
Music piracy is down but still very much in play - yuhong
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-et-ct-state-of-stealing-music-20150620-story.html
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yc1010
I am in Ireland, I wanted 1 single track (apparently there is no such thing as
music shops or singles anymore, i feel old)

So I went to Amazon.com found the track for $0.99 and went to pay, guess what
"your credit card has to be issued by US bank" error, despite me having
positive amazon.com gift balance with no need to use credit card. Fine so I
went to amazon.co.uk, same track GBP 1.00 (notice the markup) and similar
error once again despite me having credit on UK site and buying for years
electronics and just about everything else for myself.

So in end I went to google and found what I wanted on mp3juices.is or
something like that.

These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a
prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers.

~~~
cJ0th
> These music companies deserve to go extinct for wasting half an hour of a
> prospective customers time and putting up silly barriers.

Let's face it, they don't want your type. Ownership is dying. It is much more
profitable to renegotiate with the consumers that fear losing "their" music
collection the price of a subscription service every once in a while.

~~~
bad_user
Subscriptions don't work well for the long tail, artists that aren't extremely
popular get pennies and people in SF and LA live in some sort of bubble, as
subscriptions aren't that popular compared to personal music collections.
IMHO, it's a passing trend, just like CDs and iPods. And don't get me wrong,
as subscriptions are somewhat convenient, problem is they are convenient for
personal usage and listening to music is often a group activity, with sharing
without barriers and taking things offline being the norm.

Do you know why YouTube is so popular for listening to music? It's because of
things like [http://www.youtube-mp3.org/](http://www.youtube-mp3.org/)

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rawe
Situation in Germany: \- GEMA causes video blocking on youtube \- there is the
GEMA-Vermutung (it is assumed that if you play music in public, it is from a
GEMA member and you have to pay a fee or prove that the music was from non-
GEMA-members) \- there is a Pauschalabgabe fee for storage media (and devices)
for the potential use as backup/storage for the music I already paid for (but
I am not allowed to crack copy "protection" on media). \- there is a monthly
fee for GEZ/Rundfunkbeitrag for state "independent" media bound to just living
in a flat/house even if there is no device capable of playing media and not
bound to actual use of their service. Most media on their online platforms is
available for a short period of time (~1 week) and gets deleted after this,
they use flash player and there are 3rd party tools [0] necessary so just
search through all the media / get a direct link to feed into mplayer

Should I throw even more money on these unfair systems by buying music/media?

[0] [http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/](http://www.mediathekdirekt.de/)

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qq66
Piracy is the reason that labels license their content to streaming services
like Spotify. Without the threat of piracy, they would happily maintain the
CD-era pricing.

~~~
exodust
How about the idea that technology is the reason, not piracy?

As the article mentions, there's a broadly accepted argument that fans have
been ripped off for years before the internet came along. It's not about
"Napster" coming along, it's about the internet arriving and giving us new
ways to get media. CD-era comes to an end regardless of legal status of any
particular online resource.

As more artists chose to upload their own music, the big-wig artists looked
on, dwindling sales infringed upon by... what's this, indie bands previously
only seen at local pubs? The horror!

Access > Granted is defined as "piracy" too often, but I'm not saying piracy
isn't a thing, it's just not the whole picture.

I can't believe I'm paying for Netflix, but then again, no ads, HD quality. As
for music.... hmmm. TO be honest I'd appreciate Netflix getting into music and
offering me a good deal on their add-on music service. I'd prefer not to pay
another whole $10-ish per month for music. I want package deals because my
wallet wants that.

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EnderMB
I wonder how many people will pirate Taylor Swift's music since she's
exclusively linked to Apple Music? I'm willing to bet a lot of Spotify users
will dust off uTorrent (or whatever people are using for torrents nowadays)
and just download the album she has restricted her fans from listening to
legally.

It's all about ease of access, surely? The introduction of Apple Music is good
for music, but if it means that Spotify and Apple Music are going to further
fragment accessible libraries of music then piracy will probably rise.

~~~
nothrabannosir
_> ...the album she has restricted her fans from listening to legally._

Well, she is still making her music available online against a fair price. If
you mean restriction in the sense of _any_ restriction, then, yes, it's
restricted. But so is Spotify, because for every service there is another one
you don't publish on.

Miss Swift was not happy with Spotify's negotiating terms. Her not playing
ball with Spotify should not automatically be considered "restricting her fans
from listening to her music legally," even though that's a side-effect.

I'm not privy to the details of the negotiation, I don't know who's being
unreasonable, if anyone. But just saying that she restricts her fans from
listening to it, that implies it's her own fault and that people are in the
right for just pirating it then.

Not really.

~~~
EnderMB
While she's entitled to share her music with whoever she pleases, fans aren't
going to see it that way. They'll see a greedy artist that wants more money,
and is happy to restrict what is essentially uploading a bunch of music files
to a server as a ransom for not getting that money. Given the way she
immediately backtracked, I think most people see her move as nothing more than
a publicity stunt between her and Apple to promote both her new album and
Apple's new service.

Spotify works because you're safe in the knowledge that you can listen to
pretty much anything you want. With Apple Music in the picture, piracy will
almost definitely rise, should artists decide to lock themselves onto specific
platforms like Swift has chosen to.

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Mimu
I don't know if this is still true or not, but they make (made) damn sure
their offer was so ridiculous people would actively try to go around it.

The devices limitation? Who the fuck came up with this idea thinking it will
be good? Greedy kids I won't cry if they disappear, which probably won't
happen anytime soon.

It's simple, people will go for the easiest solution. I barely know anyone
illegally downloading videogames since Steam became the go to, and steam is
like a big DRM but so easy to use, always download at max speed etc, people
just use it, including myself.

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andresmanz
I legally download all the music I want for free without any effort. Because
here we "pay for that music by buying a device". Too bad the wrong people
receive that money. So I can't say that I like it, but on the other hand I
barely download any music. It's maybe one track per month.

~~~
collyw
What country are you in?

~~~
fredley
It's called a "Private Copying Levy", and it's done a few different ways in a
number of countries:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy)

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robogimp
Record companies seem to be solving the piracy issue by promoting terrible
music.

------
clarry
_Please don 't download our music_, they said.

 _As you wish. I won 't ever listen to your music_, I responded.

It's their choice and their loss, not mine.

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pessimizer
My guess would be that music downloaders are slowing down/dropping out because
they already have more music than they could ever listen to.

From what I hear, a lot of music sharing has moved to sneakernet amongst
friends. A palm-sized 2TB hard drive carries around 4 _years_ worth of 192K
mp3 audio.

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yuhong
Did anyone notice that RIAA does much less "anti-piracy" lobbying etc now
compared to the MPAA?

~~~
anigbrowl
I bet you'd see a correlation between bandwidth availability as a function of
the average media file size and lobbying activity - which is another way to
say the RIAA fought when it happened, mostly lost, and took the best of the
available bad options that eventually emerged. Film was safer for a while due
to the relatively huge file sizes for video, plus film has some slightly
different industry dynamics.

FTA: _But the music industry is still trying to recover from piracy 's heyday.
Last year, total music industry revenue was about $15 billion worldwide, well
below the 1999 peak of $38 billion._

Ouch - think about that, seeing >60% of your industry revenue go up in smoke.
And please don't give me the old line about labels ripping off artists - big
labels did, somewhat, but they weren't nearly as bad as Courtney Love made
out, and meantime tons of small labels went to the wall because they didn't
have the revenue cushion that the big ones did. I was a DJ back in the 90s
(and I was probably spending a couple of thousand $ a year on music at the
time) and it was a much more economically diverse industry pre-Napster. I
can't say I regard the commodification of music as an improvement, really.

~~~
iamben
Sure, you can say 'ouch, 60% of your industry' \- but you could say the same
about the guys breeding horses when cars came along (or whatever) - times
change. Of course it hurts when the golden goose stops laying eggs, but if you
don't adapt to the world, how do you expect to survive? The labels (majors
especially) spent so long and so much trying to stuff the genie back in the
bottle when they could have been adapting to the new landscape.

As for the indie labels - it's a massive shame, I agree, although many adapted
and survived. But I'd argue indie _artists_ have it easier than before - you
can record and distribute an album for basically the cost of your time these
days. (Although, that in itself is both a good, and bad thing.)

~~~
lentil_soup
Honest question, anyone knows how easy is it for a band to put their stuff on
something like Spotify? Or do they still need to go through a label?

~~~
lentil_soup
Should have googled that before:

[https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-
ar...](https://support.spotify.com/is/problems/#!/article/I-m-an-artist-how-
do-I-get-my-music-on-Spotify)

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mikerichards
Can anyone help with Mike D's charity (Beasty Boys). Thank you

------
eridal
> _The rise of convenient, licensed streaming has helped cut U.S. file-sharing
> rates in half in the last decade._

File-sharing isn't the problem!!

