I bought an album off iTunes last year in September. I made the mistake of joining Apple Music and it completely fucked my offline music library. So I had to revert to a backup prior to September.
Went back to download that album and was told I couldn’t because it’s no longer available in my region.
It’s okay to buy it but you can somehow lose access to it because rights expired that had no bearing on you.
It’s fucking stupid and they wonder why people pirate when they pull shit like this.
I have the opposite experience. I have a heap of MP3s and flacs and those live on some hard drives.
Apple Music was like “wanna twy?” And I was like “aite sure”. I love having lossless of basically everything when I’m not at home, and iOS doesn’t touch my at-home collection.
I guess the problem is buying DRM music. I never trusted any of that.
This youtube link contains a tracking code ?si=… Remember to remove it next time.
Quick guide that’s been shared around online lately for those unsure what this is:
Nice link you have there as an example :)
You know the rules and so do I
It’s pretty dumb when record companies limit distribution by region like this.
It’s totally dumb because it’s not about getting a good deal for consumers or artists, purely about rights-holders maximising revenue. If they can’t negotiate a good enough deal in a region they’ll simply not allow it to be streamed. This is what happens when they separate the cultural value of “content” from the monetary value of it, the perceived desirability. Viewers and listeners want a good show to watch or album to hear, rights-holders simply want to get a good deal, regardless of what the stuff it.
It’s as if they’re asking to be pirated.
they’re asking for you to hand over your wallet, repeatedly
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/7CDKvdlD6uQ?si=5AQ8Z5TbLTdUwCf1
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Most of my music is “pirated” because you can’t find it on any streaming platform, it’s usually a YT download, often for game OSTs (often ones I own a copy of), and offline play allows stuff like Music Speed Changer to change the pitch and speed of the music!
My only reason besides stuff being free is that I want my music library offline. There are some services like Bandcamp that offer it, but it would not cover a meaningful percentage of all my library. Not gonna buy and rip CDs myself as well
Whenever I release music myself, I actively block it in Russia, because they relentlessly steal my trance / freeform releases and upload them in warez sites.
Of course geoblocking can be circumvented by a determined pirate but it helps to not be on their radar in first place as a lesser known artist.
As an example, once I released a freeform album. Freeform is a very niche, small scene. It was on Russian forums within a couple of days. Fortunately one of my fans notified me, I had a Russian friend contact the site on my behalf to explain that I’m a poor struggling artist, and they’re literally taking money out of my pocket; to my surprise they agreed to take the links down.