[lawl]

Spotify randomly deleted my offline library on android. Of course when I was traveling and didn't have a data plan. Canceled my premium subscription a month ago or so. This happened multiple times to me.

Yup I'm at the point again where maintaining my own library is more convinient again. It's exactly the DRM shit I won't put up with. Also spotify, rdio etc. Are exactly the same price with the same restrictions per plan (in .ch at least). Price cartel, oligopoly?

[Fuxy]

I use Spotily for streaming however I don't use it to create a offline library exactly for this DRM shit.

I'd rather outright buy the songs somewhere else and have them backed up on another computer as well with btsync just in case these DRM apps try to pull some crap.

[krisgenre]

I used to buy songs from an online store ( Flyte by Flipkart.com, which later was shutdown ) and upload it to Ubuntu One ( which too is going to be shutdown ).

The above scenario worked perfectly for me. I could access all my music anytime and from any device but unfortunately looks it didn't work out for the vendors :)

[goldfeld]

I'm looking into this (again! I used to buy from 7digital but it seems they're no longer in the same business model) after having used Rdio for quite some time, because I just hate not being able to play songs when I most want to because I don't have internet or it's flaky or I'm at another machine.

From a quick research it seemed that Amazon MP3 was DRM-free.. not that I trust them too much or would want to support Amazon, but it seemed the only option with a good catalogue.

[jasomill]

AFAIK, iTunes has a larger selection of DRM-free music than Amazon. And if you don't want to use Amazon or iTunes, I was under the impression that essentially all pay by the song / album services are DRM-free, and have been since shortly after iTunes dropped music DRM.

[ing33k]

yeah, this still appears to an unsolved problem, even the mighty flipkart were not able to sort out the licenses properly.

I think saavn pro might be an option.

http://www.saavn.com/pro/

[krisgenre]

Saavn pro is mobile only :(. I like their pricing though, paying Rs 5 as when you want for a day is an excellent way to let people try it out.

[cuu508]

I use an old Android phone as music player when out. It is on flight mode so battery lasts forever, the system doesn't have random sync hiccups and Spotify has not lost offline library so far. It only goes out of flight mode when I want to sync a new playlist. Works OK this way. Definitely more convenient than juggling a collection of MP3s: want to go on a ride/run, find a workout playlist, mark it as offline, go into flight mode, ready.

[duiker101]

Spotify did the same to me, multiple times. Last time yesterday when my pc randomly lost permissions for offline storage.

But that is not an excuse. The music industry in trying to provide alternative ways, and I extremely appreciate it and think that we need to be supportive. Only by supporting this changes we will ever see any improvements, we need to find a middleground that can satisfy both parties. Spotify offers a great service on a great platform. It can have his hippicus but that can happen with everything. What would happen if the player app you are using to play your offline library breaks and you have no data?

[chao-]

"What would happen if the player app you are using to play your offline library breaks and you have no data?"

A traditional media player breaking almost never touches its "offline library".

WMP, Clementine, Foobar2000, Amarok, MPD, Audacious, so on and so forth. Hell you can use VLC as a music player if you wanted to. What happens to your songs if any of these crashes? What happens to the data if you delete the entire application from your computer? Nothing. The data is still there. The application is separate from the data it plays.

Now if the OS has issues, or the hard drive, or a few other things: Your data might be lost, but that is almost never the fault of the "player app".

[lawl]

Usually the media players I use, they uhm play media. Like in open(...,'r'). And should it break my library then I have backups, because there is no DRM with the only usecase of trying to annoy me.

So no, I don't support them. I use Steam though, I think they got DRM right for the most part. I'd prefer no DRM, really. But with Steam I don't notice any DRM. That's good enough for me. I only use it in online mode though.

[miah_]

gaben has said numerous times that he cares more about cheaters than pirates. Steam implements anti-cheating technology, but afaict many games don't include DRM unless the publisher demands it.

[RobAley]

It's absolutely the opposite. We need not to be supportive. The industry has demonstrated time and time again it is more than happy with the status quo, and the only reason it's even gone as far as Spotify and co is that people voted with their feet/cash. Be supportive of their efforts, and they'll take that as a sign to stop right there. Sticks, not carrots.

[sschalk]

On the contrary. As long as something like the "Music Industry" exists, there seems to be too much money going into the wrong hands (e.g., people apart from artists & sound engineers).

[Tyrannosaurs]

But this is a throwing the baby out with the bath water scenario. Here no-one, even the deserving, gets any money.

While we'd all like a situation where those who've added most value get the lions share of the reward, this solution takes us from them getting a small percentage to them getting nothing. That seems to me to be worse rather than better.