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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ @lemmy.dbzer0.com
And009 @vlemmy.net

Is music piracy dying?

Most of the discussion and sources of content talk about movies and series.

I've been recently looking for psy and techno music, finding FLAC or WAV with active seeders feels like striking gold. It's definitely been a while since I've looked for active torrent sites and it feels more barren than ever.

Edit: Thank you all for all that valuable information. The reddit group really wasn't this helpful and valued making fun over adding real use able knowledge.

329 comments

  • Personally, I tend to only pirate music files that I just can't find anywhere else. For example, audiophile quality 45rpm vinyl rips of albums that might have only been sold in that format once, and for a very limited run. In cases like that, I almost feel a responsibility to maintain a copy because it is something that could very easily disappear from existence.

    The guys doing the rips understand that they might own one of maybe a few hundred copies of a certain album, so they rip at audiophile quality and share.

    • I feel you, I have one of two known sources of obscure Russian albums in FLAC and I'm more than happy to secure its future by sharing.

  • The thing about it is that Spotify premium to me isn't that expensive and has everything I need

    • Spotify has basically nothing I've ever tried to actively listen to. It's also missing tracks of larger artists. It's also still subject to licensing which means what you have saved isn't guaranteed to be there forever (unless you're using a spotify downloader, I guess. I don't know why you would if you feel comfortable enough paying for it but not enough that you won't still download them?). Personally, to me it seems crazy to pay $10 a month for music I'm probably going to listen to for each month for the rest of my life? People always say it's great for discovery but I don't see how it's any better than any other avenue of finding new artists and releases. The convenience of an online app isn't very convenient for me, it being streamed is something that affects me on road trips and I'd need to have the foresight to download something, vs permanently having the songs on my phone (or a step further, microSD cards filled with music.) Like it was before? Just like Google Photos, if I can host my own photo backup on my computer why am I paying someone else an exorbitant fee? I can take this even further, I have Plex setup (and other music servers) and use Plexamp which is essentially my curated Spotify. Bonus: I have my core music on my phone, I have extra music streaming to me.

      It also doesn't seem to be sustainable, each yeah Spotify operates at a loss while artists get very little payout from it. More than if you pirated from them, sure, but much less than if you just buy the album directly from their options be it physical or digital, or buy just one concert ticket and one merch item.

      All this said, as with most things these are subjective case by case freedoms. Many get what they need from it and that's good enough and they're happy. Others just like to rip it all themselves and setup bubbleuPnP servers, and some probably are still just only playing CD's through their car that doesn't have AUX or bluetooth. If your decision to listen to an artist with the intent to give them your money, you probably should buy things from them instead of listening to them exclusively on Spotify you pay for. If your decision to listen to music is to just hear stuff, discovery, and it has even just 60% of a catalog of songs you'd listen to, the convenience is probably worth paying for. Especially given that technically the alternatives I've mentioned have an upfront cost of a computer and hard drives - for what it's worth only the cost of 2 years of Spotify and 2 to 4 hours of setup time, but still a larger cost nonetheless.

      That's worth it for some, they just prefer having it all physical/digitally stored and accessible for sampling and playback, the discovery and library probably aren't as deep as what they're looking for.

    • For me, the daily playlist mix alone is worth the entry price.

    • Before Netflix started sucking there was even a brief moment in time when people thought movie piracy was dying.

      Then the industry went ahead and shot itself in the foot by trying to compete by making the competition worse (pushing for exclusive content) rather than themselves better (developing a more appealing product).

  • For music from artists that don't exist anymore I mostly use ddl. If the artist is still there and offers a decent way of giving them money, I usually do that.

  • Pandora slowed a lot of my music collecting. Spotify and an unlimited data plan on my phone all but stopped it.

    Don't need to dedicate 500+gb on my phone to my music if I can just pull up whatever I want. The only stuff I keep on my phone now is Dwelling of Duels and some game remixes.

  • I consider myself a rookie audiophile. I must have my music files in flac format and they must be directly on my hard drive. I buy a bit of stuff from bandcamp and qobuz, but for my methods, there's a few routes I can take to get the majority through piracy.

    The one I've chosen is called slav art, and it basically rips directly from streaming services and zips it in a downloadable file. It used to be on discord but got chased away, and it used to be on matrix after that but left there too for some reason. Now it's on its own revolt instance.

  • I've been meaning to start a music collection for a bunch of old goth music from small bands that risks being lost to time. Thanks for this post I'm gonna get my ass moving on it.

  • I feel like it's easier than ever. I just rip official album playlists from Youtube Music. Quality should be on par with what you get from Spotify or iTunes. Personally, I've never found any official sources for music that doesn't use lossy compression, so I don't feel like it's possible to miss much by doing it like this.

  • I think a subscription to Spotify, Apple Music, etc is that one subscription most are willing to pay and never give up because it's so convenient, and fairly cheap. I'd rather give up every other subscription before I even considered giving up Spotify.

    Music piracy is still there, but it's just not as convenient these days.

  • Psychedelic trance is an awesome, but absolutely niche genre. It's enjoyed by only a handful of people on earth, and made by even fewer. With sites like rupsy and psy-music going dark this sort of stuff is getting really hard to find. Having said that, it's one of the few genres I don't mind paying the money for a good release - it's niche as fuck. The real problem lays with identifying what IS a good release.

    Last time I checked there were still new psy releases popping up on rutracker from time to time. Streaming basically sucks for psy, and most mainstream trackers absolutely suck for psy and techno.

    There might be some cool new site that the doofers are hiding out on and we're out of the loop ;p

    • I could find psytrance parties every weekend around here (if I still partied regularly). I wouldn't call it that niche. Out of the mainstream, sure, but not exactly niche. The Boom festival gets 50,000 visitors.

    • Do you have any recommendations in the genre?

      • Absolutely. I'll take you on a very brief journey through the years. I will forewarn you: most people don't gel with a lot of this stuff unless they have had a head full of psychedelics on a packed dancefloor a few times to figure it all out so we start gentle. You don't really dance to the beat...it's the rolling bassline you've got to jump on ;)

        Medicine Drum - Suraya Mela E.P from 1996 is pure psychedelic: something approximating a distillation of goa trance mixed with tribal rhythms. If I'm not mistaken, all of the synths are analogue. It has a super organic vibe and is one of my favourites for hosting a mushroom session.

        Taking a wild leap forward in time and intensity: Raz - Twisted Fairytale (2007) Purest of Israeli psychedelic trance IMO. There's not much else to say - as far as the Isra style psytrance of this period, this is the pinnacle in my humble opinion.

        Day Din - Speakers Corner (2007) Beautiful album

        Tuk - The Laws of Nature (2010) This my favourite type of psychedelic release: one that is meant to be listened to as an album. This is not a dancefloor banger compilation, but a skilled DJ can string together some of the purest searing acid basslines ever recorded into a set using nothing but two copies of this CD if they wanted. It is one of my all time favourites.

        Now for some proper bangers:

        Nights of the Psychedelic Order Compiled by Panayota (2012) There's not much to say. It's fat, it pumps hard from start to finish and any given track on it could fill a bush dancefloor.

        My finger has not been on the pulse the last 10 years. There's been some really great releases but I've no idea where they fit in; someone else can probably give you some great recommendations for newer stuff.

        If you are after something a little slower, check out:

        Tetrameth - Psychological Pyrotechnics, pretty much anything by Terrafractyl, god there's so much!

        Hope you find something you like in there.

329 comments