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bugufu8f83today at 7:51 AM5 repliesview on HN

>It's important to remember that to this day, streaming sites do not have a full archive of the music out there. There is still a need for music piracy

Ehhh..... I'd wager that pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites. Streaming is how everyone consumes music these days, so everything new gets released there, and by this point the catalog from the CD era is extensive. Music streaming has more music than What or Oink ever did. Streaming also has huge value add over piracy: it's really easy and convenient, it's better socially (shared playlists), and recommendations/discovery are waaaay better.

The vast majority of people do not "need" music piracy any more. If you want ten different versions of every REM album with slightly different mastering then sure, join RED. But it's a niche interest these days.

It's a huge contrast to movie piracy, which is thriving and which provides enormous advantages over any other way of watching movies at home, not just in cost and convenience but also in access and in quality.


Replies

a-french-anontoday at 9:33 AM

> I'd wager that pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites

If you have simple tastes, easily accept holes in their catalog and don't care about being served butchered "remasters". People who actually care don't use Netflix/Spotify.

Some examples: Melvins' Lysol is (famously) only available on Apple Music and for good measure I just looked right now at Spotify's page for Midori (https://open.spotify.com/artist/1Qjrx8NtccILLfR3wh1u3o) and it has neither their First EP nor Second LP (https://www.discogs.com/artist/777727-Midori-3); I didn't even choose or try multiple artists, I simply wondered "hmmm, is Midori on Spotify?".

Worthless.

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lopistoday at 8:38 AM

> Streaming is how everyone consumes music these days

It's pretty dangerous to assume that what you do is what everyone else does too.

> so everything new gets released there

Previous comment was probably referring to older music.

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Gander5739today at 8:01 AM

Do you think the difference between film piracy and music piracy is inherent, due to the differences between film and music; or is there some alternative reality where we ended up with a one-stop shop for films, as well?

For the history of music piracy, I found" How Music Got Free: The End of an Industry, the Turn of the Century, and the Patient Zero of Piracy" was a good book to read.

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otabdeveloper4today at 8:50 AM

> pretty much anything that most people want to listen to is on music streaming sites

If that were true, then vinyl sales wouldn't be growing.

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taneqtoday at 8:18 AM

Heck, almost everything is available for free on YouTube.

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