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Comment by gorbachev | Hacker News Reader

But they don't offer the same products. The UX and tools are largely the same, or similar enough, but the product is not the same. The product for streaming services is by and large the content catalog they offer.

Each streaming service has their own exclusive deals with publishers and offer a completely different catalog of music/movies.

This is why pirate sites are far superior, because they don't have those artificial limits on the product catalog offered.

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"Exclusive deals" in this context as analogous to "monopolistic deals", the former term sounds less bad, but in terms of consumer effect, "monopolistic" is a much more apt word to use.

Music catalogs are nearly identical identical. Much different from video streaming services where the divergence is dramatic from one to another.

> Each streaming service has their own exclusive deals with publishers and offer a completely different catalog of music

What? If a piece of music is on one streaming service, it's on all of them.

That may be true for bigger artists on major labels, but for smaller independent bands it’s not always the case. I am a heavy user and fan of Bandcamp for listening to and purchasing music but I use Spotify for listening in the car and sharing playlists. I often find albums that are only available on either Spotify or Bandcamp but not both.

The ones that aren’t available on Spotify tend to be self-released but otherwise there isn’t much of a pattern. Albums not on Bandcamp, though, tend to be mediocre at best.

And that’s not even mentioning bands that are pulling their music from Spotify in protest…

That's unfortunately not true.

In the US, this song is unavailable on Spotify where I found it, but available on YT music. Preface by Man Without Country. Given another 5 minutes, I could also find a song that is not listed on one but available on another.

https://music.you tube.com/watch?v=bvWjybBBFYs

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