Visits to music piracy websites went up more than 13 percent last year, a new report says. The majority of those visits were to sites that allow users to download the audio from YouTube URLs.
To be fair we’ve never had more choice, and music has almost never been more affordable. We used to buy singles for like $10+. Albums for $20+. Now there are several competing streaming services where we can listen to almost unlimited music each month for less than the cost of one album. Hell, YouTube Premium includes unlimited music steaming for free. Being an independent artist has never been easier, and you can find and pay for any music you like directly with millions of your favourite artists all over the world. The industry used to be entirely controlled by large labels. Honestly, I consider the industry far healthier than it used to be.
I pirate movies and shows because they refuse to create a Spotify-like service. Content is fragmented across a dozen services, they’re infested with ads, content quality keeps declining, the interfaces suck, and prices are outpacing inflation. I pay for Spotify because it’s still a good service for a reasonable price.
