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The lost joy of music piracy

pigeonsandplanes.com

541–550 of 637 posts

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#541

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well they shadowban the accounts which share copyrighted content for which they receive copyright claims. It's a centralized service, they just configure you account to be invisible in the search results of others. And they don't check whether the file is really reachable. I've 'chmod 000' copyrighted files so they could not be downloaded (but still could be found in search), and Soulseek administrators were not happ…

Not doubting you but there are people with a quarter of a petabyte shared on slsk. I have a modest share of ~200GB, a good chunk of that from trigger happy record labels and never got banned. My client serves and average of 50-100 downloads a day no problem. So idk whats going wrong on your end.

The first time I was banned for Village People, then for The Weeknd. Haven't asked the reasons after that.

I guess that's why Soulseek could be present on the sites like Google Play and in general is seen as a "music library" unlike basically all other p2p music file sharing/piracy resources.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#542

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…

I've had the opposite experience, where Spotify (and, to a lesser extent, YouTube) has been a great way to find different music that I enjoy. The Discover Weekly playlist in particular has been surprisingly good at surfacing music that I enjoy but would have never encountered on my own.

This is handy for me because my taste in music runs pretty different from most of my friends.

I don't know how much of this comes from using Spotify in a different way, and how much is Spotify's algorithm adapting to my weird preferences.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#543

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…

> I make an effort to use Spotify to find and listen to albums, but it wasn’t built for this, and invariably find 90% of my listening happening on algo-generated playlists of songs that sound exactly like a song I like. I never learn the names of the songs or the names of the bands as the songs go by, and I fall in love with none of it… It just vaguely sounds like stuff I like. It sucks. I don't think algorithms are…

The idea of how algorithms and scrolling get in the way of contemplation is an intriguing idea.

I had some other similar ideas come up in that past that are similar to this concept.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45217545

https://aeon.co/essays/tech-vexed-how-digital-life-threatens...

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#544
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because you can't stream it, that doesn't justify piracy. I buy the CD for music I want to listen to but can't stream. The idea that you are forced to pirate is made up.

I agree with you that you are never "forced" to pirate; you can simply not listen to the missing album. But many many many many excellent albums are not available for sale anywhere at any price. They essentially do not exist, except in the hands of a few collectors. The bands themselves, the creators of said music, want their music to be heard. The fact that they aren't available for sale or streaming is often becaus…

It's okay for media to reach its end of life even if they are excellent. All good things come to an end. There is continually other new good things you can find instead in life.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There has to be loss for it to be stolen. Counter example: Pirating a song is considered stealing as you are taking something for free without paying for it. You are using a definition that is different from the average person.

Pirating songs is not stealing. It's copyright infringement. If I go to the store, pick up a carton of milk with my right hand, and magically get a second carton of milk in my left hand, then walk out the store with the carton of milk in my left hand, leaving the original carton in the store, then I have not stolen anything. If that is stealing, then I can only conclude that stealing is (a)moral, and we need a differ…

People don't magically get a copy of an artists song on the computer. They steal it.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pirating songs is not stealing. It's copyright infringement. If I go to the store, pick up a carton of milk with my right hand, and magically get a second carton of milk in my left hand, then walk out the store with the carton of milk in my left hand, leaving the original carton in the store, then I have not stolen anything. If that is stealing, then I can only conclude that stealing is (a)moral, and we need a differ…

People don't magically get a copy of an artists song on the computer. They steal it.

Copying is not stealing. If you're of the opinion that that's stealing, then it is my opinion that stealing is OK.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#547

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What? The context of the conversation was about piracy which is a distinct legal fiction, it's inherently grounded in the law's opinion, so yes necessarily the law cannot be wrong in this context, that's incoherent. An idiosyncratic disagreement with the law isn't saying anything relevant to the discussion.

In that context it is still not theft. The term is copyright infringement, a distinct fiction and categorically not theft.

[deleted]

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#548
post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the streaming sites are in a difficult position. On one hand I expect access to the worlds music, but on the other hand I also expect not to be drowned in 8bit covers and AI music. They are - to me at least - also an arbiter of music, similarly to how record stores used to be.

If only they had gobs of cash to pay people to curate content… or, I don’t know, AI that can check if something is AI. Or ask uploaders for some kind of proof, since we’re in the age of asking citizens to prove they’re adults. If only there was _something_ they could do!

I mean for starters you could clearly label everything that was uploaded/created before 2023/24 and the slopocalypse.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#549
post #532

I was in OiNK, and later I was an Elite on what.cd. I had access to college radio station cd shipments at the time too. Filled my fair share of requests. Nothing that has come since compares to those days

pretty sure red has surpassed wcd in the size of archive, # of torrents, albums, etc. fewer ppl tho, much quieter forums, which was a big draw for people i've gathered.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#550
post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was incredibly easy to get upload credit for seeding freeleech torrents (which included 10-20 albums of staff picks once a month or so) or re-encoding releases that were missing v2 or 320 encodings and scripts would pick up the releases. You could also just watch for new releases or follow trends and you'd easily get 5-10x ratio seeds. Also, you can get a $5/m seedbox to keep your downloads alive and you'd easy ge…

Reading your reply, I think we have different definitions of “incredibly easy”.

i permaseeded everything i grabbed for 7 years or i dunno, from the beginning of the site til the end. i never uploaded a single thing. just maybe 300gb of v0 albums accumulated over time, seeding 24/7 forever. it got me hundreds of gb of buffer. zero effort. slow home connection. it was easy.
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