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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.
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
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.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
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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.
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!
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.
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?
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.
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.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
"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.
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.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
some would call "the primary goal is 'optimizing or maximizing their income'" a good definition of greed. Your mileage may vary.
I can't think of a better possible use of the phrase "And nothing of value was lost".
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.
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.
"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.