Illegal downloads - do you still do it?

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I haven't listened to a leak in fucking years. Elicits nothing more than a shrug from me. You only have to wait like a week and then you have a good version of it.

Financial stability has also been a big factor for me, I'm earning more money now than I ever have so I feel I have an obligation to buy, because I have the money to do so.

But I still buy CDs and I always, always will. For me a huge part of an album is sitting down with the booklet and lyrics.
 
I gave up on physical media a while ago. No CD's, DVD's or BD's. I don't miss the booklets, and don't get nostalgic about discs, or feel the need to hold them in my hand. Total respect for people who do though, it's just not a big deal to me.

And yeah, it's amazing how our ethics and concern for artist's rights increases as our disposable income does. ;)
 
i forgot that i did download the life of pablo when it first came out because it was tidal exclusive. fuck that. i listen to it legally through google now, but i didn't feel a shred of hesitation or remorse over torrenting that one early.
 
I don't deprive myself of hearing music. If an album isn't on any of the major streaming services (I pay for Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play w/ YouTube Red), I download the album. If I were in the music industry, I would make these streaming services a priority and not expect anyone to pay for something they can't listen to a sample of. Times have changed.

These days, if I love an album, I buy a copy of it on vinyl and display it proudly. Then I look for any merch options and buy tickets to the artist's show when they come through LA. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on music every year, more than any other medium, and I don't feel any guilt for supplementing my listening experience with an illegal download once every couple of months.
 
And yeah, it's amazing how our ethics and concern for artist's rights increases as our disposable income does. ;)



That's the truth for me too. I mostly use Amazon music. It's free with prime membership, which we use a ton and it has the entire u2 catalog and even the remastered deluxe editions. I can download as much as my phone can hold and that's pretty much the only way I listen to music. I still buy CDs because of my commute but it has been a while. Maybe SOI I'm not sure.

I was a big limewire guy back in college but stopped when I lost free internet access. My computer situation is terrible so I couldn't download or stream even if I wanted to so I'm totally legal now. I do still have tons of those old limewire songs on my 15 year old HP laptop but I have purchased the stuff I really like or I listen on Amazon music or spotify. We listen to music constantly at work so have rediscovered Pandora. I find myself switching between platforms just for variety.
 
I don't deprive myself of hearing music. If an album isn't on any of the major streaming services (I pay for Spotify, Apple Music and Google Play w/ YouTube Red), I download the album. If I were in the music industry, I would make these streaming services a priority and not expect anyone to pay for something they can't listen to a sample of. Times have changed.

These days, if I love an album, I buy a copy of it on vinyl and display it proudly. Then I look for any merch options and buy tickets to the artist's show when they come through LA. I spend a ridiculous amount of money on music every year, more than any other medium, and I don't feel any guilt for supplementing my listening experience with an illegal download once every couple of months.

With regard to spending money on music I'm your polar opposite. I almost never go to shows or buy shirts or things like that. But over the last year I've probably bought 30 albums on vinyl and another 30 on disc. Either way it happens, it makes me happy when artists get supported!
 
I basically downloaded everything I ever liked with my collection consisting of MP3 versions and focused almost entirely on studio albums. Singles artists would have hits compilations and some artists would have a "Z - Artist Name" folder where I'd put non-album singles and the like. The collection is about 50,000 songs.

In addition, there's a good chunk of stuff I also have in Hi-Res along with stuff I only have in either Hi-Res or a CD FLAC rip. My Sony speaker system (and some other things I own) can play 24 Bit Audio and the like although I've had a hi-res player on order for two years (a Geek Wave from a big IndieGoGo fundraiser - should finally be in production this summer).

In addition to all that, I have a lot of the Whitburn Project MP3s which is where you can hear like all 300 hit songs from 1955 or whatever...it's named after Joel Whitburn and his invaluable Hits books that he did focused on the Billboard charts and the like. Most of this stuff can really only be found on SoulSeek nowadays and obviously it's thousands of extra songs that I kind of consider a side collection. Love delving back into music history.

In addition, probably about 150 CDs of stuff I still love including many that were packaged with recent vinyls. My closet probably includes the same number - all a different range of embarassing for me from between the ages of about 10 and 16.

Started collecting Vinyl and Tapes a few years back. Probably about 350 vinyl piecse (at least) and maybe 150 tapes. Gave up the hobby recently due to a potential job change, space issues and cost...




Anyway, this all brings me to now and my plan is to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited soon since I'm a Prime member and it's like six bucks a month with the yearly price ($79).. From there, I'll put the last couple years of music that I liked but didn't bother downloading as I'm basically over it. From now on, the rest of my additions to my library will just be a big playlist on Amazon and that will basically be the end of illegal downloading.

In a lot of ways, it's a big plus how things have progressed to something so minimalistic. No trying to download unwieldy Hi-Res albums from websites that crash out hours into the download. No more washing used vinyl. No more organizing MP3s, etc. From here on out, my library will be extremely easy to keep track of and organize. Like something? Add it to my "Library" playlist on Amazon and get on with my life. Kind of a relief and at the same time I'll have this awesome physical library and the aforementioned offline stuff to keep me company.

So, to answer the question, there really isn't much need anymore and, likewise, P2P and torrenting has taking a huge collapse with the rise of On Demand Streaming for Music and Video. It's easier, there's lots there to consume, etc. Honestly, aside from the physical collection I have, I am rather envious of the younger generation. They can just sign up for Spotify when they're like 14 and just keep their favorites in playlists and get on with their life. The cosmic jukebox has arrived, I guess.
 
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i forgot that i did download the life of pablo when it first came out because it was tidal exclusive. fuck that. i listen to it legally through google now, but i didn't feel a shred of hesitation or remorse over torrenting that one early.

Basically, the last recent album I downloaded and for the same reason. Kind of can't sit out the latest work from a genius especially when the launch is always big news in the industry.

Ended up sitting on Lemonade for what seemed like a year though and was not impressed. :lol:
 
I gave up on physical media a while ago. No CD's, DVD's or BD's. I don't miss the booklets, and don't get nostalgic about discs, or feel the need to hold them in my hand. Total respect for people who do though, it's just not a big deal to me.

Non-analog formats just don't have much appeal to most people, either as a nostalgia fetish or experience, etc. I'm basically in the same boat with regards to film stuff...it was basically a bigger no-brainer to just stop buying shows or movies years back when Netflix had like a 10,000 titles streaming library. By that point, everyone and their mother knew this was the new normal. And if you're a film buff like me, you quickly realize that between just like three streaming services there's hundreds of titles worth viewing so you don't really need access to MORE streaming services. That might change quite a bit in the future as Netflix keeps paring down its catalog and turning itself into another HBO while the film industry is already trying to keep newer titles off those services longer...

We use KODi on our NvidiaShield to access Tv Shows that aren't on Hulu, Netflix or Amazon and we also have a friend's HBO account. So no real need for torrents. We only download movies around Oscar season...practically every indie, documentary or foreign feature that comes out in a given year that makes it onto my annual text files makes their way to either Amazon or Netflix within a year, so there's basically no point in downloading most films because they'll be on a streaming service inevitably, and usually, quite soon after theatrical release. Like who needs to watch some Documentary that isn't streaming when you've got 100 worthwhile ones that already are?
 
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Non-analog formats just don't have much appeal to most people, either as a nostalgia fetish or experience, etc. I'm basically in the same boat with regards to film stuff...it was basically a bigger no-brainer to just stop buying shows or movies years back when Netflix had like a 10,000 titles streaming library. By that point, everyone and their mother knew this was the new normal. And if you're a film buff like me, you quickly realize that between just like three streaming services there's hundreds of titles worth viewing so you don't really need access to MORE streaming services. That might change quite a bit in the future as Netflix keeps paring down its catalog and turning itself into another HBO while the film industry is already trying to keep newer titles off those services longer...

We use KODi on our NvidiaShield to access Tv Shows that aren't on Hulu, Netflix or Amazon and we also have a friend's HBO account. So no real need for torrents. We only download movies around Oscar season...practically every indie, documentary or foreign feature that comes out in a given year that makes it onto my annual text files makes their way to either Amazon or Netflix within a year, so there's basically no point in downloading most films because they'll be on a streaming service inevitably, and usually, quite soon after theatrical release. Like who needs to watch some Documentary that isn't streaming when you've got 100 worthwhile ones that already are?

I'm not a big movie watcher, butI did give my parents most of my DVDs recently when I upgraded nearly all the films to VUDU (and, to a lesser extent, as of now, the TV shows to Amazon). I kept the few Blu Rays I have and the DVDs for stuff like concerts and stuff, but am pretty happy that I'm starting to wade into buying the streaming rights to watching things. Overall, I think that actually makes me watch more things on my TV than I would if the physical product was sitting right there.

Interesting points re: your music collection too. Truth be told, I still enjoy actually downloading the songs just so I always have access to them and all the other things mentioned here. The other part of why I can't really fully integrate my playlists and such with Spotify is because of the rights issue. Even if I can still ultimately download or rip whatever, it still makes me wonder if this stuff can go away once the artists goes exclusive elsewhere, takes certain records off the streaming service, and so on.
 
I'm not a big movie watcher, butI did give my parents most of my DVDs recently when I upgraded nearly all the films to VUDU (and, to a lesser extent, as of now, the TV shows to Amazon). I kept the few Blu Rays I have and the DVDs for stuff like concerts and stuff, but am pretty happy that I'm starting to wade into buying the streaming rights to watching things. Overall, I think that actually makes me watch more things on my TV than I would if the physical product was sitting right there.



Interesting points re: your music collection too. Truth be told, I still enjoy actually downloading the songs just so I always have access to them and all the other things mentioned here. The other part of why I can't really fully integrate my playlists and such with Spotify is because of the rights issue. Even if I can still ultimately download or rip whatever, it still makes me wonder if this stuff can go away once the artists goes exclusive elsewhere, takes certain records off the streaming service, and so on.



For that reason, I'd recommend Apple Music or Google Play Music over Spotify since you can upload your entire music collection.
 
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Anyway, this all brings me to now and my plan is to subscribe to Amazon Music Unlimited soon since I'm a Prime member and it's like six bucks a month with the yearly price ($79).. From there, I'll put the last couple years of music that I liked but didn't bother downloading as I'm basically over it. From now on, the rest of my additions to my library will just be a big playlist on Amazon and that will basically be the end of illegal downloading.


Are there many things you find unavailable with unlimited?
 
For that reason, I'd recommend Apple Music or Google Play Music over Spotify since you can upload your entire music collection.

I have thought about those options before, or even Microsoft OneDrive since I got the free storage with my Microsoft 365 subscription. So I might look at all those a bit more closely here in the near future...
 
I have thought about those options before, or even Microsoft OneDrive since I got the free storage with my Microsoft 365 subscription. So I might look at all those a bit more closely here in the near future...



It's really worth it and both are great experiences. With updates to Apple Music I'd probably say I prefer it. Plus I prefer iOS over android but they're pretty close.
 
Are there many things you find unavailable with unlimited?

It supposedly is on par with the other services in terms of what's on there....obviously, the "free" music service that comes with Amazon Prime is just kind of random in what it has...

I haven't subscribed yet for a couple of reasons. For one, I took Spotify up on there "three months for .99 cents" offer and listened to offline stuff on my tablet during my commutes (I don't own a smartphone). Now I'm basically finishing up the small portion of my MP3 library that I had never listened to (Billboard's Top 100 Hits from every year) via my iPod.

After that, I expect to be an Amazon Music Unlimited subscriber for as long as possible. And really, I can't fucking wait to catch up on a lot of great music that I've had bookmarked for the past couple years and haven't caught up with (although I did a major binge of the Best of 2016 via Spotify towards the end of last year).

As far as worries about stuff leaving, the easiest solution is just to have a text file of your Playlisted streaming library. So I can then basically compare it whenever I need to and see if anything has left Amazon Music or have a backup in case it all goes away. Kind of a nice irony that the most recent section of my music library's hard drive space footprint will basically consist of just one text file. :up:
 
I've been on iTunes Match since day one, and never had a problem with it replacing anything.

It doesn't replace tracks in your iTunes library unless you deliberately delete and redownload manually.



Hmm, I don't know what happened with me. I signed up right when it came out and it made a huge mess of my bootleg collection. I actually ended up restoring from a back up. I definitely didn't delete and re-download, it just replaced tracks seemingly at random.
 
Hmm, I don't know what happened with me. I signed up right when it came out and it made a huge mess of my bootleg collection. I actually ended up restoring from a back up. I definitely didn't delete and re-download, it just replaced tracks seemingly at random.



There used to be a bug where it would replace your live tracks with studio versions. It's been fixed for a while now.
 
My lone complaint with my current music situation is that there are a lot of things that I had once purchased with an old iTunes account, back when iTunes was new, that I can't get at because it's DRM protected, and I refuse to purchase something to strip the DRM and the free options I've tried all pretty much stink.
 
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