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Music Piracy Is Back in a Big Way (www.wired.com)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

176 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Visits to music piracy websites went up more than 13 percent last year, a new report says. The majority of those visits were to sites that allow users to download the audio from YouTube URLs.

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I want to counter that buying individual songs and albums would get too expensive compared to streaming, but then I realized I've been listening to the same set of playlists in the past few years and the total cost of streaming subscription in those period is probably more than enough to buy those songs.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Heh. I never thought about it this way. I just need to finish downloading my Spotify playlists I guess, then plexamp l the way

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

My current favorites playlist, accumulated over 15+ years, is 4,235 songs. I don't think I can afford to buy that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

I have 44k songs in 13 years

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Looks like you've paid 15 years * 12 months / year * $10 / month = $1800

Seems like you're getting a pretty good deal!

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Assuming each of those tracks is about 3.5 min long, that's about 250 hours of music. Given your numbers they paid an average of 7 bucks per hour of music.

For context, 25 years ago a typical 45 minute album would fetch 15 bucks. And that's not accounting for inflation adjustment.

I'm sure that's totally sustainable for those artists...

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago (1 children)

One, this is just my favorites list, not every album I've listened to. And I've listened to my playlists on random quite a few times over the years.

Two, I don't listen to pop music, so the average is probably closer to 4-5 minutes per song. (About 362 hrs of music on the playlist, if you must know.)

Three, you can't just plug in a yearly rate, convert it to hours, and use it in any meaningful way.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

Your first two paragraphs make the picture worse, not better.

As for your last, I'm not writing an economics thesis. It was a quick analysis to illustrate a problem no sane person disputes: streaming services have substantially driven down revenue for artists, to the point that for many it's genuinely impossible to create their art while making a living wage.

Is it better than piracy? Sure. At least the artists are getting something (well, unless you drop below Spotify's streaming cutoff, in which case you can get fucked). But it's still a shitty deal and gives consumers someone else to blame as artists slowly bleed out.