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Comment by FireInsight | Hacker News Reader

This is exactly the reason why my preferred method of music consumption is piracy + Bandcamp. Every Bandcamp Friday (when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut) I buy about 2 to 6 albums I've listened to in the past month or a few. If an artist is not on Bandcamp, I'm less likely to listen to them, but if I do, I eventually pirate their stuff.

All the music I buy and pirate is in FLAC and funneled into my local library, where I can enjoy it without any streaming service taking it away from me.

And I usually end up contributing more to my favorite artists financials than fans who use streaming service, so that's a bonus.

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In case of smaller artists we'd be better off pirating music instead of helping cement Spotify's brand as a central platform. The only person losing money in this case is the platform holder so we could argue the decentralised aspect of piracy helps fighting monopolisation of the industry.

But don't they give out a flat % of what they earn from the subscriptions? The low return would mean that either:

a) Spotify doesn't charge enough for a subscription

b) Spotify takes too big of a cut right now from the subscription revenue

c) The model doesn't work as a lot of people from low-income (and low subscription cost) countries are "sucking out" the money that goes mainly from rich ones. So 1 listen from USA = 1 listen from India even though the USA listener pays around 7-8x times more and the subscription income gets divided equally by listens.

People use Spotify because it is comfortable and provides additional features liked by users. That has always been the only way to beat piracy.

> Every Bandcamp Friday (when Bandcamp doesn't take a cut) I

It's great that BC still does BC Fridays... but if fans only buy music from BC on BC Fridays, BC will lose all revenue and will fold or resort to shitty tactics. BC are one of the few "good" businesses in this space, and have reached an impressive scale. I'd hate to see them fold. I reckon it's worth buying some music on normal days as well as BC Fridays.

Well, I do sometimes buy on normal days too, but not as much :)

And if they removed BCFs or took a small cut I wouldn't stop buying from them either.

BC was acquired recently, so that may come sooner rather than later. It's not due to BC Friday, bur rather that selling MP3s piecemeal is a hard business. Artists sometimes also remove their albums from BC if they sign with a label that wants exclusive distribution rights.

Selling mp3s piecemeal might be hard but they were profitable for 12 years prior to the previous sale to Epic. Spotify havn’t turned a profit in 18.

I too fear the recent change of ownership will bring on changes in business model. But I live in hope that it wont, because it doesn’t need to.

If bands are not on Bandcamp, I buy them on mp3million.com, which is legal but feels like piracy given their pricing.

Well. It doesn't seem that legal, and certainly not a good solution is your primary goal is to help artists : https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/1045/do-those-...

Very shady at best.

> mp3million.com

Reminds me of allofmp3.com before the WTO asked Russia to kill it if they wanted to join.

Wow thats cheap! How is that even possible?

https://musicfans.stackexchange.com/questions/1045/do-those-...

Thanx a lot. That’s insightful.

It ain't piracy if the record I want is out of print and no longer commercially available. Most of the music I listen to is pre-2010, so there are a lot of records that fit that description.

Same goes for live recordings, remixes and radio sessions. P2P has had this for 20+ years, Spotify doesn't and never will.

Same here. A lot of artists and a good chunk of the recording crews from before the early 1980s are dead and have been for decades, and the only ones getting the money are the record companies. Otis Redding, Marvin Gaye, Jim Croce, Stevie Ray Vaughan, all of them have been gone for thirty years or more at this point. Not even their kids or some sort of charity managed by their estate get any of the money. Piracy of their albums is denying wealth from graverobbers, really.

It’s still copyright infringement just like copying the latest Taylor swift album is.

Taylor Swift albums are not out of print and she owns her record label. I am talking about recordings that were never released commercially, or released by labels that are long gone. This is closer to the videogame emulation legality argument than it is Metallica v Napster.

Still copyright infringement (assuming it’s not so old to have left copyright). Doesn’t matter if it’s a song that was last printed on a 78 in 1945 and the artist decided to burn all copies, or the latest album from some k-pop band that you can get free with your cornflakes.

Being in print or not makes no difference

These numbers definitely give piracy a shine.

What's better for music as a whole? Boosting Spotify's share price and Taylor Swift's private jet habit? Or putting that $11/month towards some gigs for an artist you really like?

> All the music I buy and pirate is in FLAC and funneled into my local library, where I can enjoy it without any streaming service taking it away from me.

Where do you get these FLACs? Do you have a pipeline/automated system or it’s done manually? Asking for a friend.

You can get these FLACs via Bandcamp. In some cases, you can download for free (enter $0.00 if there is a "name your price" tag)

If you wish to sail the high seas, look up "piracy megathread". Soulseek and Doubledoubletop are some of my favorites.

Where do you store the files, how do you take your music with you on the go?

Not the poster you're replying to, but I acquire music the same ways as them.

a1) on my computer, in folders. I manage it using iTunes/Music, but could just as well use anything else, or do it manually. I also have Serato for DJing, which imports my iTunes/Music library xml to share the same collection.

a2) to be fair, in the past year, I've gotten lazy and started streaming from the band camp app for more recent purchases. I'm not DJing much these days.

b) I buy phones with a lot of storage and don't upgrade very often

I have both a Jellyfin and a Subsonic-compatible (Gonic) server on my local NAS. Those are used for streaming and work anywhere where there's internet thanks to Tailscale. If I need to go offline, for a flight or something, I pick a dozen albums to download full quality to my phone and listen to them with the Retro music player.

Music is just files, so just use any filesync service like iCloud, Google Drive, Keybase, OneDrive, DropBox etc.

There are media servers you can host locally and Bandcamp has an app you can play music in.

Problem is that in take of new music is harder with these.

I don’t know if YouTube is any better, but I have switched all of my music consumption to youtube music app with the premium subscription.

I don't require a huge intake of new music: I obsess over those dozen albums I really love a month, always listening to them in full and appreciating them as art. Browsing Bandcamp tags, music review and catalogue sites, and music critics album reviews is really all I need to get that hit.

But it's not for everyone ig...

Your process sounds a lot like this new change by Spotify... Anything you don't listen to very much doesn't get paid for.

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