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 Oops, my device was out of date so I couldn't download the app.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 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'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.

Maybe I'll just read more books instead.

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.

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.

You're aware that you're in a thread for a tool which circumvents payments?

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.

>... 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.

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.

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. :)

'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'.

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.

(I manage artists).

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.

Buying the CD/audio files don't pose that issue.

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.

That doesn't mean that an alternative client isn't more convenient.

We don't need a bunch of corps gatekeep human culture from people just because they live in the wrong country...

All the streaming services do that. You just subscribe then immediately cancel. You’ll get service for a month until your time runs out.

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.

It's just so lazy and bad.

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.

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.

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..

That's disabled now.

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.

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.

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.

He can very well decide to not support a private company, that's the whole idea behind having a free market and not living in a socialist hell hole.

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.

g2a.com/search?query=Windows

I’ve never had a problem with that site.

So really we're back to some form of piracy because Windows is too expensive.

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.

I'd say 70% of the people in that discord pirate everything.

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.

This plus the fact that actual artists get a pittance, means the flag will fly high till companies learn.

Also piracy has become much more reliable these days. There are systems which will make sure you get 4k streams based on any genre you enjoy. New shows from around the world. No need to wait for Netflix to add it to your countries playlist that to hidden behind garbage UX.

At the end of the day it is about availability, user control, artist benefits and showing the middle finger to large corporations.

That is the hacker mindset. That is what I grew up with in the early 2000s and it is substantially better than what we are "supposed" to do now. Hope that makes sense.

I DO pay for spotify and still want all those features.

You attempt to critique other people's behavior, while completely failing at "be a good person" yourself. It is always that way. The person pointing the finger is the one most in need of a mirror.

If there was a way to configure my players to fingerprint the content and send money to the artist as I play it (or probably at the end of the month, so the total spend for that month is configurable) I'd use it. Payment should be irrespective of where you got the bits. I'm trying to build such a thing.

But until a better way exists, I'm not going to feel bad about my occasional piracy in the meantime.

The stories you hear about an artist getting pennies on millions of listens are because of their record deals and the credits on their work. You can’t solve this with software: artists enter these deals long before software is involved.

I’d argue that Spotify (and YouTube and TikTok etc) have done more for musicians because they’ve made it very easy to make a living when you have a core listener base. Software has not rescued major label artists from major label contracts because… how can it?

If only they'd give me an address (of a smart contact which would distribute the funds appropriately. I want to pay the parties whose names I don't know also, provided they're involved in actually creating the art.)

Didn't Spotify recently stop paying any royalties for tracks with less than 1k streams?

A (relatively) small audience would be made up of tens of thousands of listeners generating millions of streams. There are many, many independent artists that fall into this group.

I don't know much at all about the music industry, so I don't really have a conclusion from those data, but that seems low. It also does put a (not insignificant) number on the independents accomplishing what you describe.

0. https://loudandclear.byspotify.com/

There isn't.

I fail to see how piracy helps artists today.

Do you also fail to see how investment in technology that prevents certain groups from getting certain information harms everyone tomorrow? It's not like they'd have retool completely if they pivoted from censoring Finding Nemo because you're the wrong kind of customer to censoring political dissent because you're the wrong kind of citizen. The tech from the former can be reused in the latter and there's more money in the latter.

That pivot hasn't happened yet because the DRM hooks aren't in deeply enough. People would work around it. Piracy helps because it creates a space for us to fight back against that sort of thing. It keeps the set of people who can circumvent censorship large and it keeps them in practice.

At the end of the day, protecting an artist paycheck is just not as important as protecting user freedom. We can have both, but paying the streaming platforms and hoping they spend that money wisely is not the way to get there.

Not in my book but thanks for the perspective.

I feel my freedom to enjoy some music someone made on their own time has zero priority over said artist paying their bills.

I don't want to live in a world where there are no channels not controlled by a third party, and that's the world the content industry is building. Entertainment is just a stepping stone for them.

But we all know running a business has costs that aren’t salary.

Artists who sign to major labels get promotion and other assistance that costs money. That’s the trade off.

And they’re making less money than before because people pirated with Napster. Just look at music industry revenue charts. It only just recently exceeded pre-Napster levels and that is before adjusting for inflation. The average person is spending less money on music than they did in the 90s.

A new release CD was like $17 in 1995. So that’s $34 today. That would buy you one album. Today that buys you 3 months of listening to unlimited music.

So the price of Spotify is like when someone only buys 4 CDs every year.

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/07/05/arts/pennies-that-add-up-...

But if things were otherwise? Then yes, the users should either walk away or they should circumvent whatever handcuffs I'm hypothetically building for them.

In that scenario, I'd absolutely participate in cutting my employer out of the loop so that I could do less evil work and instead get paid directly by the people who benefit from what I'm working on, and I hope you would too.

Also, you seem to me implying that a malware author and a shelf stocker are equally culpable for the actions of their employer, which is an odd sort of moral stance to take. Treating your users like enemies is a rather direct thing, and working for someone who behaves badly in some dimension unrelated to your work is quite another.

I pay for Disney+, Disney got their money and if I’d decided to pirate it instead of the convenience of Prime video I wouldn’t have felt an ounce of guilt. I keep trying to do the right thing, and they keep moving the goal posts. Whether it be adding DRM that increasingly causes the media to be available on less devices, or adding yet another service I have to invest in. DRM doesn’t work and only diminishes the user experience.

If you want my money meet me where I’m at. Stop forcing garbage down the pipeline.

You shouldn't feel an ounce of guilty. Really. They've failed you and still got their money. You had to spent extra time to pirate so you'd get the level of service you already paid in the first place.

That said, the reason is simple, there’s no good product out there so people pirate. I haven’t pirated music in ages because Spotify solved that industry with a single reasonably priced offering.

On the other hand the dozens of streaming services have gotten out of hand by now. Same with renting movies, I’d rather enjoy in the cinema or torrent it, especially given how mediocre 95% of production has been in recent years.

Okay, then don’t watch it. If you’re watching it, though, you should pay for it. Your logic is the equivalent of going out to restaurants to eat, and then not paying because “restaurants aren’t good these days.”

You could argue piracy is going to the chef's place and eating their food before it gets to the restaurant for distribution, now the chef is angry too.

Not a good analogy.

I was absolutely not broke at 70k. In fact I thought that was the most money I'd ever make and that I was killing it for 25 or whatever I was.. lmao

I made quite a bit more money than everyone my age I knew, most were still in college or in the 35-50k brackets.

I'm genuinely glad that you weren't. Your experience is not everyone else's. I know people who have made around that salary who, for various reasons, were essentially broke.

Much of the rest of your comment just sounds... braggadocious.

And this isn't a judgement towards those in those situations, it's empathy from my end - I feel the need to clarify after another user's flippant comments elsewhere in this thread.

I can't really emphasise with people who are wealthy or high income (which 70k is), who say they are struggling with monetary matters. They've made some choices and prioritizations. People who own multiple properties say that they "can't afford" some basic consumer good, or indignant that they have to work a lot of overtime to make ends meet. Yes, you chose a high cost life style.

I try to set aside a disproportionately large part of my income for high risk investments. Everybody I know says they can not afford to make any investments, and especially not risky investments. How can they not afford it when they are wealthier than me and have larger incomes than me? Because they prioritised something else. And that's cool, but why can't people cut the bullshit. And I don't ask others about their finances or bring up the topic.

So I'm going to double down and say that there are exactly 0 cases – outside of rare medical disorders – where somebody has to struggle to live on 70K.

Edit:

>And I don't ask others about their finances or bring up the topic.

Not that it's necessarily couth to bring this subject up socially, but I do get the vibe that you could benefit from hearing from others regarding their situations.

Thank you! Have a nice weekend also.

> Not that it's necessarily couth to bring this subject up socially, but I do get the vibe that you could benefit from hearing from others regarding their situations.

I think I'll first want to make 70K myself, before I seek out somebody to complain about how hard their life is with only 70K. Likewise, I'd like to own multiple properties myself before I have to listen more to people with multiple properties complain about their life.

Likewise, I don't think anybody working minimum wage or living in a rented trailer would like to hear me complain about my money woes, wouldn't you agree?

$70k isn't a magical feel-good-be-happy number for everyone, especially in HCOL+ areas.

I don't think this was your intent, but your comment comes across as really dismissive to a wide range of financial situations.

Right? NYC and the Bay Area would like a word...

Or you could buy a used Honda instead, go somewhere cheaper for vacation, and not live in the most expensive area in the country. All those are voluntary consumption.

$70k is completely fine in Houston, Dallas, Austin. I made around that in each one. Almost everyone I know here in Denver makes 70k-100k max and I'm in the most trendy neighborhood downtown and these are (actual, like structural) engineers, lawyers, etc. My hair stylist makes 50k and has a nice 1br. Personally my rent is $4k which is absolutely common for a 2bdr in sfbay but mine is very nice, probably much newer than would be in SF. I made 90k living in Chicago. 40-60k living in Tampa. I always had a new car new a twin turbo z4, mazda 3, crv, sometimes I had 2 cars (sports/daily), always had my own place, etc. Zero debt. Went out ALL the time.

Everything isn't NYC or SFBay. I didn't start my career making 40k and go "OK great, now I'm off to San Francisco/NYC!!" I moved more west as my income grew.

The privilege.. I promise you that there are service industry people making 30-45k in SF/NYC who are absolutely content or happy with their lives whether it's living in a 10x10 shoebox or an attic in a loft with a roomate. I'm not doing that, but I have a lot of industry friends from a past life that do. The average hourly for a nyc bartender is something like $16-18. I used to do it on the side.

We're privileged beyond belief.

Never said it was, I just pointed to two areas where $70k doesn't go very far. Simple as that.

Edit: Your comment is very "I"-centric. Nobody cares about how many cars you have owned, because your life experience cannot be copy/pasted to everyone else. It's like you've missed the point.

Who do you think cooks, cleans, and serves drinks to people in SF/NYC? Sorry they aren't up to your standards living wise.

That's. All. I never said that that's how everyone lived, I just said that not everybody making 70k lives comfortably. That could be one person, it could be a handful.

I never blanket generalized, you did by saying everyone making $70k should live just fine. All I said was, "That's not always the case", and now you're trying to say that I think everyone living in those areas making $70k are scum.

You need to relax.

I was curious so looked it up, 75th % salary in SFbay is $76k. 25th % $113k. These are salaries from the ziprecruiter database- I put in Bartender - $34k, Teacher - $47k, Police - $60k (I know this is wildly off not including their overtime, they make like $150-250k in sf).

https://www.ziprecruiter.com/Salaries/-in-San-Francisco,CA#Y...

This newer article says the amount of people in that bracket drpoped 10% 2019-2022. Wonder if that's people moving out, layoffs / biz shuttering, or maybe the covid checks ending lowering peoples income across the board. Those didn't affect the $100k+ market (limit was 80k i think?) which grew 10% regardless. That sucks if it's not them leaving I can only think of negative reasons aside from that or getting raises.

https://www.axios.com/local/san-francisco/2023/09/18/median-...

Sorry, I'm just on a tangent now. Didn't mean to come off rude in general, though.

To be fair, streaming services are usually not at fault here. They have to negotiate with the content owners. But at the end of the day, I don't care.

Piracy still has place and it's not a money issue.

If their behavior has resulted in an ecosystem where the art doesn't reliably make it to the artists' audiences then perhaps they are a little bit at fault. That's their job and they're doing it poorly and they're big enough to influence the factors that constrain them if they cared about doing better.

From a monetary standpoint, most companies would throw me into a wood chipper were it profitable. Hard to feel any sense of “fair behavior” is warranted when that’s the case.

Only a handful I want to watch actually have subs or English dubs.

It's not like I don't want to pay for this stuff but when it's a huge conditional tree of if I'm going to have a good experience, with no other (non-pirate alternative), what do you do?

Meanwhile, Spotify doesn't have this issue. Happily pay for that, despite not being a fan of how the company operates.

(Old stuff is often missing too. if you're after that those I understand what you mean.)

I subscribe to both CR and Spotify im the U.S., and one thing they have in common is terrible user interfaces (IMHO).

I would be so excited if CR provided an API to let subscribers write their own clients.

My other huge complaint about CR is it will just be missing a season of a show. I tried to watch one and it had only seasons 2-3-4 etc.

Piracy almost always is caused by a lack of convenience, namely:

"I get the service, have a (sometimes very) limited selection of stuff, and have to pay for it, and if I want that other thing I have to pay for another entirely different service"

or

"I get anything I want with a little hassle, but for free"

Do you mean that literally? Because I'd think buying physical copies, or forgoing access, would also be options.

... Or does piracy sound like a better experience?

I want my neighbor's pile of firewood. They probably wouldn't miss one or two logs, but I have other reasons for not taking any.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone that my view is correct, I'm just saying that I think this is one aspect of how different people approach the question of how to obtain digital entertainment.

Back in the days when I was living in Switzerland, the DVD players there weren't region locked so a number of french, italian or german people would just drive to Switzerland and buy their DVD player there. No idea if it applies to Blueray as well, I never owned a Blueray player.

How about the Spotify client being crap? Can't believe this is the top comment on HN.

You think they shouldn't be paid because you don't like the company they work for?

For musicians, they have other avenues (arguably better anyhow) such as Bandcamp. I’ve bought tons of vinyl albums, tapes, and even just digital releases from there.

The spotify carplay/android apps absolutely DESTROY the other car apps.

I hated every single other app. Quboz, Tidal, Apple, YT, Amazon.. Most of them were so featureless I felt like I was using Winamp. But some people do love that.

Those ways probably should involve some sort of compensation to the artists. Is that happening?

¹ It is still recommended to support the creators by watching/liking/subscribing to the artists' YouTube channels or liking their tracks on Spotify (or purchasing a Spotify Premium subscription too).

It's a state machine. That's it.

So to be fair to your friends, they may also feel like they like pirating also because it is still more functional and customized. And streaming needs flawless internet while watching.

But questionably-ethical companies I try not to give money to, e.g. companies that only pay artists pennies, or might suddenly disappear music that I "bought". And that's on top of the fact that Spotify in particular actually kinda sucks at suggesting good music. I quit them in the middle of my free trial because I got tired of hitting "next". My friends are much, much better suggestion engines.

Finally pirating is most of the time more convenient, for example using these proprietary services on Linux or Raspberry Pi etc is not possibile, also they require internet and you can't just for example save the files on an USB stick or CD to play on the car stereo.

I can't speak to Raspberry Pi (and other non-x86 boards), but on my PC I can listen to Spotify just fine. I don't even have to use Chrome. It works as well on Firefox.

Piracy is a service problem, not a financial problem. I also do use patreon for some creators I enjoy.

>> I spectated upon this [Reddit] thread, something around "Do you support Sam's podcast and and you if do, why or why not?" and someone said "Well I would support the podcast if I knew what he was going to do with the money" and another person said "Well I would support the podcast if I knew how much it cost to run a podcast" and another person said "I would support the podcast if I knew how much I thought a person should earn from a podcast" and I looked at those three statements and my head practically fell off my shoulders, because I realized at a glance there was something deeply wrong here because these are the kinds of considerations that would never have occurred to a person when they were thinking about buying my next book. I mean there's literally no person on Earth who's ever thought the thought "Well I would buy his next book if I knew how much I thought an author should make from writing books" or "I would buy his next book if I knew what he was going to do with the money." These are just not the kinds of thoughts people think. Either you want to read the book or you don't and you buy it or not. [1]

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCl-5vC7aW8

[1]https://youtu.be/cCl-5vC7aW8?si=CqRcQ-kLUF7JMyXg&t=3604

The value of a podcast seems more nebulous to me, and perhaps this raises more questions. Unless you already subscribe to a lot of podcasts you may not have the equivalent comparison point, so more questions arise.

On top of that, subscriptions create another barrier to entry and raise even more questions.

The podcasters were weighing the cost to themselves vs. the benefit to the podcaster.

If the podcaster was poor and the listener was rich, the cost/benefit tradeoff favors paying. The listener feels happy to be supportive.

If the situation were reversed, the math swings the other way. A principled listener might pay, but wouldn't necessarily feel happy about it.

He has a great point, I can't think of any times I've ever asked those questions unless I thought the book author was grifting, where I'd go "Oh they're dog whistling to their flock for sales."

I never thought "I hope mac miller doesn't use this $20 for drugs" buying mac miller albums..

Limitations of team size can be a blessing.

Not interested in paying to rent access to something which requires giving shady companies like Netflix control over my graphics pipeline (which also prevents me from watching the thing I am renting on any device I want because, for example, my mediacentre PC is not blessed by the right big-corps to work with the intrusive DRM software).

If movie publishers had an easy and convenient way to donate, I would probably donate an appropriate amount every time I pirate some of their media to allow me to watch it on my TV.

You can argue "just buy the bluray and pirate it then" but I feel this just encourages these companies to continue relying on these intrusive DRM technologies.

I know my boycott is insignificant but it's a matter of principles more than anything else.

(or any of its region specific stores)

or https://bleep.com/ for independent electronic music. There are probably other genre specific stores still alive.

The music piracy community are some of the best archivists of music history we have. What.cd had a wonderfully curated and deep archive of music. I discovered so many small punk groups that would drop an LP then vanish.

Fortunately it's still relatively easy to support active bands directly via Bandcamp / physical media / tours. I cherish my personal collection, and it's all self-hosted on my NAS at home.

As for movies, half the time features don't even get a Blu-ray release. Back in the day I had a region unlocked player that would allow me to watch my favorite Japanese directors (which never got a US region release)

Streaming wise it's terrible, especially if you live outside of the US. A lot of films are not even available to "buy" via Amazon, etc. And even then services that do stream outside of the US have "4K" streams with low bitrates. It's not even funny how much better true 4k HDR remux's look when played back locally versus streaming it from HBO or something, even though it's the same source.

I buy games on gog. I buy games without drm on steam. I absolutely refuse to install ring 0 Internet-connected malware on my computer to play a fucking game.

It would seem that ring 0 internet connected malware is the future of processor firmware, and I doubleplus unbellyfeel it.

Also Spotify have censorship issue, they are removing some songs. Other are not available due to copyright issues.

If you don't want to listen playlists with new random music it is more convenient to have a local mp3 library.

YouTube pays some cents to music labels, I can listen to music for free on YouTube and I can block ads.

The only purchases I make are to reward creators, often only after I've enjoyed the goods.

Copyright is highly immoral as I never got into any contract with anyone and yet I'm supposedly a criminal because I download pirated content. Whoever is sharing copyrighted content is breaching a contract and should be prosecutable.

I sell software and it's nice to have passive income. I found a few communities who heavily pirated my code and I couldn't do jackshit because I don't make lawyer money and dmca does nothing but waste time.

I think piracy is a natural tax imposed on the market: if you can't point to your customer who shared your property and sue him you are probably making some nice passive money. There's always going to be someone smarter than the average who will bypass your security.

I don't mind pirates. The problem we have is with major publishers being rich enough they can bribe the government to do crap like dmca and infringe on our rights.

You, and we, don't know if you're the 10,000th or the 100,000,000th pirate of whatever you pirate.

It is about the fact at any time Spotify, Apple, etc can remove music from my playlist for any reason and at any time. It's about the fact they require me to use their invasive, spyware, data mining BS apps in order to listen to my music. It is about the fact that when I want to listen to music in my car, I have to listen to it using the way they say I can.

I can't believe I have adult friends who really don't care about their personal privacy or freedoms and are ready to give it up at a moments notice for convenience.

It seems to me that at every opportunity, the team responsible for Spotify has made it worse. The UI is made significantly worse every major update. The only good thing I can think of that they’ve added over the past decade or so has been dark mode and I am not exaggerating. Have you seen the state of playlists and sorting/filtering options? You know, one of the most important things about music software?

Literally the only reason I’m using (and paying for) Spotify now is that there isn’t a legitimate competitor to switch to. Spotify is not worthy of respect of loyalty and it’s certainly not deserving of not being pirated from.

You're not wrong. Their constant changes and removing features the last few years is frustrating. They just did that big recent UI update, I've barely used spotify since they did it so I can't tell if I like it or hate it yet but they constantly change it. It looks like it's missing things now but I'm not too sure.

p.s. probably not engineers in the literal sense ;)

The way ruthless capitalism works in today's age, the software writer barely gets peanuts, bulk is taken away by the management, CEO and shareholders.

You can make more money writing javascript that you learned on udemy and youtube than a firefighter or a doctor. It is absurd.

The Spotify macOS app constantly truncates classical titles, which I find infuriating. I subscribed to Apple Classical, which was phenomenal in its organization and catalogue, but I couldn't download and I fly a lot which is a dealbreaker.

So no, it's not about the money. I don't want to use their service and support their business model. I don't think their business model is making the world a better place. I wouldn't subscribe even if the price was 10 cents. I buy CDs and support directly the artists and groups I love.

On the end note. Think about, I'm paying 10 bucks a month, but the artists I love will get peanuts from it. The overall chunk will go to some over hyped nonsense like Taylor Swift, simply because she is getting more plays on their platform. Nope.

Sorry what?