this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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You're not wrong and I'm happy that piracy communities exist in spaces where access is easily cheap and accessible if only for the days that those industries get greedier. But for now, I'm happy to pay when it's affordable and easy to access.
I half agree with what Gabe Newell said in regards to piracy being a service issue and not about price. I think it largely is a service issue. Access is the greater problem. Price is secondary as long as it's somewhat reasonable. I don't pirate video games because I can get them reasonably, but he is a smidge wrong insofar as I don't buy the outrageously expensive games. Steam's major success is having good sales that keep me away from pirating because the possibility of games I want going on discount at some point is realistic. It's telling that the only time I did dabble in video game piracy was to relive my childhood memories of Nazi Zombies from the Call of Duty video games. I dabbled in it then because Activision is selling their decades old games for outrageous prices considering their age and their "sales" are weak considering the already overinflated price. I refuse to pay for that. And so I sailed the high seas.
The music industry is still affordable and accessible, so I don't feel that pressure at all. Back when Limewire was around the pressure was there partially because I was a kid and didn't have much money and hunting down CDs I wanted for the obscure music I liked was challenging. It was mostly an accessibility issue that Spotify fixed. If their prices move beyond my means then that relationship will no longer benefit me and the sails will raise once more.
You can do both - pay for music when it comes from sources like Bandcamp, Qobuz, etc where you get to own the FLAC file. Don't pay for things like Spotify where the music you've "purchased" is not yours to keep.
Can’t. I’m addicted to the algorithms. Music discovery guided by AI is too much fun. If I was only using streaming services to listen to music I already know or the new albums from artists I already like them I’d be with you, but now I’m hooked on finding new stuff.
Funkwhale is federated. I have discovered lots of good stuff on there via other servers. Not algorithmic, but once you find a server that appeals to you, there's a lot to dig into.
There's also https://libre.fm and https://listenbrainz.org/ and https://openwhyd.org/
+1 to ListenBrainz. It's an awesome tool for tracking your listening habits (kinda like Last.fm). Combined with Pano Scrobbler, I can create collage pics of my most listened-to artists or albums of a given time period (per week/month/year). It's a great service and I want to donate to that project in the future, because I get so much value out of it.
"Guided by AI" I think you mean algorithms programmed according to strict music licensing contracts from the labels that say a service needs to suggest label-preferred "complimentary" artists over actual similar music that you would like based on a collection of characteristics in a given song/band's sound signature.
You have evidence this is happening on Spotify’s Discover Weekly playlist?
Richard Stallman wrote a quick page on the shady things Spotify does (3 minute read not counting the linked articles). Although only loosely related to what you asked for. According to the info I found online, Discover Weekly should be safe from the kinds of sponsorships you talk about (the whole article takes about 8-15 minutes to read, but I quoted the important part below).
If you close your eyes, you can metaphorically hear the tides changing on the music streaming industry. The fall of Netflix is such a stark reminder of how fast these convenient services can morph into user hostile experiences.
Plus, there is the added philosophical discussion about what it means to allow a centralized corporate media conglomerate to curate your music for you. I'd imagine that their insentivisation structure over what should be heard is different than yours.
For serious though, I hypothesize that your library/playlist data (xml, maybe? somewhere? I'm just starting the journey of offloading.) is more valuable to users than the music itself. Next step is figuring out how to export Spotify's data.