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by vincentkriek 1268 days ago
I think this is true for the majority of people, and I think music streaming is the example of this. I know almost no people who still pirate music, everyone has spotify. The competition between services (tidal, deezer) seems to be fought over music quality and some minor exclusives but the majority of the music collection is shared over services.
2 comments

> some minor exclusives but the majority of the music collection is shared over services

Actually I had that impression some 7-8 years ago, but since then the experience on Spotify (France) continually deteriorated, with sometimes entire playlists (not even from a single artist, but e.g. one of my fav chiptune compilations) becoming entirely unplayable (greyed out) over night. I have the impression that this situation is getting more and more similar to the madness in video streaming. Every freaking time I want to watch a specific movie (vs just taking whatever they propose right now) I end up with zero hits on the streaming platforms in the house. (But in my family's defense, they only have amazon prime, netflix, and disney+... /s)

I don't participate in either of these shit-shows any longer. If this mode of operation of "one walled garden against the other" centering around exclusive content at the front of the distribution, with so much disregard for the long tail, is what streaming breeds, then streaming is no improvement over pirating. (and that doesn't even go into the economics of the system, i.e. who really makes money in it)

I don't have Spotify. And I never will. I don't like depending on subscription services. There are satisfactory alternatives (I find pre-compiled YouTube sets to work well) but having a local copy has always been a priority for me, and I don't see it changing any time soon.