Re:Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?
by bad_haircut72 on Saturday May 31, 2025 @09:06PM
(#44147973)
If the cops hadnt also aggressively pursued people "stealing" music (a bullshit proposition to begin with) Spotify would not have won. For most people avoiding a potentially big fine, even if the chance is small, tips the balance into just paying a few bucks (which is itself a huge price concession from the music industry, who would love to charge what CDs used to cost) - but they cant, that would tip the balance back into piracy
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Re:Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?
by hollerith on Saturday May 31, 2025 @09:11PM
(#44147983)
Which police force was involved in that? In the US, it was the RIAA using private investigators to find people to sue.
Re:Ask HN: Anyone making a living from a paid API?
by jlundberg on Sunday June 01, 2025 @01:54AM
(#44148916)
True that the full win was due to copyright enforcement by various actors.
However, in the early days of Spotify the ”play any song with a click” was pure magic and nothing piracy could compete with.
A fun anecdote from that time is also that basically the whole Spotify catalogue was full of pirated music — they had not yet secured any music rights and I personally thought they never would succeed with that.