Websites for illegally downloaded music are seeing a sharp rise, and YouTube plays a massive role in enabling modern-day piracy.

"Muso, a research firm that studies piracy, concluded that the high prices of streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music are pushing people back towards illegal downloads. Spotify raised its prices by one dollar last year to $10.99 a month, the same price as Apple Music. Instead of coughing up $132 a year, more consumers are using websites that rip audio straight out of YouTube videos, and convert them into downloadable MP3 or .wav files.

Roughly 40% of the music piracy Muso tracked was from these “YouTube-to-MP3” sites. The original YouTube-to-MP3 site died from a record label lawsuit, but other copycats do the same thing. A simple Google search yields dozens of blue links to these sites, and they’re, by far, the largest form of audio piracy on the internet."

The problem isn’t price. People just don’t want to pay for a bad experience. What Apple Music and Spotify have in common is that their software is bloated with useless shit and endlessly annoying user-hostile design. Plus Steve Jobs himself said it back in 2007: “people want to own their music.” Having it, organizing it, curating it is half the fun. Not fun is pressing play one day and finding a big chunk of your carefully constructed playlist is “no longer in your library.” Screw that.

  • aesthelete@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    9 months ago

    I’m willing to say that this is probably true for most, but not for all.

    If you run your own music streaming server, in some cases it’s better than streaming services.

    This isn’t sour grapes either. I had Google music for a couple of years, and I currently have a ninety day trial of Spotify unlimited…these services might be better for most, but if you care about the things I do they’re worse.

    I haven’t really even used my Spotify trial because my streaming setup is so much better in a variety of ways.

    All that said, I’m an album listener, an older cat, and borderline music obsessive. I’m likely a dying breed. But I find music streaming services much worse.

    I honestly think it’s much easier to have a catalog of music than, for instance, TV shows. I listen to the same albums over and over again, but I’m not nearly as keen on rewatching the same shows or watching the same movie more than even once.