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Backing up Spotify

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191–200 of 732 posts

Re: Backing up Spotify

#193
This work is so critical.

Read an article that was published just 10 years ago, and witness the bit rot as most external links will 404, gone forever.

I think it's worth questioning the value of preserving -everything-, but it seems like if we can, we should.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#194
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this argument is so tired. most artists dont really care about streaming or selling their music. most of their real money comes from touring, merch, and people somehow interacting with them. most musicians just want to make music, express themselves, and connect with folks who enjoy their stuff or want to make music with em. Even some of the largest artists in the world only receive a few grand a year from streaming.…

Touring makes almost no money. Only concerts with >1000ppl make money. Below that you can assume not even the sound engineer gets paid.

I know a number of musicians that tour nightclubs, small venues, and festivals.

They make a living; not a luxurious one, but they do OK. They just enjoy making music, and feel that it's worth it. Many of them never even record their music.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#195

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

>I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this.

What's stopping someone from sticking a microphone next to their speaker?

Slow, but effective.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researchers working on things like music classification and generation. The only thing is, you can't really publicly admit exactly what dataset you trained/tested on...? Didn't Meta already publicly admit they trained their current models on pirated content? They're too big to fail. I look forward to my music Slop.

They are too big to fail but they aren’t too big to have to pay out a huge settlement. Facebook annual revenue is about it twice that of the entire global recording industry. The strategy these companies took was probably correct but that calculation included the high risk of ultimately having to pay out down the line. Don’t mistake their current resistance to paying for an internal belief they never will have to.

> They are too big to fail but they aren’t too big to have to pay out a huge settlement. Facebook [...]

I think it's pretty clear from history that they are too big to have to pay out a huge settlement.

First, they never had to. There was never a "huge" settlement, nothing that actually did hurt.

Second, the US don't do any kind of antitrust, and if a government outside the US tries to fine a US TooBigTech, the US will bully that government (or group of governments) until they give up.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#197

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

> The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumer it's an archive to defend against Spotify going away. Remember when Netflix had everything, and then that eroded and now you can only rely on stuff that Netflix produced itself? the average consumer will flock when Spotify ultimately enshitifies

Netflix didn't lose content by choice. Actual right holders decided to pull their content and create rival services.

Has nothing to do with perceived enshittification by Netflix (even though they have enshittification too).

Spotify is under the same threat: they have no content that they own. Everything is licensed.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#198
post #179
post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this argument is so tired. most artists dont really care about streaming or selling their music. most of their real money comes from touring, merch, and people somehow interacting with them. most musicians just want to make music, express themselves, and connect with folks who enjoy their stuff or want to make music with em. Even some of the largest artists in the world only receive a few grand a year from streaming.…

Spotify paid out ten billion dollars to artists in 2024. This is not small potatoes - total 2024 music industry merchandise sales was around $14b. Youtube also paid out literally 50x more to creators in 2024 than Patreon had total subscriptions on the platform. These big platform payouts matter a lot.

> This is not small potatoes

Unless you're a small potato. Approximately 0% of what I pay for spotify goes to the artists I actually listen to. Fucking Taylor Swift and the Beatles estate don't need my money.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#199

This is insane. I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. The thing is, this doesn't even seem particularly useful for average consumers/listeners, since Spotify itself is so convenient, and trying to locate individual tracks in massive torrent files of presumably 10,000's of tracks each sounds horrible. But this does seem like it will be a godsend for researche…

>I definitely was not aware Spotify DRM had been cracked to enable downloading at scale like this. What's stopping someone from sticking a microphone next to their speaker? Slow, but effective.

> Slow, but effective.

I wouldn't call this very effective. It would take an impractically long amount of time to capture a meaningful fraction of the collection and quality would suffer greatly.

Re: Backing up Spotify

#200
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This leak will also be really useful to bad actors who will resell the music from this list without paying royalties to the artists.

Which is how Spotify started... And is still carrying on. So nothing has changed.

Spotify pays 70% of revenue to rights holders.

Why don't you ask them where the money inteded for artists is going? You know? The small insignificant companies of Sony, Warner Music, EMI that own the vast majority of music and own all the contracts?

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