DO WHAT YOU WANT CAUSE A PIRATE IS FREE! YOU ARE A PIRATE!

Welcome back 🏴‍☠️🦜

...funnily enough, it may actually be better for musicians if people left spotify, considering the absolute pennies they pay per stream.

as an independent artist I just wanna add: the best thing you can do to support artists and bands is to buy directly / on bandcamp. spotify pays shit to artists, you need millions of listeners to get any meaningful amount of cash

of course that isn’t a sustainable option if you listen to a lot of different music. so piracy is an option that I wouldn’t mind. hell, if you like my stuff and just write to me I’ll send you mp3s for free

You should already be doing that anyways with the phantom artists scandal, thousands of fake artists made with AI so Spotify doesn't have to pay real people.

Should never have left it behind to be honest.

You aren't wrong, it is the government's ham fisted and poorly thought out legislation... I fact the last government's that this one inexplicably pushed on with despite it not being anything like a priority for the electorate. I'm frankly shocked at how many unforced errors this government is making given how "not being as rubbish as the last lot" was not a high bar to clear.

I know bandcamp has its issues but I check there first for good flacs, I'll even settle for mp3s. I look REALLY hard. Not there? Ahoy.

Edit: Other places I try to buy first to support artists:

• https://www.junodownload.com/
• https://us.7digital.com/

Don't threaten, just do it!

I don't get why people are so stubborn to move away from corporate products.

Don't threaten, just do it. Enshittification must end.

The only reason we have mainstream paid video streaming now is because early Netflix was genuinely better than dodgy, pop-up riddled mirrors on movie4k.to. The convenience was well worth 8 bucks a month. Same for Spotify.

Fast forward 10 years and Spotify wants me to pay 15 €, scan my face and listen to forced podcast ads AND pay extra for paywalled audiobooks that used to be free? Meet my good old friend youtube-downloader, then.

I already moved to piracy for music because these days Spotify isn't even giving the normal shuffle option for free users

Yeah I know it's cheap but I'm a student so..

I mean, fuck Spotify and all that, but this one is really the UK government's doing.

And soon, this shit will come to every country. They're all drafting laws to mandate real age verification for adult content. The UK is just the first to implement it.

Age verification is a great success I see. I feel so much safer now with this shit in place so kids can't watch porn...

what are "spotify fans"? Spotify paid 150k $ for Trump's inauguration party, f them. They do not deserve my money

It's a load of bullshit, for a start the ISP has my details and should be able to attest my connection is rented by someone of legal age and it should be up to me what I let my children (assuming I have any) see and not see on that connection. I already had to click the "yes just give me the porn damn it" agreement on my mobile phone which was less likely to be randomly shared unmonitored and now this overbearing crap. I'll just avoid sites and services that require this.

Its as if law makers don't learn from history. Do they not know what happened in the 90s and early 2000s when stores wouldn't sell M rated video games or CDs with mature content labels? We found ways to get around that. We would go to stores that didn't check or care, got our older sibling or friend to buy it for us. We burned copies of our friends CDs, or downloaded stuff off line with Limewire and Napster.

Same shit when there was prohibition in the US. People drove cars across the great lakes to bring alcohol into the US. People brewed there own spirits in bathtubs with radiator coils.

If people want to anomalously watch their favorite weird kinky shit or listing to music they like, they're going to find a way. And, if the easiest way to do that is through piracy, that is what they are going to do.

Latest Spotify crackdowns on revanced apps and a very recent GrayJay plugin issues made me look into Spotify cracking scene. I found an app that works. But for how long?

You're way better off with your own music collection. That is what I have. I use Tauon music box it handles large playlists well.

Considering how much Spotify pays artists per listens, piracy is barely any different in that regard.

The streaming services are run by shithead C-suites who think last quarter is the way it's always been. They forget the only reason most of us use their services is someone more visionary than them made it more convenient than piracy half a generation ago. Let's remind them there's an alternative.

If I am paying for my account personally, with a card in my name, what more do they need?

There are fans of Spotify?

tf is spotify "fans"? more like spotify "users"

ah from shady porn sites, like spotify and wikipedia. definitely protect kids from porn there. /s

This age-verification bullshit is a fine example of how governments represent their rulers, not their citizens.

I don't mind giving my date of birth to all the services I already pay for with credit card but face scanning? That's just creepy. Fuck off.

Let this be a reminder to never turn away from piracy. It needs to constantly be in the background and if any company gets like they always do, then it comes back out. But if we let the knowledge fade away then it's impossible to rebuild it.

what's even the point of age gating "explicit" music?

"oh no! "Speak To Me" by Pink Floyd has the fuck word in it! can't let my kids hear it!"

Just a friendly reminder that the OSA was never about safeguarding kids from seeing porn.

Are the government seriously worried about a child being exposed to Break Stuff or So What on Spotify?

Already did this ages ago. Been building a collection for decades now. I'm pushing about 10k albums on the NAS. Haven't had spotify since like 2018

I mean, the Spotify CEO invests in AI weaponry being used to murder kids in Gaza so the morally correct thing to do would be to leave Spotify over that.

A VPN is a must if you wanna go down this route

Soulseek (and I recommend the Nicotine+ client over the official one) is a fantastic source for all music in all formats, and particularly obscure off-label shit you won't get anywhere else. You'll even have some success finding audiobooks there, although this is very hit-and-miss. I wish audiobook pirates would use it more heavily. It's P2P, like Napster used to be. You'll have to share something or you'll get auto-ignored by most users.

RuTracker is a great non-private/non-ratio-monitoring torrent site for music (does require a free account though). I've never had a single torrent from there that wasn't seemingly seeded by a Godzilla's dick. Obviously it's in Russian, but there's really no difficulty navigating around. The only thing you might struggle with is signing up for an account, but just have your favourite translation tool open in another tab 👍

If you don't mind slow download speeds (from the likes of RapidGator), I enjoy Exystence. It's a blog that shares link to the latest albums and offers both lossy and lossless versions. Nice RSS subscription to have.

If you do find yourself using RapidGator a lot, don't waste money buying a sub directly from them, it's insanely pricey. Instead, get a reseller like Real Debrid, which costs like 10% as much and also covers you for about two-dozen other file hosters. I highly recommend putting as much distance between your credit card and the company as possible, just for safety reasons. Using PaySafeCard is fine, as Real Debrid will never see your details in that case. I don't have any specific reason to be weary of them, I just don't trust random/small/hitherto unheard of companies as a rule.

just buy releases from bands on Bandcamp