Piracy is largely a convenience issue, not just a financial issue. When Netflix's streaming platform rolled around people were largely happy to stop pirating, when Netflix's catalog fragmented across two dozen different services that forbid account sharing then piracy became a thing again for many people who stopped pirating.
I had a Paramount+ subscription (alongside Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV) and wanted to watch a certain TV show on my device. Oops, my device was out of date so I couldn't download the app. No problems, I'll update it. Oops, my account is set to an overseas address so I can't download the app. No problems, I'll change my account settings. Oops, the app won't log in because my DNS blocks ads. No problems, I'll add a bypass for this app. Oops, the app sucks and crashes when I navigate through the catalog too quickly. No problems, I'll make my search more specific. Oops, the buffering speed is horrendous and scrubbing through the video crashes the app.
Guess what I did? Uninstalled the app and searched for a pirated version of the TV show. A minute later it was streaming fine on my device.
I mostly agree, but this tool is for spotify. Spotify is about as convieinient as a streaming music platform gets. That being said, most people (including me) happily pay for spotify, so your point still stands.
I refuse to pay for a streaming platform that's not Netflix or prime. The former benefits from being grand fathered in and the latter is a free bonus on something I would buy anyway.
It also sucks that cancelling a subscription is as hard as it is. If you want me to pay to watch 1 specific TV show, then give me a payment plan that allows me to pay for an expiring subscription. Simple.
I pay for Prime, and we're soon to have ads unless you pay more to remove them. I wouldn't feel bad taking to the high seas while keeping the prime subscription.
I'm at the point with other services where I will subscribe for a month or two in a given year, watch full seasons of what I want, and then cancel. Things like Max / Discovery / Whatever they call themselves this year are making this more difficult by removing content. In some cases, it's difficult to find a legit place to watch it, with Raised by Wolves and Westworld being prime examples.
Yeah, in regards to HBO Max, I signed up a couple years ago specifically to watch cartoons like Close Enough and Infinity Train. Not only were both those shows canceled but they were purged from HBO Max for streaming entirely.
I managed to buy legit copies of Infinity Train on Amazon, but now the only way that I am aware of to watch Close Enough is piracy.
The recent Amazon “pay us more or you get ads” thing feels a bit rent-seekey to me. I don’t watch Prime enough to justify paying an extra $3/month, and so I think what’s going to happen to me is that I just stop watching Prime entirely.
What really frustrates me is that companies are basically stopping releasing Blu-Rays, particularly for TV shows. I have over 400 legitimately purchased movies about about 40 complete series in Blu-Ray; I am more than happy to support creators by paying them a reasonable compensation, what I don’t want to do is pay those creators forever for the privilege of watching the same thing over and over.
>Spotify is about as convieinient as a streaming music platform gets.
Convenient for users, but you'd be hard-pressed to find artists who are content with the payments they get from Spotify. And that's across the spectrum, from world-famous pop artists to indie artists struggling to get heard.
I'm huge into music so I'm "OK" with Spotify for the sake of convenience and all that, but if people are really digging a piece of music then please buy it directly from the label, the artist, etc. via other means, if possible.
>Convenient for users, but you'd be hard-pressed to find artists who are content with the payments they get from Spotify. And that's across the spectrum, from world-famous pop artists to indie artists struggling to get heard.
You're aware that you're in a thread for a tool which circumvents payments?
I think it's mostly orthogonal. Pirating music only takes money away from artists in the case that you were going to buy their music, and don't now because you downloaded a file, which is probably the vast minority of downloads, I would guess.
On the other hand, there are a ton of ways to support artists if you have the means, whether it's attending shows, buying merch, or what have you, none of which can be properly "pirated" in this sense.
Oh sure. It even gets more nuanced than that, which can make figuring out how to support them a bit of a challenge. Some artists will release music streaming-only and then tour and make their cash that way, others (looking at you, Bibio) never tour and rely on sales of their music.
while this is adorable and maybe even is "giving more to the artist" if ever true,
do artists only deserve to be paid only when someone "decides to pony up for an album"? that's a nice $10+ hurdle that will ensure it happens as rarely as possible. even $1 for a single song is apparently enough of a hurdle.
do artists not deserve to be paid if their song is just being played? it's just stiffing artists, whose music continues to play for free, for even that way of getting paid.
I never said they didn't deserve to be paid if their song is played - I haven't argued anywhere in this thread for not paying artists. In point of fact, I said I'm OK with Spotify.
To expand on that, I have a Spotify subscription. If I love the music and find myself listening to it regularly, I go and buy it so that they can have more than the pennies they get from my Spotify streams.
I also never said the phrase "decides to pony up for an album", so I'm not sure what those quotes are for. I said, "a piece of music", which could very well be a single song.
But thank you kindly for putting words into my mouth and then snarkily calling them "adorable". I greatly appreciate it. :)
not everything that's "in quotes" is from someone in particular or a quote at all really. it's not personal. i'm more interested in how those things get mixed up with all other 'rationales' for not paying, not streaming, not participating in that economy.
'buying an album/merch/etc would pay more anyway' sometimes gets used as a reason to pirate. along with 'artists get a pittance from spotify/streaming and aren't really satisfied with it', casting some kind of shade on that whole streaming thing - is it bad? is it not good? if it's not good, why even use it? - and also getting tangled with 'that's why...if it's pennies, whatever, just pirate it'. or sure, 'buy it later instead', if that ever happens. all that amasses to people skipping streaming, stiffing already unfavored artists (that won't get their merch bought later).
it may be a slight difference, but streaming is not just about 'convenience', it is about artists getting paid regardless of whether they'll get their album or whatever bought later or not. even if it's contentious for artists, it's not just "OK", but the sole acceptable solution at the very bottom of 'how much are you willing to pay (nothing) while still compensating artists in literally any way (that's not nothing)'
i'd go as far as to say that 'buy merch' (specifically in context of piracy and streaming workarounds) is kind of bad advice cause it gets taken as 'oh so I can skip streaming/continue pirating then? great' and taken up as excuse for piracy.
especially when combined with pointing out how artists are dissatisfied with streaming. 'oh, they don't really like it anyway? how about i just don't do that at all then.'
and of course, leaves the rest of artists that won't get favored like that in the dust. what solution do they get? where's the "stream the rest, even if you don't buy it, cause that's still something"? so the 'do they not deserve to be paid' thing actually still kinda arises here huh.
here being, in a comment section about piracy, about an app that's kinda like 'i can't believe it's not piracy!' (just doing it two-fold, circumventing both spotify and youtube at the same time. so actually, twice the piracy, perhaps.)
it's kinda like, 'streaming doesn't pay much and artists don't like it'. well great. that surely would leave an impression that'd incentivize streaming (and paying). it doesn't actually follow from it that 'you should still stream anyway'.
The reason artists are not happy with Spotify is because their record label takes 80% of the small profit they would get from streaming. I saw an interview with a swedish artist that was quite happy with the streaming money thanks to not having signed under any label. All the money goes directly to him.
It’s more complex than that. A major reason artists don’t like Spotify because Spotify shows the number of track streams and regular listeners. This has a huge negative effect on many artists mental health.
Artists signed to Major label’s might get <20% of Spotify’s payment (often substantially less than that after the various spurious desuctions). Indie labels frequently pay 50% of net profits though.
Spotify’s rate per stream is certainly low. And they are in no way artist friendly.
Thanks for the confirmation, this is what I have seen talked about for a long time. I'm so sad for all those artists bound to big labels. Believe the pirates are costing them money when they could be their biggest advertisement board. I would preffer not to fuel the whole record industry when I know the artists creating the actual art gets such a small cut. Not only the singer or the song writers but album artists, sound engineers and so on. And I have seen some of the "various spurious desuctions" on paper, it's insane but good name for it.
I guess a lot of older artists that made it young would do it differently if they knew more about how the rest of the world works.
Did you miss the part where I implored people to buy music they love?
Perhaps the "if possible" part at the end confused you. That was referring to times when artists only release music on streaming platforms and you can't buy it anywhere.
Yeah I just don't understand how paramount+ is so bad. I've unsubscribed but I got it to watch a tv show on a plane, and so downloaded it onto my phone. The app would NOT play the video on the plane. At first I thought for some reason it needed to connect to the internet. Then after landing it wouldn't play even with the internet.
Then there's the chromecast app. I want to watch an episode of survivor, a show with 45 seasons now. Apparently it just loads all the episode data for the entire show in one go, and hangs for a bit when opening the episode select page. This is one of their bigger shows I think.
I had the same thing happen on a flight last year so when I got home I tested every streaming app I could think of and a bunch of them removed their download feature from the last time I used it or they put it behind a connection requirement like you said.
I forget if there's a second one, I know Netflix says you can download on its ad but I don't have netflix to test. The one I know for sure that you can download and watch offline is Prime.
You MIGHT be able to download and watch offline with HBOgo. I know at one point I could. But that might also be one of the ones that took that feature away.
I also don't know about any of the disney/paramount/apple ones. I think I tested Prime, HBOgo, Crunchyroll (iirc this can do it but theyre always missing episodes its annoying), Youtube (requires connection) and hulu.
It's just gotten to the point where I optimize for laziness. When I'm at home I watch on the streaming apps for the most part, because it's easy.
When I'm traveling, I download tv shows I think I want to watch and stick it in VLC on my iPad. The exception being movies from the apple TV app. I have had no problems renting and downloading the video through that.
Maybe they fixed it, but ever since I downloaded a bunch in the HBO app only to find it would NOT play once I was in the air, I just gotta do what I gotta do to be able to actually watch in flight.
Oh man, and the other thing apps will do, is if you're not careful, they'll download some awful low res version of the show by default. ugh.
You know what got me last time. Ipad offloading my apps.
I hadn't touched my ipad in 4-6 months I only use it on flights and I opened it up and had almost no apps. I might have actually had no apps but the apple apps if thats a thing. I couldn't open ANYTHING. Then I got to the airport for my next flight and was franctically running around hoping to find a guest wifi network..
> Piracy is largely a convenience issue, not just a financial issue.
I'd say it can definitely be both. For example, when I was a broke teenager, I pirated all the video games, because the alternative was simply missing out on them and the option to acquire them through dubious means was there.
When I actually got disposable income I realized that Steam is so well made, that I buy all my games there nowadays. It's gotten to the point where I'd rather buy a game than pirate it, especially when the game does have some sort of an online component. The only exception is cases when I feel like I might need a refund (e.g. seeing how a VR game runs before buying it, because refunds still feel like a hassle).
I still sometimes resort to something like G2A (Steam key reseller site, not a very good reputation) or just buying games on other stores like GOG or Epic when they're much cheaper there, but aside from that it's easier to just not play some expensive AAA game on launch altogether, since I don't care that much about being first to experience it anymore.
As for music, I can actually just listen to whatever I want on YouTube which is good enough for me, but I don't see why the same principles couldn't apply to something like Spotify.
This has not been my 99% experience. I'm sure one or two of those stories are handy to have to justify a lifetime of unnecessary theft, but the bottom line for me is that I don't mind playing by their system on principle.
This is how the artists asked us to do it, by selling their rights to distributors. Similarly with Spotify. I'd love to pay more to artists, I do go buy songs when I love them, and I'm happy to pay for a family Spotify account because Spotify has brought an amazing amount of positive to our house.
Bottom line I'm actually willing to endure a small amount of inconvenience in 1% so that my happy path still supports artists and yes industries that have brought so much good to me.
Not everything needs to be an activist fight, should I not pay taxes because a party I don’t like is in power?
I think we should all be a bit more open to voices we don’t like. Live and let live, etc.
There are a lot of voices I find worse, and I support them all being free of government persecution. But I'm not paying their platforms--that's _my_ voice.
I think there is no way you are being honest with yourself. there are a truckload of entities that do far more and more objective evil than Joe Rogan and being serious about this issue requires prioritizing attention in such a way that paying any to Joe Rogan is madness, especially when it's not even boycotting Joe Rogan himself but a whole different company that has thousands of contracts just because this one specific guy Do you even boycott other companies that also platform him (and way worse!) like Youtube, Twitter, Reddit?
I would say that the problem is larger than that, with how Spotify worked to close up and monetize a historically free and open medium (podcasts) and aggressively pushed their new business to users who were only interested in music.
The way they deprecated libspotify while promising a fully capable replacement only to never live up to those promises (current APIs/SDKs are incapable of playback) to strip paying users of clients that aren't official also sucks.
When I pirate, it's sometimes based on convenience or quality (where else can I download DRM-free blu-ray quality movies? Or a band's discography lossless?), but other times, it's certainly about money. For example, I don't use FL studio anywhere near enough to warrant paying for it (I have literally just opened it a couple of times to play with it), but paying for a license would have been less work than pirating it. Same with Windows; I pretty much never use it, the last time I booted into it must be around a year ago, so I'm not gonna pay $250 for it. I like to have it on my PC however for the occasional situation where I need it to play some game which doesn't work in Proton with friends, so I pirated it, even though buying a license key would've been more convenient than dealing with cracking tools.
It used to be the case that they were all keys that aren't technically allowed to be resold per their agreement. Either OEM or business copies and the like.
So really we're back to some form of piracy because Windows is too expensive.
I went to Microsoft's store and found the entry for Windows Pro. It's the actual price.
Other comments have pointed out why G2A is also more or less piracy except you pay someone for an illegitimate key instead of using a cracking tool to generate one.
This submission shows that it's not about convenience. Spotify, Apple Music and YouTube Music are all incredibly convenient. They range from free with ads to very affordable monthly subscriptions (the price of a single CD for unlimited music for a month). They have vast libraries with more music of all styles than anyone could listen to in a lifetime with, as far as I can tell, effectively no geo restrictions.
And despite that, look at where we are. A "pirate your music for free" app with 400 upvotes is at the top of HN, with some posters pretty much writing fanfic about how this will be great for the artists. "It's just a service problem" my ass. It's about people wanting something for free, and taking it.
It's also about having more control over the viewing/listening experience for me. I pay for a bunch of services (Deezer/Netflix/Prime Video), but I'll often end up watching pirated versions of content I can legally watch on those platforms.
Often that's down to tons of annoyances and lack of control over the viewing/listening platform. E.g. in VLC or similar I can tweak subtitle positions, sizes, fonts etc. for the best viewing experience. I can nudge the audio back/forwards a bit if it's out of sync with the video.
It also means I don't have to deal with whatever nonsense the platform is trying to push on me. I don't want to be bombarded with ads for podcasts, I don't want to have various videos autoplay at me just because I've hovered over them for too long, I don't want giant animated album artwork taking up 90% of my mobile screen and wasting battery, I just want to listen to music and watch films, not interact with a platform/app that changes on the whims of some revenue-driven organisation.
I had a Paramount+ subscription (alongside Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV) and wanted to watch a certain TV show on my device. Oops, my device was out of date so I couldn't download the app. No problems, I'll update it. Oops, my account is set to an overseas address so I can't download the app. No problems, I'll change my account settings. Oops, the app won't log in because my DNS blocks ads. No problems, I'll add a bypass for this app. Oops, the app sucks and crashes when I navigate through the catalog too quickly. No problems, I'll make my search more specific. Oops, the buffering speed is horrendous and scrubbing through the video crashes the app.
Guess what I did? Uninstalled the app and searched for a pirated version of the TV show. A minute later it was streaming fine on my device.