"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.

  • Wasabi
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    11 months ago

    Just a small tip with yt music if you are not aware, you can upload your own mp3s (50k files iirc). It’s the main reason I use it since so much dnb is missing from all the streaming platforms.

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Oh shit. I didn’t know that. Might be able to get some other albums on there then. Thanks for the heads up.

      • Wasabi
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        11 months ago

        No problems, it’s the only reason I stuck to yt music when Google play music died.

      • Wasabi
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        11 months ago

        A large portion of the metalheadz back catalogue is missing, and also an absolute shitload of jungle is absent

        • Firestorm Druid@lemmy.zip
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          11 months ago

          I also thought that jungle was a tad lacking on Spotify, but overall, I’ve been happy with it thus far. Definitely enough to not have to listen to the same 5-10 songs on repeat lol