Spotify Wants to Convert More Music Pirates

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Spotify wants to convert more pirates into paying customers? Good luck with that.

The popularity of music streaming services has grown explosively in recent years. There are many competing services around, but there's also a huge untapped market of people who pirate music. In the years to come Spotify hopes to convert a large chunk of the latter group into paying consumers.
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2001: "People still BUY music?"

2014: "People still PIRATE music?"

Seriously, it's basically cheap or free now.
 
Because they have sex with each other and don't eat enough citrus?
 
I'll confess to having a large library of MP3s that I didn't originally own. But, I signed up to Spotify Premium many many months ago and use it daily. So, I suppose it works for some.

I can stream, sync and store for offline play almost anything I can think of on almost any device I own.
 
I think the bottom line is Spotify is more convenient and easier to use/manage across multiple devices than MP3s. For both streaming and offline play. For most(I'm sure there are exceptions) it's a better experience than what you get when pirating. It's not just MP3's repackaged in DRM. It's what we've been telling RIAA they needed support for over a decade.

Main disadvantage to MP3s is they still don't have 100% of the music out there, but more often than not they have what I'm looking for, obscure or otherwise. Library is easily big enough to not turn me away.
 
Haven't pirated a MP3 for years, as there hasn't been anything new I wanted to listen to for years.

Guess that's one way solve the piracy problem :)
 
I used to pirate music like a fiend back around 2005-ish. I've had spotify premium for the past 3 years almost and now I can't live without it. It's just so easy.
 
Another thing helping is a lot of the old school pirates were poor students and young lower income people.

Now they (we) are hitting their prime in earnings and coming to the conclusion that 8-10 bucks a month is cheaper then pirating.

What the millenniums are doing I have no clue. I just know as I get older I want crap to work and be easy... willing to pay for it. I figure out technical problems all day, don't really want to do it at home so much anymore.
 
dandirk said:
Another thing helping is a lot of the old school pirates were poor students and young lower income people.

Now they (we) are hitting their prime in earnings and coming to the conclusion that 8-10 bucks a month is cheaper then pirating.

What the millenniums are doing I have no clue. I just know as I get older I want crap to work and be easy... willing to pay for it. I figure out technical problems all day, don't really want to do it at home so much anymore.
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WHAT?! I can't hear you!
Speak up, sonny!!
 
If the labels would stop doing exclusive deals and the few digital hold-outs would stop living in the past, that would kill a majority of the piracy.
 
The Donut said:
I'll confess to having a large library of MP3s that I didn't originally own. But, I signed up to Spotify Premium many many months ago and use it daily. So, I suppose it works for some.

I can stream, sync and store for offline play almost anything I can think of on almost any device I own.
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Exact same here. Why waste the time looking for music, when it's all at your fingertips with Spotify.

Love the service.
 
Google Music. Everything I want, total control, no limits, for less than the cost of an album every month. The only thing they could do better is stream lossless quality. Oh, and Metallica isn't on here. I guess Hetfield doesn't want my money. :(
 
Spotify is awesome. I used to listen to standard internet radio for a couple of years and I would still tend to pirate stuff when I wanted to listen off line or I wanted a whole album. With Spotify I would just click on the artist and listen to what they have.

Good stuff :D
 
Taco said:
I'm a recent convert to Spotify. So far I'm impressed.
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Same here. My issues with the music was always the delivery. I have no problem paying for a wide variety of music.

Now, with regards to Spotify, I pay $4.99 via student discount. I will *not* pay full price for their service until they fix an annoying bug that is well documented by their community. It's the randomization-repeat bug. If you have the app up long enough (about an hour or so), you'll start getting repeats on your playlist, despite having repeat turned off. Happens on all 6 systems I've tested (this is one of many bug posts: http://community.spotify.com/t5/Hel...nd/Shuffle-repeats-songs-too-often/td-p/22413 ). It makes the radio part of it practically unusable.

One person speculated that it could be they're replaying cheaper music to save money and that is why they haven't fixed it.
 
Have they changed the requiring of a Facebook account and so you still get ads paying for premium? Those two are deal killers for me like day one if still true.
 
TwiceOver said:
2001: "People still BUY music?"

2014: "People still PIRATE music?"

Seriously, it's basically cheap or free now.
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More importantly, it's on YouTube. Every device on earth has access to YouTube. If you know what you're doing, you can download high quality videos from YouTube and store it.
 
Am I the only one left on the planet who still buys CDs? :(

I like owning stuff that I can touch. I like ripping the disks into FLACs with the ability to recreate the music on any platform, at any quality, etc. It's amazing how cheap actual CDs are these days on Amazon. Full MP3 album - $15+ bucks. Oh you want the CD? $5.99 :p
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Have they changed the requiring of a Facebook account and so you still get ads paying for premium? Those two are deal killers for me like day one if still true.
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I last used Spotify a year ago (now use Google Music due to Chromecast) and even then I never needed a facebook account nor did I get any ads with premium.
 
I thought the whole argument was that the evil music companies wouldn't make the music available, so that was why they "copyright infringed". You mean it's now available in easily accessible and inexpensive formats, and people still pirate?!
 
Why pay for it when you can listen to Spotify for free? Maybe I just don't care enough about music, but their playlists on random are just fine by me.
 
People who use streaming services like Spotify don't really care about music. Real music fans keep a local and well-organized collection that is tuned to their tastes.

The only thing good about streaming services is convenience. Everything else is garbage. Low quality files, low-res cover art, improperly tagged albums, etc. And I don't give a rat's ass about the new Lana del Katy 50 Cent album.
 
Megalith said:
People who use streaming services like Spotify don't really care about music. Real music fans keep a local and well-organized collection that is tuned to their tastes.

The only thing good about streaming services is convenience. Everything else is garbage. Low quality files, low-res cover art, improperly tagged albums, etc. And I don't give a rat's ass about the new Lana del Katy 50 Cent album.
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It is almost impossible to discern between lossless and 320kbps. This sounds like another one of your famous "get off my lawn" posts.
 
xIronCrossx said:
It is almost impossible to discern between lossless and 320kbps. This sounds like another one of your famous "get off my lawn" posts.
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Why bother, it's not like he would actually ever admit to not being able to tell the difference. Audiophiles are some of the best types of consumers out there, self important and pound foolish.

Newsflash, you can't tell the difference. It's in your head.
 
Dekoth-E- said:
Have they changed the requiring of a Facebook account and so you still get ads paying for premium? Those two are deal killers for me like day one if still true.
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I believe the two are actually in a joint venture or related to each some how. You used to be able to make a Spotify account, but I believe that option is no longer available. But you can disable Spotify from putting stuff in your Facebook. I don't want any of my friends knowing I listened to a Barbara Striesand song :O
 
Megalith said:
People who use streaming services like Spotify don't really care about music. Real music fans keep a local and well-organized collection that is tuned to their tastes.

.
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Please. People that listen to music for the sake of the music do not focus on the reproduction accuracy. They simply want to hear the music. They might even sing along out of enjoyment *gasp*

That's like saying people that listen to music in the car don't care about music. People that only listen to live music will say the same thing about people like you who focus on the hardware.
 
TwiceOver said:
2001: "People still BUY music?"

2014: "People still PIRATE music?"

Seriously, it's basically cheap or free now.
Click to expand...

I agree... with all the excellent streaming services out there (I love me some Slacker) why pirate music? It's a waste of my time...
 
Spotify is the one and only music service I have ever paid actual money for, and it is well worth the cost.
 
westrock2000 said:
I You used to be able to make a Spotify account, but I believe that option is no longer available. But you can disable Spotify from putting stuff in your Facebook. I don't want any of my friends knowing I listened to a Barbara Striesand song :O
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This isn't at all accurate.
 
5loth said:
I last used Spotify a year ago (now use Google Music due to Chromecast) and even then I never needed a facebook account nor did I get any ads with premium.
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Perhaps I'll take a look at it then sometime. Iheatradio covers most of my streaming needs but every once in a while I would like offline available. But I'm flatly unwilling to create a facebook account for it was my early reservation.
 
Kongar said:
Am I the only one left on the planet who still buys CDs? :(
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I buy CD's, but almost 100% of the CDs I buy are local/unsigned bands. I buy vinyl more than CD's. I also subscribe to Google Music all access.
 
I'd be down, if I actually listened to real music.

Currently paying around 4$ a month for di.fm premium. Aaand, I stream it about 22 hours of the day.
 
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