Discussion: Torrenting music

[action9000]

From a consumer's point of view - does torrenting/pirating music make more sense than acquiring it legally?

My argument is, it depends on what you're using it for but there are cases where I would argue "yes".

I, for one, have a problem with streaming services: You don't actually get to hang on to any of the media. You just pay an access fee and play it over their network in realtime. You never get a copy of it.

I know this is a frivolous thing in many ways: Why would I CARE if I never got a copy? I can still consume it just as well.

Simple: Building a media collection.

I know it sounds silly but people have had movie, music, game and other collections for years. With a streaming service, this is simply impossible.

Why would I care?
So I can tailor my collection to suit whatever needs I have at the time. Also, collecting stuff is cool. It's personal. It's like a hobby.

I understand that many people sort their music library by Artist -> Album -> Song.
That's the way a CD gets ripped when you rip one yourself. That's how iTunes and similar stores are structured.

I find such a sorting method completely useless. I'd end up having 10 bajillion folders, each with half a dozen subfolders...ugh, no thanks!

Instead, I prefer to sort by major genre -> Subgenre -> Artist / Song

That way my music is always sorted by the MOOD that I want to express with my music, rather than a gigantic list of artists in alphabetical order where the next one probably has nothing to do with the previous one other than being spelled similarly.

You can see an example here. Look in the address bar at the top to see how I got there and you can see my folder structure:




That's why I care to have a personal music collection. That way I can tailor-fit playlists very easily by using a genre sort and grabbing files from a known library - I know what's there, I know what I CAN find and I build what I need.

That highlights the other main thing I like about having a music collection vs. a streaming service (other than the fact that I don't keep anything with a streaming service): I know what I have to work with. I know what I have and why I have it. It gives my collection something important: MEANING. Personality. An identity that it's mine.


What does this have to do with torrenting vs. buying music?
Simply - practicality. Yes, I torrent quite a lot of music. It's my preferred method of discovering new music - I'll find a song I like, torrent that new artist's discography and explore it. On occasion I'll buy a CD if I love an artist's direction enough but there's a simple fact to life:

Music collectors like myself end up with a LOT of music. I'd have to drop thousands of dollars a year on music in order to purchase a collection like this legally.

I know, I know, that's no excuse...but why not? What about music collecting makes it worth THOUSANDS of dollars per year? I don't spend that much on anything other than food and rent. Why does "music collection" make the cut?

Remember - I can get the same experience (almost) for the cost of a Spotify account. The DIFFERENCE in cost to a spotify account vs. buying all that music in album form is ABSOLUTELY ASTRONOMICAL. The difference in service quality, I'd argue, does NOT have that much financial worth.

Yes, I think owning a copy of the file on my computer should cost more than streaming access but, again, look at these numbers! I could easily toss a Spotify account into my budget, no worries. I don't because it's not quite as good of a sorting and music management system that I can get by torrenting music. It doesn't meet my needs quite as well. If I had to give up either Spotify or torrenting, I'd give up Spotify every time. It just doesn't suit my needs as well.

My argument isn't that Spotify isn't GOOD. I think it's awesome. My argument is that it doesn't suit my needs AS WELL as having a physical (well, software) collection on my hard drive and the cost of going the "physical" route is completely unreasonable. Spotify isn't AS AWESOME as having the files locally in my own file system managed the way I want to manage them.

Therefore, the best option for me? Torrenting. It's still a superior product to me than Spotify or any streaming service will ever be because:

- Torrenting gives me physical files which

- lets me manage my collection on my terms which gives me

- A feeling of personalizing my media collection with

- A cost that isn't astronomical (seriously! THOUSANDS per year to do this vs. the cost of Spotify? It's completely unreasonable!)

I wish there was a low-cost way to do what I'm doing that didn't require torrenting. I do. Torrenting is a little tricky sometimes and you can't always find what you want. I've also resorted to YouTube rips for unique stuff that won't ever appear in any collection elsewhere.

I really feel like there's a very real reason that, for some people, torrenting is still the only viable option. Streaming doesn't give you a collection to manage and buying albums and songs is prohibitively expensive, especially compared to said streaming services. You don't get THAT MUCH MORE service by downloading songs than you do by streaming it. Why is the cost literally THOUSANDS of TIMES more?

In response to that insane cost, I torrent.

There needs to be another way.


Thoughts?

[Nick22]

piracy- and torrenting IS Piracy- is illegal for good reason. when you torrent a song by say Beyonce,  she doesnt get paid.   if you bought one of her albums, she would get paid for that, in royalties. songs are intellectual property, as well. when you torrent, you are in essence stealing  from the artist or sports league - if you torrent a sporting event. if you like something so much, paying 20 or 50 bucks for watching it is a small price to pay.

[retrorobby]

piracy- and torrenting IS Piracy- is illegal for good reason. when you torrent a song by say Beyonce,  she doesnt get paid.   if you bought one of her albums, she would get paid for that, in royalties. songs are intellectual property, as well. when you torrent, you are in essence stealing  from the artist or sports league - if you torrent a sporting event. if you like something so much, paying 20 or 50 bucks for watching it is a small price to pay.

I agree with you Nick22. Couldn't of said it better myself.

[action9000]

I agree with you Nick22. Couldn't of said it better myself.

I do agree with both of you.

My question is, what is my incentive, as a consumer, to WANT to buy music legally? I've listed many reasons why it's NOT my best option. Other than the goodness of my heart, why is legally buying music my best option as a consumer? As far as I can tell, from a "getting the best product available" perspective, it's not.

I'll pay for a good product. The problem is that the best product available is the one offered by pirates. I don't think this should be the case but as a consumer I'm inclined to want the best available version of a product...or at least the version of the product that best suits my needs.

There's a dissonance here, between what's best for the market and what's best for the consumer.

Streaming services offer a LOT of products at a VERY low price but don't offer them in a format I want them in (physical files).

Song and album purchases offer what I want, but at a price THOUSANDS of times higher than streaming services. Why is this pricepoint SO much higher than streaming services? It just seems like, for what you get, the price difference is outrageous, to the point where I don't think it's right. I don't want to continue supporting this.

That only leaves me with the option of torrenting or not listening to music, which I'd argue is damn close to being denied a cultural right by modern society's standards. Who in modern society is denied the right to listen to music?? That's not a reasonable option either.

As someone who doesn't subscribe to a streaming service (because, again, no physical files), I feel like I have much less choice of music than those who do, yet if I were to buy discographies of even half a dozen artists that would cost me upwards of $1000. That's nowhere NEAR the ballpark of streaming service customers' costs (which puts you more into the $10 per month range). I get a LOT less content and have to spend A TON more money, just because I want a file on my hard drive. That's where I feel the injustice lies.

I don't consider that reasonable, therefore I resort to torrenting. It's not perfect but it seems like the most viable option at this moment.

I mean, one option I DO have is to subscribe to a streaming service and rig up some funky software audio capture setup to record the audio to a file.

I can't tell you how much of a pain that is. I have Software capable of doing that (Virtual Audio Cable) (and yes I own a full legal copy of it) and it requires booting up Windows 7 in Test Mode, which kills other drivers. It's a very time-consuming and frustrating task.

It also has another problem - Streaming services aren't lossless. In some cases, I'll cut or modify an audio file and re-save it in a lossy format (such as .ogg) to repurpose it. The systems I repurpose it into can't handle lossless files. Compressing an already compressed file results in significant quality loss. I want to start with lossless when possible, especially when doing this. I can't get lossless on Streaming services. I CAN get lossless on CDs...which are crazy expensive compared to streaming services, as previously stated.

Guess where else I can get lossless audio! Yaaarr.....


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Bottom line, my argument is this:

1) The price of CDs and lossless (or even lossy!!) audio files is THOUSANDS of times higher than the cost of streaming services.

2) The quality of the service is only marginally different (you get a physical file and MAYBE a marginal sound quality improvement).

Therefore:
Audio files ought NOT to cost THOUSANDS of times more than the streaming service.

[rhombus]

Putting the morality and legality aside for a moment for the sake of argument, I would agree that there is not much incentive as a consumer to use streaming services if one has particular tastes in how the files are organized or in desiring lossless data.  

Ultimately, with the rise of illegal downloading, what the studios are now turning to in many instances is a focus on discouraging piracy immediately after a product is produced, and then not dedicating much legal resources in stopping piracy once the estimated profit margin on the product has been obtained.  We see this in contemporary computer games, for example, where anti-piracy countermeasures are often put into the game's code in order to discourage piracy in the first few weeks of a game's launch (often making ripped games act buggy) and in many cases fake torrents are offered (which have viruses).  Thereafter, months later in some cases, the piracy is less of an issue to the studio as it has already made much of the profit it expected from the product in the first place.

In the case of music though I am not sure how the studios could incentivize legal activity in the particular case you describe.  If they were to make the actual music files much cheaper then the artists (well, in most cases the studios) would not be making a sufficient revenue from their work to make a healthy profit.  Additionally, the anti-piracy techniques used by game studios to delay piracy would not be applicable in the case of music, where the bulk of the profit does not necessarily come in the few weeks after an album is released.

I do have a question for everyone, however.  Where would you draw the line on what is piracy? The examples of torrenting music or a sporting event was mentioned earlier, but in the 1990s it was common in many households (mine included) to record sporting events, films, and other things from the television (which would technically be equivalent to ripping something from an online stream) and such actions were not deemed illegal (as per the Supreme Court decision, Sony Corp. of America v. Universal City Studios, Inc.) despite the fact that it undoubtedly led to many people not buying the shows or films (as argued in the Home Taping is Killing Music campaign).  So, would ripping a film or music from an online stream be considered piracy in your view?  Ultimately it leads to a similar result (obtaining music or a film that you didn't buy) but if it was not illegal back in the VCR and TV days then why should it be illegal in the days of video streaming?  I can see why torrenting would be different (that would be equivalent to obtaining bootlegged VHS tapes from a third party, if we continue to use the VCR analogy) but I think the ripping from an online stream should probably be in a different category.

Thoughts?

[action9000]

If they were to make the actual music files much cheaper then the artists (well, in most cases the studios) would not be making a sufficient revenue from their work to make a healthy profit.

I agree with you and I think this is ultimately the problem - There aren't any directions the content creators / studios can go with it in order to keep digital download or CD prices competitive with streaming services.

There's much less demand for physical media and audio files now than there used to be, with the rise of very good streaming services. Therefore it appears services that offer audio files are going to become more and more niche as time goes on.

They're not going to get cheaper, or better, or more reasonable. They're going to become fewer, have smaller libraries and perhaps even eventually get phased out (or at least end up in the proverbial alleyways of the internet, rather than front pages of major corporate websites).

What does this mean? As time goes on, piracy will become a better and better way to obtain audio files as legitimate purchases and availability of audio files decreases. I think we're at that point right now, where piracy has almost become the most practical way to get audio files on to your computer.

I don't see that changing. Ever. And it sucks. I want to do things properly but it's remarkably unpractical, even today. It's only going to get worse as fewer and fewer people own desktops and migrate to smaller, more portable devices and the Internet of Things grows and matures.

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Here's a million dollar question. I know it's not viable right now because of how music licencing works but here's a tentative proposition on an alternative system:

What if, in the future, we replaced music streaming and music purchase services as we know them with a universal music service or database? This system would be run by the government and funded with tax dollars. Everyone would pay into this. Contributing artists would receive a cut based on number of plays or some other factors. Artists could submit their music to this master system that they knew EVERYONE had unlimited access to.

This system is based on two assumptions:

1) Everyone in a society listens to at least some music, therefore it seems reasonable to make this a taxable civil service, no different than libraries or public radio. I'll bet more people listen to music annually than go to a library annually. This, at least on the surface, seems reasonable.

2) Anyone could submit anything they deem "music" into the system. The government could not censor material going into the system. We would need things like daily upload limits to protect system stability.

Everyone would have unlimited access and everyone who has their content enjoyed would be compensated at a rate related to how much of a contribution their work had in society and culture.

Because everyone in the country would have free unlimited access (other than taxes, of course), there would be no reason to limit downloads to personal devices or PCs. Just allow everyone to download whatever they want from the system or stream it if they choose. The concept of licensing would be obsolete: Every artist's work would be freely available for everyone to use. Copying and whatnot would no longer be a legal problem or a financial threat to the artist. and they would be paid for their work as appropriate.

The details of what "paid appropriately" still need to be worked out but suffice to say such a calculation is probably doable. Downloads could be worth more than "plays" in order to balance out the fact that downloads will have offline plays that aren't counted...blah blah blah, there's a way payment could be sorted out if enough thought was given to it, I'm confident.


Naturally there would still be problems of artists using other artists' work and uploading it as their own, etc. There would be very strict paper trails kept when anything was uploaded and hefty penalties applied to rulebreakers in order to discourage this behaviour. As long as rules are written strictly enough ("fair use" isn't black-and-white enough. We need definitions of everything for this to work) it would be manageable.


Ideally such a system wouldn't be country-wide but worldwide, tearing down issues regarding licencing completely. The system would need to be seamless across countries, with NO different rules on a per-country basis. Consistency is absolutely key here.

Such a system would highlight music (could theoretically be done with films too) as a key element of our CULTURE and would allow artists to remain getting paid for their work. It makes music less of a commodity and more of a cultural presence that every human on Earth has the right to.

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Admittedly, I literally just thought of this at this moment while writing this and there are likely plenty of problems. I would like to toss it out there to see what people have to say though.