[bicubic]

Between the dwindling Netflix catalog and increasingly hostile subscription service experience on Spotify, I have found myself flying the black flag again. I still have subscriptions to both, but I will be cancelling them this year. I don't want their shitty analytics payloads, I don't want their shitty anti-adblocker tech. I don't want their shitty tactics of deleting random songs off my playlists. I just want the content I paid for.

It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.

Whatever arguments were made about piracy detracting from sales are laughable now. The copyright and ad lobbies are detracting from those sales, piracy is just a symptom of the cancer that they are.

Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts. The fact that the premium subscription cost for those services is more than netflix+spotify, and yet people are willing to pay that much for their piracy, that should be pretty telling to any industry analyst.

[Wowfunhappy]

> It's not because I don't want to pay for the content, I'd happily pay 2-3x under the right circumstances. It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation.

Can't help you with movies/Netflix, but in the case of Spotify, you could go back to buying mp3's. Google Play, Amazon, iTunes (aac format), etc will all sell you DRM Free tracks at $1.30 a piece, and the ad-free songs become yours forever to listen to however you wish.

[abrowne]

Bandcamp is another option. They have multiple download formats, including FLAC. Lately I've been seeing more albums from artists on ("major" indie) labels, not just self-released.

[_t2kx]

Bandcamp is my favorite service precisely because they include FLAC downloads.

[rjplatte]

This. I've started actually buying music for the first time ever because it sounds so good from Bandcamp.

[wolco]

Netflix offers too much value for a small amount plus the size of movies makes downloading/previewing the throwaway type of netflix shows make it hard to justify the effort to pirate.

Spotify always seems less useful compared to winamp if you knew what music you liked or like to download everything from one band who's best days are behind them. A hassle for new stuff but if you want the all of the 'yes' albums the rare shows, interviews spotify just doesn't cut it.

[macd]

A happy medium for me is google play music. Basically the same song selection and features as spotify, plus the ability to upload your own mp3s that aren't available on the platform (I actually haven't used this feature in a while, but it seems like it still works). And you get ad-free youtube as well.

[nickthegreek]

I am all about Youtube premium. Replaced my spotify with it and I love it. Ad free youtube, my own mp3s along with the google music catalog is great. They even grandfather people in on the original price that they subbed for when the service price increased.

[zeeZ]

They changed that last year though. An All Access subscription now only includes YouTube Music Premium, which does not remove ads. That requires a YouTube Premium subscription. Plus I hear there are plans to ditch Play Music for YouTube Music this year...

[00deadbeef]

For me it's the opposite way around. Netflix's UK catalogue is tiny compared to the US, but Spotify always has the music I want. I pay for Spotify, but not Netflix.

[mancerayder]

A bit of a tangent, but the production quality and writing of shows on BBC iPlayer is high compared to Netflix. Netflix shows increasingly feel like they're written for a generic audience, with a lot of mediocre writing and, I hate to say it, a little dose of virtue signaling as well.

[guitarbill]

That might have been true a while back, but Netflix' US catalogue seems seriously small these days due to the fragmentation of video streaming in the US, and them focussing on their own original material (at least some of it is good).

Assuming you have Netflix and Prime Video, these days I'm finding more and more occasions when the selection in the UK is bigger (!).

[00deadbeef]

I might give it another try

[ianai]

Not to neglect that traditional media for music can be found cheaply. I got something like 200 cds of great classical music from the relatives of a passed neighbor. Garage sales and such are great, too. They’re not great for newer music, but there are options.

[reaperducer]

I think a lot of people would be surprised how much music is available for free at their local public library.

I load up my holds list online on the weekend and pick up a dozen or so CDs one day a week on the way home from work.

[14]

Have you pirated in a while? Things like popcorntime make it trivial for even elderly people like my folks to check out new movies and shows. No longer are the days where you have to download the entire movie and hope it was a good copy you just click play and they start a progressive download from the beginnin and you can stream it within seconds. If it is a bad copy stop it and move on. I keep thinking about joining these services because it is nice to pay I believe people should get paid, but what Spotify is now doing is user hostile and now I am no longer considering joining. I use Adblock. I can not see how this will work for them. People surely will backlash.

[bryanrasmussen]

ok well I bundle my media consumption with my phone service so on that hand it's not that problematic for me, but on the other hand I have netflix, paramount, cmore, viaplay, HBO nordic bundled as well as some cable channels and I would still have to pay another 30 dollars or so per month to get what I don't have now that I want

[IloveHN84]

Use Kodi and plugins. Or rent good old DVDs for movies.

[bubblethink]

mp3s are compressed and lossy. Makes them unsuitable for buying. There are a few sites like bandcamp that sell flacs. Not sure why the big players don't let you buy flacs. It's not like there's an engineering issue. Maybe they get the rights only for lossy files.

Edit: Since some will invariably point out that you can't hear flacs, here's a better argument. Even if you prefer lossy music, there are and will be better codecs than mp3. So the choice of encoding should be up to you so that you can choose a better codec in the future if you wish. And mp3 wasn't even free until last year. So until 2018, it was illegal to play mp3s on a free system.

[ghaff]

Then buy the CDs as if you can probably tell the difference. You're just making excuses for not wanting to pay.

[jeromegv]

Yep. At this point now there's so much paid music available in high quality than anyone who says that it's still not good enough is looking for reasons to feel better about themselves for not paying.

[ghaff]

Video is something of a shitshow and I'm somewhat sympathetic to people who don't want to buy a DVD just because Netflix has driven all the local rental places out of business, their own catalog is rotting, and it's not available for even a la carte streaming. Or you have to subscribe to yet another streaming service just to watch one show.

But music? There may be corner cases but pretty much any of the big streaming services plus judicious a la carte purchases have you pretty well covered. Personally I do like owning music but then I started from a pretty large collection of physical media.

[wolco]

Anyone offering the complete collection of any artist including bootlags, unreleased tracks, artwork and in some cases images of used tickets of the shows?

[metafizikal]

a well-encoded mp3, ogg, or aac file will be audibly transparent to almost every end user, even on extremely high-end equipment. mp3 does have the side benefit of being supported on damn near everything.

[_t2kx]

For me it's not about lossless sounding better. Storage is so cheap nowadays that it's silly not to have a full lossless encode for an archive/backup. I can transcode that lossless file into any other lossy format but transcoding a lossy file to another format destroys the quality.

[dvtrn]

It feels, for some-odd reason that us audio people have to justify our purchasing decisions and desire for quality and fidelity way more than people who spend hundreds of dollars on 21 inch 144hz monitors and care about things like frame rate and texture resolution do.

Or maybe not, but it's a feeling.

[Wowfunhappy]

Enthusiasts complain about the crappy latency and refresh rates of modern LCD televisions all the time, against people saying "just turn on motion smoothing and most people won't notice." I'm not justifying one or the other, but it happens in both domains.

[dvtrn]

I suppose I'm glad I offered the caveat that it was a 'feeling', in that case.

[lmm]

It's pretty easy to learn to recognize mp3 pre-echo and no amount of good encoding will eliminate it.

[whiddershins]

Doesn’t Tidal offer very high quality streams?

As for iTunes, don’t they sell in high bitrate AAC? It is very hard to hear a difference in the vast majority of music between a high bitrate AAC and an uncompressed file.

[schrijver]

For recent releases they tend to be available, but you might have to look through many channels: next to Bandcamp Beatport, Qobuz, Juno Download, Bleep, Boomkat are stores I check.

[Wowfunhappy]

Spotify isn't streaming FLACs either.

[zcid]

And you're not paying $1/track for Spotify.

[whalesalad]

> hostile subscription service experience on Spotify

???

I pay $14.99 a mo and my wife and I enjoy as much music as we can stomach. It's the one subscription I never even think about. Their service never goes down and they are constantly trying to improve the product.

> Sonarr + Couchpotato + Plex + Subsonic is somehow a more consumer-friendly experience than their 'legitimate' counterparts.

???

If you have the time to configure all of that stuff (and support it, and find pirated content) you need to seriously up your billable rate and reconsider the value of your time.

Then again if you just enjoy doing it yourself and running your own gear, that is fine too, but admit it. I don't think this has anything to do with the market being hostile.

[schrijver]

Spotify is a great way to discover and browse music; but it kind of goes with the nature of streaming services that your access to their content is neither as reliable or as anonymous as playing files you’ve downloaded. Then again, major labels now provide lossless DRM free files through Qobuz, Juno Download, Beatport etc (although some region localisation still exists, but once you’ve bought the file that no longer affects you). Smaller labels operate through these platforms as well, and through Bandcamp (which is my favourite platform for buying music). So I do think the situation when it comes to legal access to digital music is much better than it ever was.

[mwest]

Bandcamp is definitely my favourite platform for buying music. No DRM, flac format available if that's your thing. Artists can put up both digital and physical merch.

Wish they had a more fully-featured experience for streaming music on PC. Downloading to play in foobar is a bit of a faff sometimes!

[rchaud]

The selling point of BC for me is the sense of community. You can see reviews of releases from other fans, and you cannot post a review unless you've paid up, which eliminates 99% of trolls/shit-stirrers.

It definitely helps that BC is focused on independent artists and doesn't seem interested in pushing grand visions of a global musical monoculture in the way Spotify does (those pretentious Year in Music retrospectives, Drake, "chill beats playlist", Lana del Rey etc).

[mwest]

Must agree with you here (even though I do like me some Lana del Rey). Majority of Bandcamp music in my collection is retro/synth/new wave, and some "drone" which is nice to have on as white noise while working.

[rchaud]

Nothing wrong w/ LDR at all, I was taking issue with Spotify's nudging behaviour like "Hey, millions are listening to these artists, why aren't you?", when my listening history would clearly indicate that I'm not interested in those artists.

Old-school sites like last.fm used user-submitted tags to link my listening history to new artists I'd probably enjoy. You don't need any fancy machine learning for this kind of basic pattern recognition. Spotify could obviously do this, but like Netflix, Amazon etc, they choose to push artists that make them the most money.

[majewsky]

Any suggestions? I'm always looking for new background music for work, and I agree that BandCamp is a very nice shopping experience.

[mwest]

For drone, I have a lot of stuff from Cryochamber:

https://cryochamber.bandcamp.com/

Looking at my current most-played list, I'd suggest:

https://starcadian.bandcamp.com/album/saturdaze

https://future80s.bandcamp.com/album/trans-am

https://nightvision2.bandcamp.com/album/runaway !!

https://neondroid.bandcamp.com/album/no-more-sunset-2017-ep

[MarsAscendant]

In case you don't do this already:

You can use Bandcamp Downloader [https://github.com/Otiel/BandcampDownloader] to download the artist's music – including any or all albums and any of the songs – just by entering the addresses of the pages.

Might make getting the audio easier, considering you've already paid.

[dTal]

That app doesn't even do anything special. The link to the mp3 is right in the page source code, which Bandcamp intentionally doesn't obfuscate. They justify this by asserting that if somebody really wants to pirate, they'll do so with or without Bandcamp; ergo, it's better to keep them on-platform.

I also like that this fits in with their general marketing of lossless files - sure, you can download the 128kbps mp3s. Go ahead. They're inferior - just previews.

https://get.bandcamp.help/hc/en-us/articles/360007902173-I-h...

[rchaud]

BC lets users stream every track at least a couple of times before asking you to pay. This 'free plays limit' resets after a few days, so theoretically, you wouldn't have to pay to hear it ever. I like the reminder because I'm more willing to support independent artists, and if I get the prompt for a song I like, why not pay $5-8 or whatever to have it in my collection?

[reciprocity]

Just wanted to mention that any limitation in listening to a track is set by the artist, not Bandcamp. With an artist profile, you can set the number of times people can listen/stream your music before being prompted to buy (I have such a profile).

[dTal]

There's a limit? I stream a good bit off Bandcamp and I've never once hit it.

[elcrawfodor]

I believe it's only on mobile

[mwest]

I've seen that before, thanks. Wish I could find a similar tool to download (or stream) my bought and paid for collection, at the quality I set!

[sourcesmith]

Yep buying a lot of my music via Bandcamp. 7digital is good for more mainstream stuff and world music.

[module0000]

>> I have found myself flying the black flag again

I'm in the same boat(no pun intended), and also still pay for the subscriptions. I thought that more streaming services and more maturity(time passed) meant this situation would be improving - not degrading.

[tzakrajs]

When the business model is to float a huge amount of capital to purchase unsustainable licensing agreements while you become a record label or movie studio — then it makes sense why we are here.

[noxToken]

Physical media still exists for a lot of music, but I know first-hand that some music, collections/anthologies/compilations and playlists containing some original content are becoming increasingly digital-only. Check for an artist's profile on a music service that allows you to purchase and download the content. Bandcamp (no affiliation) is one such service. Then you can make your own physical or digital backups external to the service.

This is less than ideal, but it works for now.

[SteveNuts]

Remember, even CDs aren't safe from DRM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...

I guess Vinyl is the only way to go for true security-minded individuals.

[kwhitefoot]

The Sony/BMG rootkits only worked on Windows. I never had any trouble playing them on Linux. I stopped buying all Sony products when I found out what they were trying to do. And that's after half a lifetime of recommending Sony. Idiots.

[xtracto]

So... I had a Spotify family subscription for me and my wife (2 persons... of course living under the same roof). Suddenly my wife lost her spotify premium functionality and asked me if I had cancelled.

Turns out Spotify invalidated her as part of my family plan and asked me to add her again. Cool.... I go to the config to add her and Spotify asks for her address and does not let me add her when putting her/my address... I don't remember what address did I enter when I opened spotify more than 5 years ago, and the stupid thing does not let you see your address (like, 1 field in a database, how hard is that?)

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Accounts/How-can-I-check-my...

Needless to say, I cancelled Spotify Family premium and went to Google Play Family plan. Great deal if you tell me.

[black6]

There is so much good CC music out there, I don't feel the need to pay for a music service. Amongst Soundcloud, the Free Music Archive, Bandcamp, and Jamendo there are lifetimes of new music available for enjoyment out in the Creative Commons. When I find artists I truly enjoy, I prefer to support them directly.

[Legogris]

I'm curious; what's the hostile subscription service experience you've encountered with Spotify?

[e40]

Here's mine, bullet 2.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109437

[xtracto]

See my previous comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19118498

That felt pretty hostile when it happened to me.

[neivin]

I canceled Netflix a few months ago. Their catalog is really garbage now.

Feels great flying the black flag again with Plex.

[praneshp]

> I canceled Netflix a few months ago. Their catalog is really garbage now.

weird, I just upp-ed the screen limit after 6 years because there are so many awesome new things that my wife and I want to watch independently.

[matwood]

> I canceled Netflix a few months ago. Their catalog is really garbage now.

I keep reading this and wonder how much TV watching do people do daily? Netflix already has more content than I will ever get to with just the back catalog of TV shows and originals. It does not even count movies.

[graeme]

Apple music is pretty good. Has basically everything I want, and you can add your own music via icloud too.

For movies, criterion collection is coming out with a streaming service, if that's your thing. I don't have netflix but I will have that.

[matwood]

The trick I use for AM is they have a single user deal $99/12 months. You can almost always find $100 iTunes gift cards for $80-$85 making your effective price $6-$7/month.

[graeme]

Good point. Where do you get them for $80?

If you can buy them in a place with good credit card rewards percentage on the gift card it's even lower.

[matwood]

You just have to keep an eye out. My sub renews over Christmas and I got one from PayPal for $80. I think last year Amazon had a lightening deal for $80 (may have been 2 $50 cards for $40 each). $85 is pretty easy to find though. I think PayPal just had a deal earlier this week.

[zamalek]

> It's because no one wants to take my money and provide the content I want without bundling it with drm, ads, dark patterns, insane region segmentation, and manipulative cross-sell tactics.

I'm not sure if they'd satisfy these requirements, but I generally open paid Hulu more than I do Netflix. Google Play Music seems to cover everything Spotify does and there is no free option (so there are never ads), but it's Google, so it could go the way of Reader at any point.

[donatj]

I mean they’re obviously tracking your every move but I’ve subscribed to Google Music for years and never had any problems. Use it every day.