Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The lost joy of music piracy

pigeonsandplanes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

491–500 of 637 posts

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#491

Post by kylestratis »

runarberg wrote: post #385
port11 wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s true I didn’t grow up with that at all. When music blog were popular I’d have been in university exclusively listening to what I already liked. Bandcamp is indeed really bad at suggesting things you’ll like… To your last point: it’s weird how Bandsintown or Last.fm didn’t figure this out. Last.fm has so much potential but just isn’t… interested? One advantage of the offline scene is that I see a lot more local a…

Does Bandcamp still do their Bandcamp weekly and their regular article? Personally I never signed up for any streaming service (apart from Bandcamp; but I don‘t use their suggestion algorithm) so I can’t judge what is good or bad about it. But I feel like their regular articles and their Bandcamp weekly show was excellent at music discovery. I stopped listening and reading it a while ago, as I get plenty good music d…

They actually do a lot for discovery. Bandcamp weekly, notifications when labels you've bought from release something from another artist, playlists, and they have genre-focused blogs as well.

People just like saying something doesn't exist when they just didn't bother to look at their emails.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#492

Post by gitowiec »

I searched today for UK garage music blog and stupid LLMs gave me links to services with links to Bandcamp, YouTube and SoundCloud. It didn't understand the phrase "music blog" so I added mp3 and mixtape words. Still couldn't find good place like it was 2000.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#493

Post by Multicomp »

anal_reactor wrote: post #111
omgmajk wrote: 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.

I really struggle to find new music. I feel like I've already listened way too many times to everything I have on my SD card, but I really don't know what to look for. When I was a kid I was very much into rock and everything adjacent so I do have albums of most iconic rock bands. Nowadays I'm more into electronic music. I love a good techno track and I have a folder with 2000-2010 greatest pop-techno bangers. God da…

rainwave.cc has a chiptune mode, that's not electronic necessarily, but its an internet streaming radio that I've used to learn lots of new soundtracks I wouldn't otherwise encounter.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#494

Post by BeetleB »

DuncanCoffee wrote: post #135

I remember Emule, with its IRC client we discovered by chance, or BearShare, which had a whole social network, you could search for people based on age, country and whatever. We used to get together at a friend's house because he had decent internet, in front of a CRT monitor, chatting with people around Europe with our broken english. Music piracy also changed the course of my life, thanks to a DVD full of music I d…

The Donkey Network (Emule's network) is still going these days.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#495

Post by burningChrome »

JohnBooty wrote: post #302
devonsolomon wrote: post #112

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 iPod would be the culmination of my friendships Hey! You can bring this back in 2026! In a fit of random inspiration (possibly inspired by a glass of wine or two) I began a new practice. If I'm hanging out with somebody who's passionate about music, I pull up Spotify (or Apple Music, whatever) and create a blank playlist. I hand them my phone and ask them to add some tracks for me. Here's the trick that makes it w…

>> Here's the trick that makes it work... I give them strict instructions not to pick something they think I'LL like. I just want some tracks or albums that THEY are passionate about.

This is exactly how I used to find music in the 80's when I was growing up. I had two guys I hung out with that were music aficionados. Both had older siblings who were really into music and so by proxy they would inherit their siblings music and musical tastes. I would hand over blank cassette tapes for them to put the stuff they were listening to. My god, the amount of music I amassed in junior high and high school was mind boggling.

This is a great updated version of this, thank you for this!

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#496

Post by Semaphor »

rconti wrote: post #487
Semaphor wrote: post #65

I loved OiNK (and had the t-shirt), but neither What.cd nor waffles ever were a proper replacement for me. What got me that feeling of discovery again, decades later, and even surpassed it, was doing release Fridays and just listening. I mostly know what (sub)-genres I like, I go through upcoming release lists for the next week, open every bandcamp link in a new tab (or for those that don’t have bandcamp, I see if I…

What do you mean by "doing release Fridays"?

The paragraph following that explains what I mean. It’s technically not always all on Friday, as Japan doesn’t join in, and smaller labels or non-labels sometimes also pick others days, but the bulk of releases happens every Friday. For tomorrow I have 9 albums on my list, plus an extra one that releases on Sunday.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#497

Post by jml78 »

kylestratis wrote: post #490
devonsolomon wrote: post #112

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…

This has never gone away though, you just chose to stop doing it. I go to local shows pretty frequently, have made tons of friends (in bands and not) in the process, found new bands - some that produce an EP and breakup, others who chug along locally for years, others who tour nationally regularly but stay playing intimate shows here at home. I've discovered so much wonderful music and even better people this way, it…

I can explain it. I graduated college, got a job, got married, had kids. Going to shows just didn’t happen.

Now I am getting back into it with my teenager.

On the flip side, I was part of an irc group back in the day where with permission of local bands, I would take their cds and get them released by music piracy groups. I would rip and release them. It got more ears on their music. This was all in the heavy metal scene.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#498

Post by beloch »

eisa01 wrote: 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…

Some music is a lot like abandoned video games. It can sometimes be tricky to figure out who owns the rights and, even having done that, more difficult still to track them down and get their permission. Also, it's not a given that the answer will be, "Yes.". If you ask an obscure artist to fill out forms and jump through hoops for 6 cents in streaming royalties, they may tell you to piss off.

There are likely many albums that would have met oblivion were it not for piracy.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#499

Post by fl4regun »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #438
eisa01 wrote: 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…

> Even albums mentioned in the Norwegian business magazine D2 can be impossible to find in legit channels. I'm confused. Spotify wouldn't work?

spotify doesn't contain every music album released.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#500

Post by fl4regun »

bugufu8f83 wrote: post #99
eisa01 wrote: 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…

here's a counter example: the opening to mirror's edge is not hosted on spotify (last time I checked, in my region at least), and it's an old favourite of mine (and I'm sure many people who played the game too)
Post reply on HN