Slashdot Mirror
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.
When did pirating stop being tempting?
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
500K people torrented Kanye? What the fuck is this world coming to.
Suppose you were an idiot and suppose you were a member of Congress
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.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
.
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.
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.
... non-value added things will be trumped. I.e. there's no 'value-add' for one streaming platform to another, other than exclusivity/access.
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.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
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.
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.
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
Like it really matters if you hear one particular artist. There are plenty more out there.
Don't worry, the confusion will get worse if the US gets Donald Trump for president while the EU has Donald Tusk for chairman.
-=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
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.
Kriston
I can't think of a better possible use of the phrase "And nothing of value was lost".
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.
I will never subscribe to any form of paid TV streaming services for the exact same reason.
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.
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.
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.
'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
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.
>>"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.
Singularity: a belief in the "God" idea with the "demiurge" relation inverted.
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.
Have you ever fallen asleep at the keybhanusdiog?
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.
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"?
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.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
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.
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.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Hold on, let me just check the maths in the summary...
1 service = 120
2 services = 240
3 services = 360
Yep - all checks out.
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.
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.