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

601–610 of 637 posts

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#601

Post by dbspin »

runarberg wrote: post #596
dbspin wrote: post #594

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I've been a bandcamp user since close to the dawn of the service. The issues I commented on above don't relate to their curation emails but the poverty of the interface itself. Bandcamp has been widely and roundly, not to mention accurately criticised for it's technical / UX failures for a long time. It also has no social features whatsoever. Unfortunately a curated email isn't a replacement for proper recommendat…

I think me and you use Bandcamp in totally different ways, and this is why you see a problem where I don‘t. I am not judging btw (unlike your parent) just pointing out the differences. My primary (and now only) use case of Bandcamp is as a marketplace between me and the artist/label. I use it as a super convenient record store. And like a good record store, bandcamp also has the equivalent of music magazine which you…

That makes sense. Viewed as just a store, it isn't the worst.

However - a store is no longer the competition. In terms of promoting independent music and giving the artists both control over distribution and profit, Bandcamp is almost the only game in town. However the complimentary service is streaming and the typical user is on mobile. It's awful for both mobile streaming and browsing. As well as recommendations in general.

If we were still in 2003 and Napster and it's successors were the alternative, bandcamp would be great. But record stores (outside of a few independent marquee stores like Amoeba in hip, high income cities) are now glorified merch stands and music is gatekept on evil services like spotify.

Just loaded up the bandcamp app for the first time in a while and my goodness is it godawful. Worse than I remember. Arcane icons, unclear features, total lack of centring the music I've already bought or the artists I've bought it from. It's a shop and that's not been enough for a very long time.

Lets bear in mind that most folks don't even have an mp3 player client on their phone. The distribution platform must - to stay useful, also be a listening solution. Bandcamp fails at even that.

Just to be clear - I very much want Bandcamp to succeed. Hell if I could roll back all technology to a point in the mid-late 2000s just before the smartphone I would. But in todays climate it has to improve or eventually become irrelevant.

I applaud bandcamp radio's existence, but their player doesn't even have a jog function. It's shocking.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#602

Post by runarberg »

dbspin wrote: post #601
runarberg wrote: post #596

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think me and you use Bandcamp in totally different ways, and this is why you see a problem where I don‘t. I am not judging btw (unlike your parent) just pointing out the differences. My primary (and now only) use case of Bandcamp is as a marketplace between me and the artist/label. I use it as a super convenient record store. And like a good record store, bandcamp also has the equivalent of music magazine which you…

That makes sense. Viewed as just a store, it isn't the worst. However - a store is no longer the competition. In terms of promoting independent music and giving the artists both control over distribution and profit, Bandcamp is almost the only game in town. However the complimentary service is streaming and the typical user is on mobile. It's awful for both mobile streaming and browsing. As well as recommendations in…

Speaking of record stores, my last trip to Easy Street in Seattle my vinyl purchases had 0/3 download codes in the sleeves. Luckily all the albums were for sale as digital albums on Bandcamp and I could buy a second copy there for fairly cheap. In fact It probably saved me money buying the physical copy at a physical store and the digital copy at the digital store, as the records were slightly cheaper in Easy Street and I didn’t have to pay shipping.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#603

Post by crowfunder »

minikomi wrote: post #41

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.

Obscure breakcore hell yeah! Wish SSK channel was more alive or there was a better place to network.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#604

Post by plastic-enjoyer »

roryokane wrote: post #555
plastic-enjoyer wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is no joy of discovery of new music that you haven't heard. I have my problems with Spotify, but this is not one of them. I discover new artists, or long forgotten artists, regularly - even some weird obscure shit like Tänzelcore. But I have to agree, that the magic of discovering new music is not the same as, for example, digging records in a record store or via obscure boards and platforms (remember FF-Shri…

If you liked FF-Shrine, there are some active successor sites. Search for Sitting on Clouds (which is like FFShrine’s Galbadia Hotel) and SquidBoard (a forum).

Holy shit, thank you! FF-Shrine was phenomenal back then to find even the most obscure rearrangements of video game music. I know, that there has to be some backup archive of FF-Shrine, which I stumbled upon a few years ago, but unfortunately didn't save.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#605

Post by AntronX »

port11 wrote: post #599
AntronX wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It took about 30 minutes to get 3.5 MB mp3 song over dial up. I would let downloads run overnight and could get a dozen songs by next day. I would do my bulk mp3 downloading in the morning before class at schools library to immediately transfer over USB to my 4 GB Archos Jukebox hard drive mp3 player. That was around 2001 - 2003 either before schools blocked p2p or I must have been using public file downloading sites…

Hmm, with unmetered traffic? I played DarkGalaxy one month at home and we got a ~95€ bill, my dad wasn’t amused. Literally just DG’s website once a day.

I don't remember worrying about data usage. I got into wardriving and was torrenting from neighbors unsecured linksys ssids. Will never forget that warm feeling of hearing netstumbler pings picking up new APs.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#607

Post by CrimsonCape »

raydev wrote: post #506
wasmitnetzen wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also iTunes Match, which legalized all of your pirated music[1]. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2625967

In the early 2010s I uploaded an ALAC copy of an album through iTunes (and I guess iCloud Music???) that still has not appeared on any streaming service, and it remains accessible on any of my devices today. And now that my preferred streaming service is Apple Music, the album is accessible whenever/wherever I want. When Apple gets something right, they really do get it right. A shame a lot of other aspects of Apple…

I'm having the opposite experience. I have tons of music in Itunes and they are all DRM from early itunes. Apparently they predate the DRM-free era? I have no idea how to get the DRM free versions.

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#608

Post by mjrbrennan »

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…

This is a cool idea! Hope whoever gives me the blank playlist is prepared to listen to a lot of Bob Dylan :P

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#609

Post by tclancy »

carlosjobim wrote: post #432
otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's largely driven by a kind of retro nostalgia Incorrect. The reasons why vinyl specifically is still relevant (as opposed to any other "retro" audio format) are technical. Vinyl avoids compression issues by design. (Compression both in the computer science sense and in the audio engineering sense.)

The music is digital before it gets pressed on vinyl. They're not recording directly from microphone to vinyl.

Maybe you aren’t today, but buy my Monster Cable Golden Wax Cylinder and a set of titanium needles and you can too!

Re: The lost joy of music piracy

#610

Post by tclancy »

otabdeveloper4 wrote: post #143
bugufu8f83 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

> pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites If that were true, then vinyl sales wouldn't be growing.

Anyone over forty, beware. Below/ above this line is a rehashing of all of the arguments around CDs from 1982-2020 inclusive.
Post reply on HN