for regularly.

but then if you have a membership you also typically note what you save on what you're buying in bulk, which again you can buy anywhere else - and if you watch sales closely enough you can match the prices - so that membership fee becomes a savings point which they also highly advertise (buy X of Y over the year and save your membership fee).

And, again, back to my original point: if you don't feel the music services provide enough of a value for the price they're asking, you have three options:
1) Pay the price, and use the service;
2) Negotiate a more favorable price & terms with the owner/creator of the music you want to hear;
3) Do without, and support artists who are willing to sell to you on terms you find acceptable;

If you don't like it, don't fucking buy it. If you don't like it, support people whose terms and conditions you support. If you don't like it, don't be an entitled little shit and think it's your "right" to pirate a copy of Kanye's new album.

And for me, I don't purchase any music subscriptions. I'll buy unregulated MP3's, and that's it. I'm in control, period.

And that's your right, and your privilege - I avoid subscriptions myself, because I don't get enough value out of them to make it worthwhile to me. But I also refuse to pirate music in any way - if I hear a song I like and wish to own, I pay for it, because I've discovered the value of supporting artists whose music I appreciate. Any attempt to justify piracy as "but the service costs too much" is completely, utter, nonsensical bullshit. Anybody who tries to make the argument that they have the "right" to the product of someone else's labor is a slave-driver in training, and a disgusting freeloader.

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

zzzz...

Re: False Equivalence

[Anonymous Coward]

Everyone in a capitalist society are leeches. There is nothing ethically wrong with leeching off of leeches.

The labels get paid anyway

[ZorinLynx]

The ridiculous thing here is the labels get paid ANYWAY when you stream the music, regardless of whether it's on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon, etc... It's in the contract.

What point is there to have an exclusive? They should be trying to get the music on as many services as possible, so the stream count is as high as possible (across all services) since they are paid by the stream.

Re:The labels get paid anyway

[dj245]

The ridiculous thing here is the labels get paid ANYWAY when you stream the music, regardless of whether it's on Spotify, Tidal, Apple Music, Amazon, etc... It's in the contract.

What point is there to have an exclusive? They should be trying to get the music on as many services as possible, so the stream count is as high as possible (across all services) since they are paid by the stream.

The various different services are in heated competition. They are all offering mostly the same thing to people who mostly want the same product. Exclusivity is a negotiation point. In order for the artist to accept such a clause, they must have gotten something of equal value in return. Maybe that "something of equal value" was cash money up front, maybe it was higher rates, maybe it was satisfaction in helping a friend's company, maybe it was something else. But there are lots of reasons why an artist would accept exclusivity. These people are business folk. It isn't always about getting as many people as possible to hear their music.

Re:The labels get paid anyway

[Kjella]

And don't forget the streaming services are a business too. They're constantly trying to push the prices of their "suppliers" in an oligarchy-like fashion. Not the superstars that could take millions of "beliebers" with them to a different service but the bread-and-butter artists that need to be where their market is because they're just one among several competing artists. The streaming companies know people are slow to change, so short term it's the artist taking the biggest hit.

And if people pirate because it's not on their preferred service, even better because then it's a little money or no money - which do you want? For artists it's meet the new boss, same as the whole boss. This whole "it's the Internet, you can sell it yourself and cut out the middle man" didn't really work out for the music industry. The name and nature changed, but there's a new middleman between you and your customers who does what it wants for its reasons.

It's still early times for Butter

[tepples]

Isn't that the Butter project?

Currently, installing it requires installing git and Node.js first, and I imagine that the majority of home users of Windows or OS X aren't comfortable enough with the command line to do that. This is especially true on Windows, which (as far as I can tell) lacks a counterpart to sudo to run a single command with both command-line arguments and elevated privileges in the same Command Prompt window. One has to instead start an elevated Command Prompt window, which is like logging in as root.

Besides, let me know when there's anything on Butter that's worth watching and worth discussing with friends. Somehow family and co-workers want to discuss the latest proprietary movies and TV shows, not obscure pre-1964 movies.

Water cooler exclusion

[tepples]

All these network exclusives which are not re-licensed and distributed make me pretend the product doesn't exist.

Until your co-workers start discussing details of the new releases, thereby making you feel left out.

Re: Water cooler exclusion

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding me? What are we children in school?

Mommmmmm I need the new Nikes because everyone in school has them.

I'm sure your mom was smart, didn't she ever say "if your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow them?" Knowing you, you probably said yes. Dipshit follower.

JAYZ's entourage on Tidal; News at 11

[Anonymous Coward]

JAYZ is trying to keep himself relevant and has launched Tidal and all his music buddies (including wife) are launching new hits to his service in order to gain traction and eventually be bought out ala Dre Beats. What is more shocking is that we are 20+ comments and it's all 'lol kanye' posts. I thought nerds would be far ahead of this "news"

Ambiguous jargon

[arensb]

Last week, Drake dropped two new singles off his upcoming album Views from the 6. The tracks are currently only available on Apple Music.

It took me a second reading to realize that this didn't mean "Drake removed two tracks from his new album, and the only place where tracks 9 and 10 can still be found is Apple Music."

Re:Ambiguous jargon

[MobyDisk]

Okay, so can you explain it to everyone else? Cuz I am still confused.

Re:Ambiguous jargon

[Anonymous Coward]

s/dropped/released

Re:Ambiguous jargon

[TMB]

http://www.urbandictionary.com...

Re:Ambiguous jargon

[Anonymous Coward]

Last week, Drake dropped two new singles off his upcoming album Views from the 6. The tracks are currently only available on Apple Music.

I read that as "Drake will soon be releasing a new album, titled 'Views'". It includes six tracks, but two of them will only be available on Apple Music.

Re:Ambiguous jargon

[MobyDisk]

aha!

Not all artists even release CDs

[tepples]

every so often, visit an online used cd store like secondspin.com

Until a recording artist decides to stop releasing music on CDs, such as Kanye West. Or unless a recording artist never starts selling CDs in the first place and stays digital-only because "major labels are for chumps".

Re:Not all artists even release CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, consider that the vast majority of available music has already been produced and can be found on cd -- it's only recently that artists have started bucking the trend. So if you want something from these artists, make an exception. Like I said, if you're into Top 40 and the latest hits, my system isn't going to work that well. On the other hand, if your musical tastes span multiple genres and multiple eras, then you're in heaven with my system.

Re:Not all artists even release CDs

[Anonymous Coward]

Until a recording artist decides to stop releasing music on CDs, such as Kanye West.

Thankfully the majority of people don't consider Kanye West to be an artist of any kind.

Re:Not all artists even release CDs

[tepples]

it's only recently that artists have started bucking the trend.

The following may not affect people in 2016. But by 2026, there will likely be more recording artists whose entire oeuvre is download-only from day one because they consider pressing CDs and negotiating with record stores to be an unnecessary expense. And by then, not everybody will have the discipline to develop musical tastes suitable for shunning all download-only artists. "Only luddites boycott an artist solely because the artist doesn't release on a medium from 1982, which was decades ago."

When the artist owns a stake in a service

[tepples]

What point is there to have an exclusive? They should be trying to get the music on as many services as possible

To drive subscriptions to the service in which the artist owns a financial stake. It's the same reason that Nintendo releases the vast majority of its games only on Nintendo consoles.

Re:When the artist owns a stake in a service

[Anonymous Coward]

At least with the game consoles, there's a real cost to porting the games -- the underlying graphics/controller APIs are radically different.
With the streaming services, there's no such cost, so the only reason to not put it on every streaming service is to create artificial scarcity.

Vote with your feet

[tepples]

In the UK, music publishers got a ruling that ripping CDs is illegal. What is the likely outcome of that?

The legal outcome? Try to emigrate before President Trump takes office and closes the border.

Re:Vote with your feet

[Anonymous Coward]

UK? Trump? What?

Re:Vote with your feet

[Calydor]

Don't worry, the confusion will get worse if the US gets Donald Trump for president while the EU has Donald Tusk for chairman.

Re:Vote with your feet

[Anonymous Coward]

I think tepples meant that UK citizens need to get their asses to the US before Trump closes the border(s). You know, because it's going to be terrific or something.

Re:Vote with your feet

[tepples]

I understand that many Slashdot users outside the United States of America (USA) haven't been following politics in the USA. So I'll spell it out:

In the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (GB), ripping CDs is illegal.
There exist other countries where ripping CDs is legal, such as the USA.
Residents of GB who want to rip CDs need to leave Britain in favor of one of those countries.
Entering a country requires permission from that country, granted by the country's immigration department.
The office of President of the USA (POTUS) is up for reelection in a few months.
One of the front-runners for POTUS, by the name of Donald Trump, promises to significantly tighten the USA's immigration policy in an effort to ensure jobs to unemployed citizens of the USA.
So residents of GB who want to move to the USA for CD ripping may need to begin the immigration process promptly in order to get in before Mr. Trump becomes POTUS and closes the door to immigrants.

Re:Vote with your feet

[jabuzz]

I would point out that nobody has *EVER* been prosecuted in the UK for ripping a CD they own. In fact as the only losses anyone bring a case could *EVER* get in these circumstances is *ACTUAL* losses which are a big fat *ZERO* it is not hard to understand while it is technically illegal, it is for all intense and purposes (I want to use the word practical here but it has special meaning in a legal context) legal.

See my other post for the very narrow ruling the music industry got on the law change and why it was a pointless waste of their time, as the minister will just come back and get his way.

Not worth pirating

[late_game_reviewer]

Albums and Songs from all the artist mentionned in this article to me are just crappy. I know I'm not the only one to say this but you hear 1 and you have a feeling you heard them all. It sounds like theres a single recipe to make their songs and they do look alike to me. I won't even pirate them since it would be a waste of my time...and would destroy what sanity I have left. no thank you music industry. Also, with the way they act, i rather pirate it myself and give the money directly to the artist if I have a chance to do it as I don't trust the music industry anymore.

VPN: $5 - $10 / month, or less

[PeeAitchPee]

And there are no restrictions -- music, Blu-Ray rips, software, you name it -- all are available. Cripple your stuff enough and people (especially the Millennials) will simply vote with their dollars and choose that option.

Public performance

[tepples]

Humming a tune you heard isn't theft.

You are correct that doing so in public is not theft but copyright infringement. The owner of copyright in a musical work has the exclusive right to perform it publicly.

Re:Public performance

[BronsCon]

Actually, the copyright owner in a musical work has exclusive right to the music in sheet form (if they composed it) and their performances of it (if they performed it). If you obtain the sheet music, or can play it by ear, you are entitled to your own performance; this is how cover bands are allowed to exist. When you hear of an artist being sued over sampling, that's because sampling is, as its name implies, taking a sample of someone else's performance of the work and using it in your own. There's a pretty big difference between playing seven notes yourself and using someone else recording of those same seven notes; Vanilla Ice was sued for the former, but could have done the latter with impunity.

Re:Public performance

[secretsquirel]

99% sure that large acts that play covers absolutely pay royalties, at least if they sell or distribute recordings of the show.

Re:Public performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Cover bands are allowed to exist because of music publishing companies like ASCAP or BMI, to whom said cover bands pay a fee for the right to perform a song. There's a pretty standard fee schedule and the paperwork is relatively easy, so it's often cheaper to hire a cover band to perform some song rather than licensing a pre-existing recording by the original artist(s).

And even that seven notes is a risk; muscians have been successfully sued for incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song, even if not sampled.

Re:Public performance

[BronsCon]

ASCAP and BMI rake in money from cover bands with a "play it safe" attitude. Care to show me a cover band successfully being sued for their performance?

As for the seven notes, I guess whoever came up with the 2 - 4 - 6 - 4 progression should be raking it in right now, no?

Re:Public performance

[Anonymous Coward]

Why does everyone ignore Fair Use?

Re:Public performance

[tepples]

Because errors and omissions insurers have historically been unwilling to cover fair use.

I just rip songs off YouTube.....

[blunttrauma]

Is it piracy if the song is posted online by the Artist or label? There are lots of ways to create a MP3 file from a MP4 Video file.

Yeah, quality could be better, but after ~50 years of abuse from airplanes, race cars, firearms and loud music, my ears really can't tell the difference.

I do buy CDs occasionally, and digital stuff from a couple sources (provided it is DRM free), but honestly there hasn't been much I have heard lately that I felt was worth spending money on.

Re:I just rip songs off YouTube.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Pretty much.

It's just music

[Tighe_L]

Like it really matters if you hear one particular artist. There are plenty more out there.

Who are those people?

[Anonymous Coward]

Drake? I know of the fishdicks guy.

Amazon Prime keeps dropping songs and artists

[kriston]

I like Amazon Prime but they keep dropping songs and artists. Each month more and more songs in my playlist get "greyed out" until I elect to purchase them.

At least for Amazon Prime Music, sometimes it feels like it's a bait-and-switch scheme.

Re:Amazon Prime keeps dropping songs and artists

[Ken D]

Prime is rotating music and videos in and out all the time.
It isn't intended to be a static set of N titles that are Prime in perpetuity.

Kanye West?

[ilsaloving]

I can't think of a better possible use of the phrase "And nothing of value was lost".

Google Music includes Youtube Red, jussayin'.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sign up for Google Music to get most of the catalog, and if it's not available you can "play offline" with Youtube Red, "somehow," involving phones, I think. I haven't figured it out and have been using youtube_dl because I don't do "apps." Anyway, in theory, both ways a payment goes to the artist.

streaming exclusives

[Anonymous Coward]

I can't believe anyone would go out of there way to listen to that no talent idiot Kanye West.

IDEM for tv streaming services

[w1zz4]

I will never subscribe to any form of paid TV streaming services for the exact same reason.

Wait it out

[ThatsNotPudding]

If you wait pop music out, you'll soon find not only will you not be tempted to buy any of it, you won't even want to steal any of it. Other than the Greatest Hits of Get Off My Lawn, that is.

Re:Wait it out

[Anonymous Coward]

Other than the Greatest Hits of Get Off My Lawn, that is.

Did you mean 'Get Off My Cloud" ?

'dropping a single' means 'releasing a single'

[Ionized]

'dropping a single' means 'releasing a single'
much like 'dropping a deuce' means... you know.
and in many cases, the content of the former is the same as the content of the latter

Re:'dropping a single' means 'releasing a single'

[MobyDisk]

thanks

Re:'dropping a single' means 'releasing a single'

[Anonymous Coward]

i.e. like how dropping a needle commences the aural experience on a victrola

De nada.

[westlake]

The legal subscription services like Groove have 45 million tracks instantly available for streaming or purchase. There will gaps in any one of them, but add Amazon Prime to the mix, YouTube and internet radio and you are pretty well covered. I lost interest in P2P quite some time back. Too much time invested with very little in return.

It's called file sharing, morons!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not getting armed and then jumping on boats to rape and pillage.

Oh well.

[wkwilley2]

This doesn't effect me at fortunately.

I used to torrent music religiously, but now that I'm older and have a stable income, I try to support the bands I like.

Besides, these asshats that put their music only on specific channels don't make what I'd call music anyway.

How to avoid accidental infringement as composer?

[tepples]

And even that seven notes is a risk; muscians have been successfully sued for incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song, even if not sampled.

So what steps should a songwriter take to avoid accidentally "incorporating a sound-alike riff from someone else's song"?

pushing?

[Anonymous Coward]

"pushing many people to resort to piracy"

Yes, those poor pirates, being forced to do something that looks like a choice. Clearly they would all die if they didn't have their continual stream of free music.

Do go on about how "it's not really wrong because (insert personal philosophy that just happens to benefit your scenario)", etc. etc.

You know it's wrong. Stop doing it.

Re:How to avoid accidental infringement as compose

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't avoid someone making the claim. Whether you do it or not is irrelevant. If you really want to go into songwriting then, *like any other business in the USA*, you should know a lawyer that you can call if someone makes a claim about your song. You don't have to have them on retainer, just understand that being sued is a standard part of doing business and assume it'll happen someday and worry about it at that point.

The Word "Piracy"

[Anonymous Coward]

By allowing music and movie executives to frame "Copyright Infringement" as "Piracy", members of this forum accept that this practice is equivalent to kidnapping and murder on the high seas.

Again?

[Anonymous Coward]

Saying "tempting again" implies that it was ever not the go to option. I haven't bought music since 1999, other than for the specific purpose of making sure that others don't have to.

Oddly enough, the single biggest thing that slowed my music downloading over the last 5 years was Grooveshark, it was convenient and I all around loved it. When that was so foolishly taken down, all bets were off.

It doesn't matter how good it is ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Kanye is such a tool I don't even bother listening, and if I find a song I thought I liked was actually by Kanye that knowledge ruins the song for me. Sorry if that bugs the Kanye fans out there, but he affects me like Trump affects Democrats.

Complex maths in the summary

[JamesKeane7745]

Hold on, let me just check the maths in the summary...

1 service = 120
2 services = 240
3 services = 360

Yep - all checks out.

Depends on whether the engine is ported

[tepples]

At least with the game consoles, there's a real cost to porting the games -- the underlying graphics/controller APIs are radically different.

Unless the games are developed with something like Unity or Unreal, in which case the engine handles the graphics API for you. Controller APIs are something that can be wrapped in one day per platform. So it's more like mastering a finished album for a new format, which is something you might have to do anyway for the streaming services.