Live data from Hacker News

The lost joy of music piracy

pigeonsandplanes.com

361–370 of 637 posts

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#361
post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The result increased the likelihood of irl performance attendance. I don't really know what my friends listen to these days.

I wonder if the real difference is that everyone has earbuds versus playing through a speaker

And Bluetooth still doesn't have a good "headphone splitter" function to plug in 2 or more sets of headphones, does it?

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#362

I'm confused, surely there's a contradiction between "piracy was so good, we had this panacea of completely open, free, infinite music" and "streaming is bad even though it's the same infinite music library but we charge a small subscription". I get that artists aren't paid enough, but it's better than the $0 they get from piracy.

> it's the same infinite music library

No it's not. That is absurdly wrong. You can ignore whoever led you to believe it.

> I get that artists aren't paid enough, but it's better than the $0 they get from piracy.

I was going to say that you should talk to some artists, but one has already replied to you.

This should clear your confusion enough to update your opinion.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#363

This is a wonderful piece. I really appreciate the author for writing this – I thought I lost the ability to read longform on the internet. What.cd was so vast a resource that it means something different to everyone. I personally lament the loss of the forums the most. I would post dissertation-length comments there and others reciprocated. I would put hours of research into debating a single topic. It's where I pro…

> I thought I lost the ability to read longform on the internet

Same here. It's great to read a well-written piece that keeps my interest. I'm sick of reading the overused AI cliches and all the long-form articles that spend many paragraphs on irrelevant parts of the life stories of all involved, before getting anywhere near to the point.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#364

Very fond memories of using Audiogalaxy, and also soulseek. Soulseek especially had a community where you found someone who was into the same kind of music as you (obscure breakcore! japanese garage punk!) and could browse their collections, and chat to them also! What a wonderful way to make music friends and get good recommendations.

SSK is the best of anything mentioned here. You can find everything. Community is extremely big and it is there 25 years and will hopefully be another 25. The coverage level is so good that you can find any release in loseless format. There are folks having millions of audio files and 50TB of highly organized data.

I pretty much doubt it can be taken down at this point.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#365

This is a wonderful piece. I really appreciate the author for writing this – I thought I lost the ability to read longform on the internet. What.cd was so vast a resource that it means something different to everyone. I personally lament the loss of the forums the most. I would post dissertation-length comments there and others reciprocated. I would put hours of research into debating a single topic. It's where I pro…

I miss the What.CD forums as well. I learned so much there. What.CD felt like attending a conference full of people from all over, full of ideas and willing to put effort into posts. The successor sites are much smaller and less active and it feels more like visiting a bar full of regulars who all know each other. I still love those sites for the music discovery and I still collect music as a hobby but What.CD's forum was the best forum I've ever been on. I wish someone archived it so I could go back and read some of the old threads.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#366

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's total bullshit. Global music revenue fell by 50% because of piracy[1]. The article you linked does not provide any source and / or a methodology for how this was calculated and attributed specifically to piracy

The article is mostly an interview with a journalist who wrote a book about Napster. The claim comes from his book. That's the source. I have not read the book. If you have concerns about the methodology you should read it yourself.

It's unfathomably weird of you to frame an article as a source for your claim and then wait for someone to point out that the article does not support your claim before admitting that the source is actually a book that you haven't read.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#368
post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. I mean sure, people were definitely pirating music. But lots of people are own huge collections of CDs, and you could also just borrow other people's CDs to rip them. We were kids without money, but older folks at the time did spend money on CDs.

> and you could also just borrow other people's CDs to rip them Which is "piracy" - not that that makes it ethically wrong. It's actually the main kind of copying that is targeted by DRM since users of the LimeWire kind never see that.

Which is why we should never use the word "piracy." Don't let the industry dictate language (for their own benefit). Equating sharing music with a friend to robbery and murder on the high seas is a wildly out of touch exaggeration. If we let booksellers dictate language in the same way, they'd call libraries and book clubs organized crime.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#369

The thing I miss most, and the thing we’ll never get back was the cultural buy-in and network effects. My music discovery then was different friend groups incrementally amassing large collections of albums in whatever sub-culture that friend groups had doubled down on. My iPod would be the culmination of my friendships. I would then fall in love with bands and albums and tracks on these albums without any influence b…

>My music discovery then was different friend groups incrementally amassing large collections of albums in whatever sub-culture that friend groups had doubled down on. My iPod would be the culmination of my friendships. I would then fall in love with bands and albums and tracks on these albums without any influence before hand on their popularity or their algorithmic match to my music tastes. I feel that for sure, bu…

> We mostly discover new music from about 15 to 25 or 30, right? It's pretty normal for that to slow down as the concerns of adulthood kinda get in the way of keeping up with whomever is hot now.

Maybe, I guess? I still listen to some of the stuff from that era, but I've gotten wonderfully addicted to a music trivia game called Whatsamusic, which introduces me to a ton of music played by whoever's in the round. But only 30 seconds at a time (it's fairly fast-paced), so when I hear something that's intriguing enough to want to hear the rest of the track, I go add it to a "check this out later" playlist elsewhere. (I could also bookmark it in the game.)

My tastes have exploded in the 2 years since I found the game. There's so much good stuff out there! And playing with hosts that pick good themes ("Songs that're a good source of protein" was a recent favorite. The first play was "Maneater" and it went downhill from there.), you can't help but find more.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#370

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd wager that pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites If you have simple tastes, easily accept holes in their catalog and don't care about being served butchered "remasters". People who actually care don't use Netflix/Spotify. Some examples: Melvins' Lysol is (famously) only available on Apple Music and for good measure I just looked right now at Spotify's page for Midor…

>If you have simple tastes, easily accept holes in their catalog and don't care about being served butchered "remasters". People who actually care don't use Netflix/Spotify. Oh please, spare me the condescending bullshit. Sure, there exists music that is on RED that is not on Spotify. There also exists music that is on Spotify that is not on RED (some of which I even listen to!). I said "pretty much anything" and "mo…

I think you and OP are arguing different things. Netflix/Spotify are the McDonalds/Olive Garden of media. They are basic, uncomplicated, and flawed, yet they serve most people's tastes. People whose needs they don't serve well go somewhere else.
Post reply on HN