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I have a serious question. Why is Spotify so easy to pirate? I googled it and the first result got me the premium apk. Why aren't they fighting that? I have a few possible answers: 1 - Most people find it hard enough to download apps from the store. Only a few pirate it. Running after them is not worth it 2 - Spotify, even without ads, is an ad itself. It recommends artists and music trends. Maybe the music labels pay it to do that so it still gets money 3 - They're just retarded

That's kind of a loaded question and there's a lot to unpack, so in order to not write an essay I'll to take specific points of your post: >Only a few pirate it This is true, but the number is still worth to most companies. A lot of companies before just decide not to release on Android because of this. >Running after them is not worth it It actually is, and Spotify themselves have done it before. A couple of times I think. https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/5/17080920/spotify-cracking-down-pirating-premium-free-account >Spotify, even without ads, is an ad itself You're right but not in the way you're thinking. You gotta have in mind that cracked apps give you access to most, but not all, of the app features. For example, you can't download music. And since you're using a free account to login anyway, Spotify sends you notifications from time to time about price cuts and soykaf. I know a couple of people who have started paying for the service after using it cracked for a while since it was cheap and they already knew it worked.

God forbid musicians ever make any money for what they do. Let them spend 1000s on gear and never see a financial return, its all worth it when you see those digits of people that listened and thats just as good as any gig (obsolete now) or pay check. Keep sticking it to the little guy OP well done.

>>11795 I was quite critical of Spotify for a long time (too) and just downloaded everything off of YouTube (library is ~9 gigs) and synced it w/ syncthing for the last 2 years or so. But I recently tried out Spotify, mostly because I was bored... and I like it. It's just less of a hassle, searching is easy, downloading too, playlists are synced, recommendations by the algorithm aren't half bad, etc. Yes, I know, it uses THE DRM which is stealing our freedom or whatever /rms, but it's the go-to solution and it feels good finally paying for music (although it's debateable how much the artists actually get, but you get my point, there's a difference between 0$/month and 10$/month). Also the playlists that are made by community members/music labels/spotify themselves are convenient. If you only care about getting stuff for free, i.e. piracy, you probs don't care at all, but if you - somewhat - want to support artists, Spotify (or any other big streaming service) is just much more convenient than, say going to everyone's bandcamp account (or similar) and purchasing it from there. I guess it depends on if you want to support artists or not and if you aren't bothered by managing all of the meta-stuff (downloading from $service, syncing, etc). I know you're probs gonna hate me for liking such a proprietary service ( and being on lainchan OMG how is that possible?! - sorry), but it just werks - and gives me what I want (at least currently).

>>11800 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1-5-K6onXo&t=4m32s If you want to support artists, buy albums and concert tickets. Spotify listens barely give them money at all. If I save up to buy an album once in a while, then not only can I actually have the files on my hard drive and do whatever I want with them EULAs notwithstanding, but that money is actually going to the bands I listen to. The way Spotify works, if I pay for a subscription, then the vast majority of that money is going to the most popular artists on the platform - the music I listen to isn't taken into account. Why should I pay Taylor Swift for the right to listen to High on Fire? To clarify, I'm not OP and I don't use Spotify at all. I realize that might've been a little unclear.

Spotify is acceptable with an ad blocker. The finding and playlist sharing stuff could use some work. It's hard to search by genre (common in streaming services). The web app crashes an awful lot for "production" software.

>>11802 I don't really pirate music anymore for this reason. I enjoy my CD collection and can rip the tunes to whatever device supports me doing this. While services like Spotify were meant to be a solution to the Napster soykaf, if people really cared about the music they would go buy CD's and merch to support them. Also High On Fire is a good band, fuarrrk Taylor Swift.

>>11802 >>11807 I'm with ya except that I really can't afford to be spending money on music willy-nilly. Bandcamp is *by far* the best way to discover, share, and buy music in a way that directly benefits the artist.

If you're into very obscure artists (like Japanese doujin circles and artists) you won't even find them on Spotify. Quite a lot other artists too, so I don't even have to make the decision. Personally I wouldn't use it anyhow, seeing how intransparent and complicated actual payouts for artists are, how readily they embrace DRM (but still fail to combat piracy?). In general I dislike streaming, network traffic that could've happened once or twice for a download happens every time you listen to a song now, multiplied by every song and user. Quality is also deceptive, I can reason about using a low bitrate for mobile users as their internet capabilities might be lower, but I still wouldn't call 96kbit/s MP3 "normal quality" or 160kbit/s MP3 "high quality". I guess music can be enjoyed across all compression levels, but listening on "low quality" gives you 24kbit/s MP3 lol. The clients are trash also, god forbid you use one of the million music players that have thus far already been developed and perfected instead of their client. I still find it questionable to use spotify to support favorite artists, for reasons other lains have already pointed out. I think a better compromise that actually supports your favorite artists, is to pay them on some occasions, but otherwise just torrent their work. For touring bands you can buy their merch or CDs and for exclusively digital artists, you can just support them on bandcamp. >>11801 some people search almost religiously for pirated content of their favorite artists. Once your that fanatical you're not far from just buying their merch or releases, yielding them more than a spotify subscription would have in the first place. I don't mean to be hostile, but I would argue a user who simply turns to spotify hoping their favorite artists get a good turnout and not ever actually knowing cares less.

>>11808 love artists who put music on bandcamp. probably one of the few remaining vendors who doesn't have DRM bullshit tied to it

Better back up your library if you need it, they can terminate your account for just blocking ads, it's in their TOS.

>>11801 >downloading it off youtube Why would you download music in 128kbps? >>11809 Yes. Spotify's library is smaller than most think. If you're into underground or old stuff you might not find what you're looking for.

>>11808 I don't always buy music. I will only buy music CD"s of bands I really like. Bands I know I listen to alot so I am not just buying CD's that get shelved most of the time.

>>11811 Bandcamp is the way. Those who make digital goods need to accept that they CANNOT make money on every and even most "individual goods". They can however, be supported by fans who truly love and connect with their work. They should have a donation based system. 2000 people giving $1 a month is $2000/month. They should supplement their main creative output with physical goods e.g. posters/concerts/albums + album in-case goodies/apparel/signed collectibles etc. However, there is a big issue that's present on the internet that is just not being talked about. Where is internet cash? Why can I not anonymously give somebody a little bit of money? Why must there be a middleman (PayPal/Patreon/Liberpay) who can just stop someone's income on a whim? Monero can't come quickly enough.

streaming sites are trash.

>>11813 They cater to what is popular. Look at Joe Rogan. It's no mystery they chose him over some other podcaster. It's all about what will generate clicks, purchases, and attention.

>>11800 Release your soykaf for free. Help kill the music industry with us.

>>11800 Anyone trying to make a living off music in the current year is a fool to do so by putting a paywall on their listeners. Period. For one, the market is so absurdly saturated that the odds people are going to go out of their way to buy your music are extremely close to zero. Sure, you can play local gigs, and that might even get you a bit of recognition in your area, but if you want anything outside of that then you aren't going to do well with demanding people pay just to hear your music. Like >>11825 said, release it all for free. Streaming services do next to nothing in terms of payment for their artists. Why do you think the "hehe I finally made it guize, got my first paycheck from Spotify - a whole 48 cents!" jokes are so common? IMO, the smartest and most ethical way to release music online today is to do it on Bandcamp with no minimum on any purchases. If someone stumbles on your page and likes what they hear, but finds they can't download your music without paying, what are the odds they'll actually come back to stream it from there often if they aren't already heavily integrated in the Bandcamp ecosystem? I even use Bandcamp quite a bit myself but I can say I've gradually forgotten about certain artists that might have grown on me more, just because they do absurd soykaf like charge $7 minimum for a single. Make money with giving people the option to purchase to support you and by making merchandise. Tour when you have the audience for it. Anything else is outdated and stupid to attempt. >spend 1000s on gear Yeah, shut up man. Anyone in the stage of their musical career where they're still trying to figure out how to make a financial return has no place spending that much money on gear. If you genuinely say to yourself "I want to be a musician!", drop 2k of savings on a really nice guitar, recording equipment, and a DAW license, you're just fuarrrking stupid. If the music you're writing isn't good enough for people to enjoy it in a rough homemade DIY state with a cheap guitar you got at a pawn shop and a snowball mic that you put through a cracked version of Reaper, then your music isn't good enough to release yet. Keep practicing until it is. As for streaming services, fuarrrk them. Spotify is disgusting. I encourage everyone to look up the rates these services pay their artists. As for "making a financial return", good luck even making enough off of streams to pay for the distribution services to get your music on Spotify in the first place. I would legitimately argue that it's more beneficial to artists to pirate and avoid giving traffic to these predatory services, than it is to stream your favourite artist's work to give them a few cents.

>>11834 if you want to download stuff from bandcamp just use youtube-dl. I usually end up impulse-buying some music once every few weeks because for some reason it hits me right. I'm not even paying for the privelege of downloading, usually the streams are decent quality already. Just paying because I like the music.

>>11813 because 128kbps mp3s are good enough for my ears. not everyone's an audiophile.

Reading this through makes me think back to the Metallica vs Napster thing. The only people that really went after Napster were big name artists like Dr. Dre or Metallica (obviously) who already were well off and are not losing a ton of money. That and the people that pirate music usually buy and support those artists anyway besides the kids that would have to beg their parents to buy them a shirt or a CD (if anyone still likes those). Seeing as a Spotify stream doesn't equal a full dollar it kind of makes the small time artist have a harder time climbing the charts wouldn't it? They would have to get attention on platforms like YouTube and then become popular enough to get on Spotify. Then again that's what I notice. I am not sure what Spotify's policy on that is.

>>12139 >then become popular enough to get on Spotify you can just pay to get on spotify. idk how expensive it is because i have no interest in doing so, but i know a couple of people who have done it and they aren't rich or anything.

>>12139 >>12140 Yeah the streaming services don't just come to you. You go through a distributor that puts your music up. Contrary to what people might think, there isn't any exclusivity or anything to Spotify, anyone can release on it. There's automated checks for audio quality, sure, and you do (usually) have to pay, but that aside it isn't any different from posting to YouTube. Distrokid is one of the more popular ones, $25/year for unlimited uploads. I tried with them for a bit but I cancelled my account because the customer service was terrible and everyone I talked to was a snarky asshole with me who insisted I change things about my music to fit their arbitrary guidelines. Amuse is another interesting one I've heard of - they don't charge you at all, but rather upload your stuff for free and use their customer base as a sample size to scout for people to sign to record contracts. Neat business model, but I don't have experience with them. I've heard about TuneCore too, and that they let you sell basic CDs on Amazon or something. Anyway, bottom line is that getting on Spotify (and all streaming services) has nothing to do with your popularity.

>>12168 I couldn't think of a better way to say it but my point was that legal streaming services don't necessarily equal a lot of money and it's the fans doing the extra bit and buying merch is what gets them more money.

>>11801 >It's just less of a hassle, searching is easy, downloading too, playlists are synced, recommendations by the algorithm aren't half bad, etc. > not knowing Nucear you doing it wrong. https://nuclear.js.org/ stop paying for what you have for free LEGALLY on youtube. Soy boy.

>>12733 > using chromium as a music player > not knowing youtube-dl or VLC

>>12733 >soy boy >redditspacing >electro Terrible post

>>12746 >redditspacing Can we just knock it off with this stupid complaint forever? Spacing paragraphs with blank lines has been standard practice in the english language for literally centuries. Complain about content or tone all you like. But kindly shut the fuarrrk up about a universal formatting style that makes for easy scanning.

>>12747 >Spacing paragraphs with blank lines The tell is leaving a blank line after the quote. Although admittedly there's nothing inherently wrong with doing so. It's just not something most IB posters do because the quote is already visually distinct from the rest of the text. >For instance On reddit if you don't do this, this line will be part of the quote block.

So what do you guys recommend for ripping media from Spotify? What kbps does Spotify stream at?

>>11800 I'm glad your favorite musicians stopped releasing music for financial reasons, their music was soycaph.

>>12733 Nuclear didn't even open on my PC. It also has this self righteous attitude as it tries to put bad reviews as a selling point. Not to mention when you download the install file it mentions that downloads off AWS.

>>12769 why care about the attitude? people talk soykaf all the time just care about the code :)

>>12747 That wasn't paragraph spacing, that was extraneous spacing for new lines because of how reddit markup works. It is a dead giveaway that they haven't lurked at all.

>>12770 Often times the people that talk the most soykaf cannot produce the quality they preach. As shown in the fact that the program wouldn't even try to open on my PC.

>>12778 hm its a pre-release and i do not know your os, perhaps you have a pretty obscure config, whats not uncommon right here

>>12780 I'm running Debian 10. I don't think that's very obscure.

>>12737 but this retard >>11801 want "spotify experience" > As shown in the fact that the program wouldn't even try to open on my PC. Works on my machine

>>12832 >Works on my machine Cool. Doesn't on mine.

>>12848 Sounds like a you problem then.

>>12856 And sounds like you and OP are pushing for unverified cracked software without any proof backing you. It sounds to me like a wild goose hunt that OP orchestrated to have people here install his backdoored apk. Well elaborate ploy, maybe even verging on conspiracy theory levels, but if there is no proof to show me that the claims posted ITT are like that then I have no need to think otherwise

>>12856 It does sound like a me problem. You're right.

>>11816 With gigs drying up in the pandemic, bands that most people consider successful are starting to get Patreon accounts. This is because the industry dicks them over and they hardly see any of the money because they don't technically "own" all their own stuff. By getting Patreon etc. they're circumventing the ((((industry)))) and letting the fans contribute directly to the artist.

>>12907 Never thought there would come a day that artists would actually adopt Street Performer Protocol and crowdfunding instead of artificial scarcity to fund their art.

>>12910 Ikr. Can't come soon enough.

>>12751 Since they would be executed by the industry if you could pirate the actual audio stream, everything is covered in thick blobs of DRM up to the point of a decoded audio output which is sent to your OS's sound system thingy to put on the sound card. This means you can't download the actual music files, you have to record the music live. Well unless you have premium and find a way to break the DRM. You can set up a virtual sound device and direct spotify output there, and then re-encode it with whatever format you want. Note that quality wise this will be 160kbps OGG (on free accs) + quality loss from re-encoding (unless you waste space be encoding a lossy stream into lossless. Most utilities you can find online will just encode the output of your default audio device, and have awkward problem with volume - if it's too loud the result will have clipping, if it's not loud enough you end up with a lower quality and quiet audio that you have to fix somehow.

>>12792 Was a .deb package available to download or it needed to compile from scratch?

>>12859 Modded apk 's can be an issue sometimes. That's why it's important to download from trusted sources(Mobilism is good) and/or run a virus scan at VirusTotal. Oh, and running Spotify cracked apk with your main spotify account is dangerous as well since if the company detects your modified apk, they can disable your account

>>11795 >I googled it and the first result got me the premium apk Enjoy your backdoored executable!

>>12938 I used a .deb file.