Well, my friend, he’s kinda poor he can’t afford some books and some streaming services, so he pirates. He pirate books, audiobook and videos and other stuff. Sometimes he buys books he likes a lot out of loyalty to the author (yeah, I don’t understand it either), he likes to read physical books, but yeah, if he hates the author or just wants to skim through it, he will download the book.
He usually doesn’t like to pirate from small companies or professors who are trying to make a living by selling books, but from millionaires & plenty of mega corps which already have loads of money, he feels like it’s the right move to pirate
Also, have you ever noticed that you have felt that the value of a product has decreased just because you didn’t pay for it, thus you are less interested to read it? i.e., had you paid for the book, you would have more likely read that book.
He says he will buy stuff when his time is more valuable than money, let’s all hope that day is soon.
What are your piracy habits?
Give me a reasonably priced, accessible way to enjoy the content and I will happily pay for it.
Streaming has become untenable and now it’s neither affordable nor convenient to watch what I want to watch. And with how frequently shows and movies bounce around platforms, who knows if the show I want to watch this weekend will be still available on one if the many platforms I’ve been paying for.
I’m just done with it.
I know people like to shit on Spotify. But it’s the reason I stopped pirating music forever ago and the reason I’ve paid for it for years now.
It’s fairly reasonably priced at $10-11/mo. It’s available on basically any phone, computer, tablet, etc. And nearly every song I could ever want to listen to is just there, seamlessly. You can even download the songs to play locally for when you don’t have Internet access. I will admit there are some rare occasions where a song I want is not available there, but it’s so infrequent that it doesn’t at all impact my listening experience. I can also very easily discover new music by generating playlists based on a song I like.
Now look at something like Netflix. It used to be this way…priced well and had everything you could ever want to watch on it. But now everyone and their mother has their own steaming platform. It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s become as expensive as cable to get the same watching experience as TV streaming sites used to be. Sure there are people who say “well I just periodically subscribe and unsubscribe to the service I want to make it cheaper”. And sure, it makes it cheaper, but it sure as hell isn’t convenient. I don’t want to have to fuck with all that shit. So I use illegal TV/movie streaming sites instead. Or I just watch YouTube videos or use free services like Tubi and Pluto. Paid for TV streaming services absolutely suck ass nowadays.
If we started having issues with artist and production company fragmentation, I would cancel my Spotify subscription. But thankfully that hasn’t happened and I hope it never does. The trend doesn’t seem to be looking that way thank goodness.
If you have a reasonably priced service that has everything I could want, I pay for it. If you don’t, then I pirate. Simple as that.
The biggest issue to me is that all music services offer effectively the same access to music. I’m not choosing between Spotify and YouTube music because my favorite artist is on one, but not the other. However we are conditioned to think this is ok when it comes to video. Streaming services never should have been content creators, we should be choosing Netflix vs Hulu based on price, app quality, video quality.
I was never conditioned to think it was ok for video and it’s why I hate TV/movie streaming services lol
I still pirate my music, using YouTube music revanced, but the main reason I do it is because I find it to expensive for how often I use it. I don’t use it that often, mainly just when cooking dinner, if there was a way for me to use YouTube music for $5 a month, I would probably pay for it.
Also for me it has to be YouTube music, as alot of the songs I listen to aren’t on other platforms, (song covers, and remixes).
YSK that YouTube Premium can be bought over a VPN for a whole lot less than the regular retail price, it’s a bit fiddly to set up but I’ve got a Nigerian based family account that costs me £1.76 a month.
Ah see I listen to music all the time. When I was in school, it would be hours upon hours every day. Nowadays, I listen to it far less, but it’s still whenever I drive, which is near daily. And when I feel like it sometimes I listen a lot at work.
I’m with you. I’ve had a Spotify sub for more than a decade and have no plans to cancel.
192kbps max and now artists and corpos can pay to promote music on the front page.
No thx
Spotify claims 320kbps with premium (see the link below). Has this claim been debunked or something?
https://support.spotify.com/us/article/audio-quality/
Noted! I didn’t know about that, my info might be dated.
I ended up on Apple Music cuz they have heady lossless by default.
… I still horde flacs tho
Yeah I could definitely see a lot of streaming services starting out with lower quality before Internet speeds and such have gotten more robust.
Absolutely. I’m very thankful for infinite fast mobile data now. I’d never have signed up for a music streaming service if I didn’t have they.
The unfortunate truth is that 10 dollars a month is not enough to produce TV shows and movies for. Stuffing it all into one platform can (and should) work, but you’ll be paying not that much less than buying all the streaming services separately.
I suppose streaming companies could set up a two tiered system, one for shows before streaming media that have made back their investment and one for producing new stuff, but that’d only raise the price.
I’m all for making stuff more accessible. I pirate the 1080p copies that Amazon won’t send to my rooted phone to prevent piracy. I pirate the 1080p Netflix shows that Netflix won’t show me because I’m on Linux. I have subscriptions to both and will sometimes use my Chromecast without pirating, but as long as these companies go out of their way to make my experience worse, I’ll just pirate shit on the side.
I’ve also decided never to join Disney+ after they pulled all of their interesting content off Netflix to make their shitty streaming service more attractive. I pirate Disney out of principle. Same goes for companies knowingly abusing copyright law like DMCA to bully people, like Nintendo likes to do.
I try to avoid indie stuff like indie movies. I also try to buy games I play on my PC, mostly out of convenience. I still pirate some games to see if they run on my system (bring back demos, please!) but last time I did that I’ve bought Cyberpunk for full price a few days later.
Oh let’s be real here, this is what capitalism does. It chooses the worst possible option for entertainment because it’s what makes the most money. What makes the most money is not making you happy, but getting you to stay subscribed.
Let me tell you the real secret. You know what it costs to rent a movie online? And stream it? And then never watch it again? Yeah now justify that against streaming services.
I’ll tell you right now, go get Plex. If you don’t already use a media server, start. Because chances are that you don’t actually watch 90% of what’s on those services. So that $15 a month for content you don’t own could easily be $20 a month on content that you do actually own. Not to mention there’s no ads involved and you can stream as many devices as you want from anywhere. Get friends to pitch in and it’s even better.
The ONLY argument for this is convenience of all the shows at your fingertips. Except now that’s not the case and they’re on different services, screw it, either pirate the media or buy it used on disc.
I don’t see what capitalism has to do with anything. As far as I remember, video rental stores started as a concept in the west, not under any communist regime. With how many grants governments write out to production companies to come film in their state, I don’t think the movie business is completely capitalistic anyway, because it seeks out state funding wherever it goes.
Video streaming services make content available for ridiculously low prices. The only way this can even work is that these companies assume you’ll stick with them for a xouooe of years, slowly making their money back off your subscription. The months that you watch less new content will pay for the months that you do.
Royalties and basic payment for streaming content are also pretty bad for the people working on shows. I’m not saying all these actors deserve their private jets, but acting is hard work, some shows involving 12-16 hour work days, and hard work should be rewarded at least. Meanwhile, studios are trying to use AI to own the visuals and sound of a person, which was the straw that broke the camel’s back and caused the current strikes. I suppose it’s a matter of opinion which is worse, their likeness being owned by companies or by the state, but the race to the bottom for content pricing are causing productions to pinch pennies real bad.
You can buy most media, but the math doesn’t work out if you regularly watch stuff. Shows go for about €10 per season digitally (you’ll have to strip the DRM) or about €50-60 for a full boxset of an older show. Great if you only watch one show per month, but I don’t.
Then you also need to set up Plex, pay for a server somewhere, and keep it running. I’m running Jellyfin and I’m fine with keeping that updated and working, but most people don’t care about any of that and don’t have the knowledge to set up something like Plex.
Movies are different from shows. Most of them make back their investment in the box office, so I have little qualms about them being pirated to hell and back. Independent movies less so, but I don’t watch those anyway. The biggest money suckers are TV shows, which are six or seven movies presented as separate episodes, with none of the initial return on investment. They must subsist on the few cents per view they receive in compensation, and that’ll take ages to make back the multi million investment, let alone pay any royalties for the people hired based on a percentage of the profits rather than a flat fee.
Piracy is the easiest way out, but it’ll hurt everyone in the long run. Once it becomes financially inviable to continue making certain content, they just won’t make any more.
Agreed, totally depends on how much you watch. But shopping used DVDs and like I said banding together with friends to buy content eventually begins to work out better for you.
I’m not someone who consumes tv and movie content en masse so it works out for me to do this and for a lot of people who watch a season or two of a show a month, it’s not that much more expensive to own.
What I meant about the capitalism concept is that the core idea isn’t about enjoyment or getting to watch what you want. It’s not about convenience anymore. This is a capitalistic cycle where it stops innovating and starts to poison it’s consumer.
So shows will now be splintered across services, shows will get cancelled for being less profitable, and the overall quality will dip because we’re driving art to the bottom price. Whatever makes shareholders more money. And is this true? I feel like it is. Quality of shows has dipped quite a bit to fit the streaming service pricing.
We can argue about whether people want that or not, but it’s basically just what’s been done with every other consumer item. Dominate the market, lose money, get the subscribers, and then make their experience shittier over time.
This is how I do it.
I pay for Netflix, Prime (only really for the free shipping), Disney+, Apple TV+ and Spotify, if it’s not on any of these then I’m going to pirate it.
The whole exclusivity stuff is just rubbish, I get the reasoning but if you can’t make your content easily accessible then I just don’t want to pay for it.