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Comment by simplify | Hacker News Reader

To be fair, spotify was able to thrive because the pirate-solution alternative got shut down (grooveshark).

Grooveshark is exactly the point though. The reason they were better than Spotify was because they had EVERYTHING at a time when other services had much smaller catalogues. Now the movie industry is headed down the same path. No Disney, having your own service isn't going to increase demand, it's going to drive people back to piracy.

I'm at this point already. The price for most video streaming services would be okay if it gave me access to all the content. But I'm never going to pay for Netflix and Amazon and Disney and YouTube Red and the list goes on when I just want to watch one show on each service.

YouTube red isn't even available in my country for some reason. According to advertisements I'd get it with my Google music subscription. Nope. Not available for some reason so enjoy the ads of course no access to their specific content. Back to Spotify and ublock I went.

I don't think most people were using grooveshark BECAUSE it was a pirate-solution. They had paid plans as well that allowed you to do more than the free ones. I don't think most people knew there was any real difference between grooveshark and spotify.

And Napster before that et al.

However, I would still rather use Spotify than go through the bother of downloading dodgy MP3s and synching them to all my devices. I think Spotify's model killed music piracy much more than legal action ever did.

Besides the convienience of streaming, I stick with spotify for their discovery features, and radios that are very targeted and generally produce good results. Their Discovery Weekly, Release Radar, and Daily Mix playlist offer far more value than any other music service has.

Even though I could through a minor effort, take my entire back catalogue of MP3’s (many were pirated and very clearly sorted and organized), pirate a bunch of new content, and upload it all to a streaming service like Google Play Music, I don’t because then I would be missing out on killer curation and discovery features music services offer today.

Maybe I just downloaded different stuff, but I think I can count on one hand the number of 'dodgy' MP3 files I ever got from napster/limewire. Even to this day I have friends who say "oh, i never torrent anything today - I got sick of all the viruses I got from limewire whenever I tried to get mp3 files". What on earth were people doing (or searching for) to get viruses from mp3 files?

I do recall reading about some trend major publishers did, with seeding 'bad' versions of songs with the same titles as the 'real' ones, confusing people in to wasting bandwidth and resharing 'bad' files. Was that terribly effective?

They were being idiots and not paying attention to file types. GoodMusic.mp3.exe

> I do recall reading about some trend major publishers did, with seeding 'bad' versions of songs with the same titles as the 'real' ones, confusing people in to wasting bandwidth and resharing 'bad' files. Was that terribly effective?

I remember Madonna's "What the fuck do you think you're doing" mp3's. But it really didn't make me change my habits, or even really annoy me.

Actually, I still haven't changed my habits, as Spotify and Deezer don't have everything I want to listen to, and unlike Grooveshark, they don't allow me to add my own music.

yeah - I use spotify, but it doesn't have everything I always want - maybe... ~80%. live stuff, bootlegs, etc from various folks, they don't have. Not really their fault specifically, but it doesn't cover all my needs/wants.

I've never used Spotify, but even I mostly stopped pirating too... other legal means are just too easy and cheap, and increasingly likely to actually support the artist.

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