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The lost joy of music piracy

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Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#101

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just…

I'd even go as far as argue that all streaming has its origins in piracy - Spotify seeded its catalog with pirated music (allegedly), Crunchyroll started off as an anime piracy site, etc.

Sometimes it's cheaper to break the law and pay a fine, than to do everything by law.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some people want more than "mystery meat" levels of audio quality.

I once did a blind test on myself. A FLAC audio file and a 128Kbit Ogg vorbis file of the same track that I could switch between as I pleased but without knowing which was playing. Yeah, I cannot tell the difference. I am absolutely sure others can, but not me. I also think credit goes to far better encoders today than what we had 25 years ago.

Yeah, but people aren’t uploading high quality music to begin with. It’s probably like two or three levels of compressed by the time you yt-dlp it.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#103
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://archive.org/details/What.CD_Goodbye_Release

Oh phew, I hadn't heard of this, thank you. Glad this exists, I wonder if Redacted has imported it.

It hasn't, but it was used by the community to kickstart the rebuilding process. I'd wager at this point there's less than 1% of the original catalog missing. Plus, all the music that was released meanwhile. RED already surpassed the number of releases that were on WCD many years ago.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#104
post #28

Music piracy is alive and well if you know where to look. Some places has been mentioned in this thread already. Of course there is no replacing the magic of early 2000-2010's p2p sites like OiNK, What and Waffles - but well curated sites still exist.

Public p2p sharing is pretty much dead in the West.

Only Russian Rutracker is still going strong, but everything other is either stagnating or defunct.

I have a p2p sharing websites bookmarks which I collected about 5 years ago, 60% of them are dead now.

Private (invite-only) West sharing websites are still alive though, but are supported mostly by beefy enthusiasts who seed everything via a seedbox elsewhere, not in their home country on their residential connection.

Rutracker went the other way: they organized donation collection to buy the HDDs to the 'saviours' group, a one-time investment compared to the datacenter server cost. In RU/UA, people usually seed from home.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#105

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just…

Also iTunes Match, which legalized all of your pirated music[1].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625967

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#106
post #51

It's important to remember that to this day, streaming sites do not have a full archive of the music out there. There is still a need for music piracy Even albums mentioned in the Norwegian business magazine D2 can be impossible to find in legit channels. Your only option is to buy used CDs on Discogs for 50-100 USD, or know your way around the successors of these sites These CDs weren’t even on Oink or What (or did…

>It's important to remember that to this day, streaming sites do not have a full archive of the music out there. There is still a need for music piracy Ehhh..... I'd wager that pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites. Streaming is how everyone consumes music these days, so everything new gets released there, and by this point the catalog from the CD era is extensive. Music…

Do you think the difference between film piracy and music piracy is inherent, due to the differences between film and music; or is there some alternative reality where we ended up with a one-stop shop for films, as well?

For the history of music piracy, I found" How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy" was a good book to read.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article touches on the topic and mentions Nine Inch Nails' and Radiohead's 'free' album releases. There's also the possibility/likelihood (I can't recall the results of the research) that increasing exposure, via piracy, is actually better for the artist long term. And then, as others have already responded, the worst offenders are, generally, the industry insiders themselves. Reports of the death of music are gr…

>increasing exposure, via piracy, is actually better for the artist long term. If breaking someone's kneecaps extended their life by 20 years I wouldn't want someone to randomly break my kneecaps and feel good about it because they "did me a favor." >I pirated plenty as a kid with no money Neither age nor wealth exempts someone's stealing from being a crime. In fact I see it as worse crime as it sets a bad example th…

[dead]

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#108
post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd even go as far as argue that all streaming has its origins in piracy - Spotify seeded its catalog with pirated music (allegedly), Crunchyroll started off as an anime piracy site, etc.

Sometimes it's cheaper to break the law and pay a fine, than to do everything by law.

Sometimes it’s impossible. Music labels wouldn’t even get in a room with you to discuss web back in the day.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#109

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just…

I'd even go as far as argue that all streaming has its origins in piracy - Spotify seeded its catalog with pirated music (allegedly), Crunchyroll started off as an anime piracy site, etc.

[deleted]

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#110
post #86

One thing I miss about the iPod era is that Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music. It doesn't take much look at how much music an iPod could store, how much music cost, and how much people had in disposable income to spend on music to realize that music had to come from other means. The iPod and P2P file sharing were incredibly synergistic in a way that makes me giggle. The iTunes store is just…

> Apple knew they were selling a device to play pirated music If I’m remembering right, the tagline on the Mac mini was “rip mix burn”

Predates the Mac mini (tagline: The most affordable Mac ever.) by a good few years—predates the iPod even—but it was an Apple ad campaign:

https://youtu.be/K0ZWuhcM7t4

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Apples-Rip-Mix-Burn-camp...

You can’t really call it a pro-piracy message though. Ripping implies you have the original CD already.

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