At this point Spotify and AppleMusic have made it unnecessary for people to pay for music over a monthly subscription. Like most others fields, entertainers and producers need to adapt to the change/progress over trying to fight it.
Does it really? It's not really true if you (1) are into lossless or high quality formats, (2) don't want to pay $10 a month when you can pay ~$50 a year for a VPN and get literally any content you want, (3) you don't like having your personal tastes tracked, (4) you like your big ol' 160 GB iPod classic. None of this is a moral justification, but pirating is a common practice because it does have considerable advantages compared to streaming services.
Another thing to consider with that, coming from someone who has a Google Play subscription, is that the bandwidth use can be murder on a cellular plan. It's a problematic endeavor when you have a limit amount of space on the phone, a wide taste in music. and a small amount of data available to you. That's without considering having spotty coverage in some areas, which can also be a plague for some people. So, in many cases, downloading your music onto an external hard drive while at a friends place is more suitable for some people versus being subscribed to a service that they might only get a limited use out of it.
In general, the streaming capabilities of phones suits a lot of people. But there are going to be those edge cases where someone lives between two hills in the middle of nowhere, leaving them to try and stream with either spotty cell service or over the phone lines. If there can be a method to help support those people as well, I'd be all for it.
This beautiful digital age certainly has allowed a lot more discovery of music and exposure to bands of all shapes and sizes.
I think what you've said certainly holds true for bigger artists, because along with streaming royalties they can earn a lot of cash through live concerts / merchandise sales, so a few (million) people pirating their albums doesn't mean they need to find a day job.
But, at the least we should all try to support the little guys and gals who we love, but don't have the fan-base of millions of people. These artists would seriously struggle if they relied on streaming royalties alone.
At this point Spotify and AppleMusic have made it unnecessary for people to pay for music over a monthly subscription. Like most others fields, entertainers and producers need to adapt to the change/progress over trying to fight it.
Does it really? It's not really true if you (1) are into lossless or high quality formats, (2) don't want to pay $10 a month when you can pay ~$50 a year for a VPN and get literally any content you want, (3) you don't like having your personal tastes tracked, (4) you like your big ol' 160 GB iPod classic. None of this is a moral justification, but pirating is a common practice because it does have considerable advantages compared to streaming services.
Another thing to consider with that, coming from someone who has a Google Play subscription, is that the bandwidth use can be murder on a cellular plan. It's a problematic endeavor when you have a limit amount of space on the phone, a wide taste in music. and a small amount of data available to you. That's without considering having spotty coverage in some areas, which can also be a plague for some people. So, in many cases, downloading your music onto an external hard drive while at a friends place is more suitable for some people versus being subscribed to a service that they might only get a limited use out of it.
In general, the streaming capabilities of phones suits a lot of people. But there are going to be those edge cases where someone lives between two hills in the middle of nowhere, leaving them to try and stream with either spotty cell service or over the phone lines. If there can be a method to help support those people as well, I'd be all for it.
This beautiful digital age certainly has allowed a lot more discovery of music and exposure to bands of all shapes and sizes.
I think what you've said certainly holds true for bigger artists, because along with streaming royalties they can earn a lot of cash through live concerts / merchandise sales, so a few (million) people pirating their albums doesn't mean they need to find a day job.
But, at the least we should all try to support the little guys and gals who we love, but don't have the fan-base of millions of people. These artists would seriously struggle if they relied on streaming royalties alone.