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Stream-ripping Is 'Fastest Growing' Music Piracy (bbc.com)
Stream-ripping is now the fastest-growing form of music piracy in the UK, new research has suggested. From a report: Several sites and apps allow users to turn Spotify songs, YouTube videos and other streaming content into permanent files to store on phones and computers. Record labels claim that "tens, or even hundreds of millions of tracks are illegally copied and distributed by stream-ripping services each month." One service alone is thought to have more than 60 million monthly users. According to research by the Intellectual Property Office and PRS For Music, 15 percent of adults in the UK regularly use these services, with 33 percent of them coming from the 16-24 age bracket. Overall usage of stream-ripping sites increased by 141.3 percent between 2014 and 2016, overshadowing all other illegal music services.
I bought an app last night in Microsoft's Windows App Store to rip content from YouTube. It isn't underground and you don't need to even use dubious apps or warez anymore to rip.
do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
if you checked out the quality of the average ear-buds that people use with their phones, you would have the answer to that question.
politicians are like babies' nappies: they should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons
My mp3 player has a burnished walnut knob.
I know the difference between an integrated amp and a "receiver."
But that Grateful Dead you listen to with your pristine Dynaco amp and vintage Klipsh speakers was originally recorded on cassette.
I'm guessing they're getting FAR less than even dismal mp3 quality music ripping off of streaming services, that aren't putting out very high quality music at all....
I would guess this wouldn't sound very good even on a portable player or in a car, much less even a modestly decent home sound system....
Or, do people just not care (or even know about) sound fidelity anymore...?
I can only speak for YouTube as I don't use Spotify, etc., but YouTube vides have MPA audio at 128 kbps at the lower resolutions and 192 kbps at 720p and up. It's arguable, but 128 kbps should be roughly equivalent to 192 kbps MP3. So it's not as bad as you think. But honestly, no, no young people care at all about sound quality. If it's not terrible, it's good enough for them. One thing my conversations with young people has made clear is that they are simply not ever going to buy music in a physical format, like CDs, ever. They'd rather not have music than do that. And streaming meets their needs because they prefer to listen to pretty random selections of songs rather than being fans of specific artists.
I did this VERY briefly early on...but also, early on, I noticed the sound sucked, and well...hard to always get the intro/outro of the song without the fscking DJ talking over it, or starting a new song over top of the last one....
But at a young age...I and most of my friends were sold on good quality audio.
We all worked, mowing lawns, baby sitting...later we got jobs washing dishes and bussing tables in HS.
But starting about 12 years old...I went into a high end audio shop, and heard a McIntosh tube amp hooked to Klipschorn speakers and my jaw hit the floor.
Starting from then...I earned and bought piece by piece as good of audio equipment as I could save and afford at the time...and have been trading up over all these years, till I now essentially have that first system I heard as a kid.
Of course, too many loud concerts have made my hearing not quite as sharp as back then, but still...I love good audio.
For the gym or car, sure..high quality mp3 is just fine, but for home...I want CD quality...usually I rip my stuff to FLAC and listen on the good stereo to that....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Technically, it's not "piracy" even in the idiotic sense in those jurisdictions where recording is allowed.
Ezekiel 23:20
Several sites and apps allow users to turn Spotify songs, YouTube videos and other streaming content into permanent files to store on phones and computers.
You mean "time shifting". This has been litigated already.
Overall usage of stream-ripping sites increased by 141.3 percent between 2014 and 2016, overshadowing all other illegal music services.
Except that this isn't actually illegal. So now I wonder how many other apps services are incorrectly called "illegal" by this group.
Nope, no sig
People don't care about anything but 'FREE'. So who cares about paying for the product any longer.
Then their favorite artist stops touring and producing music and they complain because "They were my favorite band".
I don't pirate music- but I don't exactly think the music artists of large bands are really struggling for money. They tour because THAT's where they make most of their money.
Smaller bands probably aren't going to be on most streaming sites anyway.
In reality, stream ripping isn't really much different to copying to cassette from the radio like everyone was doing in the 80's.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
If you think the earbuds are bad, some of the crap over-produced loudness wars inspired music they put through those headphones couldn't sound good even if gold-plated monster cables actually worked. Hell, Wikipedia even has a nice image of how more recent releases of old songs suffer the same problem: Waveforms for 3 releases of Black or White by Michael Jackson
Look at classic rock songs before that era to get a good idea how much its changed and how much it affects music. Here's Stairway to Heaven which I'm sure most people are familiar with. That song would be practically impossible today since whatever dick weevil would be put in charge of mastering the album would have maxed it out immediately, removing any ability for the song to build-up musically as well as lyrically.
Any song being crafted for mainstream radio play just isn't going to be as good of a listen (I'm not even talking about whether the song is good lyrically or musically) because the shit stain producers utterly rob it of expressivity in order to make it stand out more amidst all the other noise. There needs to be something like a Director's Cut for albums that give us something other than the radio mix.
Depends.
I'm an old person. But back when I was a teenager, I used to record stuff off the radio to listen to--the AM Radio. Why? Because it's free. Yeah, the quality sucked. Yeah, I sometimes ended up with some DJ talking up the song. But I was willing to forgo all that because it was free.
I assume it's a similar thing here.
Close...
They emit gold particles that when ionized create a gold nano-filament between the ear buds and the device -- allowing for perfect signal transmission. It gets kind of expensive having to refill the reservoir with fresh gold (i don't have the money to invest in the recycling adapter), but still miles and miles better than wired headphones.
Songs with high dynamic range are annoying to listen to in a lot of everyday situations, such as in a car or while working out at the gym, as volume has to constantly be adjusted. Not everyone listens to music in an underground bunker with perfect noise isolation, $10000 speakers, etc. Also, I doubt anyone here can truly differentiate between a lossless audio file and a reasonable MP3/AAC, most of you are just full of yourselves (many blind AB tests out there that people tend to ignore due to bias). Most people really just care about the music; sound quality is secondary. Heck, people can't even differentiate between a modern violin and a Stradivarius, let alone the difference between MP3/lossless.
The last few cars that I've owned boosted the volume as you sped up or slowed down. This is a much better technical solution than ramming saturated music down everyone's throats.
And even my old-ass Sony tube TV has a dynamic range compression feature to help watch movies at low volume.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
No, cost is not a problem. The circuit is trivial and the trick can likely already be pulled off with the DSP electronics already present for tone control/equalization. This was even available in the analog days as a "loudness" knob.
"Adoption" would happen more or less immediately if the music wasn't already compressed. It was widely adopted in ye olden days.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
I certainly hope it doesn't kill the music industry. Y'know, like it did last time. And the time before that.
I doubt anyone here can truly differentiate between a lossless audio file and a reasonable MP3/AAC
As someone who did professional audio engineering for quite a few years, I have to disagree --- sort of.
First, you say a "reasonable" MP3. A "reasonable" MP3 is indeed hard to tell from a lossless file, but most MP3s aren't all that "reasonable" and can be pretty easily distinguished.
My second caveat has to do with the listening environment. If you're listening on the Apple earbuds that came with your phone, you surely can't tell good from bad. If you listen on the JBL professional setup I had in my studio control room, you sure as heck can hear small differences.
I do agree that many modern (and many somewhat older) mixes are way over-engineered. The engineers try to get them to sound acceptable in loud environments, in stereo and in mono, on crappy car systems and crappier earbuds, and so on ... and what loses out is listening in a good environment on good equipment. Note that I say "many" mixes, not "all" mixes. In particular, New Age seems to be mixed with more of a view to quality listening.
Of course, taste is subjective. I'm sure some people like the sound of their Apple earbuds.
A good friend of mine got his CPA as an older college student. Then he went to work for the big CPA firms in NYC. They used him for auditing and then spit him out at the end of audit season (after having told him, "You play your cards right and we'll put you on track to be a partner." Yeah, as if!). One audit he did is worth noting.
It seems this one former rocker whose group was filling the stadiums "back in the day" was accosted by a paparazzi and the rocker may have struck the paparazzi. He called his attorney when he got a letter from the alleged victim of his fist and asked for him to defend him. His attorney told him what it would cost to defend. The former rocker said, "But I'm broke!" His attorney said, "That's crazy—your music is still selling. In fact, my daughter just told me that she got your entire album from 1970-something on iTunes."
"I haven't received a royalty check for five years from anyone!" replied the former rocker.
His attorney, who drew up the contracts informed him that he had the "right to audit" the sales of his recordings. So, my friend Jim was hired to do the audit.
Here is what he found out:
To say the least, after the audit, the record company agreed to arbitration and wound up paying the members of the group unpaid moneys and had to pay interest to keep the story from the press. Jim never told me who the band was, but he did tell me that I would know right away who they were.
So, the next time you see the recording industry whining about people stealing "their" music, understand that it's the artist's music you are stealing—if you are, indeed, illegally copying music. But also understand that the recording industry, themselves, are just as guilty—they blame you for what they, themselves do.
Gods don't kill people, people with gods kill people.