this post was submitted on 27 May 2026
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Please stop using Spotify. I pirate all of my music, and you should, too!
Buddy, no.
The best things you can do for artists are, in descending order:
that last on ahhhh hahaha
"i'm supporting the artists", you say, as you bankroll the AI enshittification of a tech company which was literally founded on profiting from pirated music, and gives artists pennies on the dollar.
cope harder. pirating everything and going to gigs is the most ethical approach in our era and I will die on that hill. buy physical media if you care that much.
No, I’m paying artists directly. When I go to a show, if I get the chance to meet the performers, I palm them fifty bucks.
I buy physical media. I buy downloads from their stores.
I’m deeply confused how you think I’m supporting Spotify. That’s only immediately above pirating stuff, and that’s only just barely above punching the bassist and stealing their shit.
I think you may want to pass your eyes over my comment again so that you can understand what it means.
Although I think if I punched Kid Rock and stole his microphone, I’d be given a Nobel Peace Prize in music.
woaw you are super moral and awesome dude, good for you! I'm just hating on spotify, so if you're not defending spotify, I don't really mind if you yell at me for pirating all my music. I'm not gonna stop and I will never stop encouraging people from pirating EVERYTHING.
Thank you, I do try to support the music I like, because I want to see more of it.
I appreciate your genuine and heartfelt sincere support, and I hope you join me in helping good artists thrive.
Pirating is WHY artists see the shit deal from Spotify as swallowable. Fuck you! You’re not entitled to someone else’s music.
Lol, sure. If piracy disappeared tomorrow they'd still squeeze and monopolize until the stream payments were table crumbs just the same. That's how corps go; has nothing to do with any of us.
Buy direct if you actually care about getting cash into a band's hand.
Not sure how you did it, but you attempted to refute my point and then went back to argue for it. Buy music from artists and don’t stream, especially do not pirate.
If you read my other post, you'll see that i hybridize and do both.
I cant afford to buy every artist that someone flippantly recommends i check out. (8k albums in my library atm) Im not streaming. Pirating is the demo/simmer stage. Followup retroactive purchases are the "yup, good shit" support stage
When they get my support they're getting 100% of my money rather than what drips down through Spotify's grip. I'd say that's a win for both sides
Why do you need to have music that you can’t afford?
?? Chicken and egg? It's not that i cant afford the things I like. It's that i need to listen to it first to know if I like it enough to purchase it. If someone recommends me some band I never heard of froma genre im not familiar with, I would like to give it a chance. A heavy portion of the music I love now wasn't something I knew immediately I would like within 30 seconds of hearing it. The likelihood is their recommendation isn't for me, but I dont know until I listen a bit and simmer at least a short bit.
So do I just buy everything anyone namedrops outright? Or do I refuse to give a recommendation any chance whatsoever because I make a guess its not for me before I even listened?
I don't think that's actually the case. Can you show any correllation between piracy rates and Spotify rates or Spotify artists counts?
All the histories of music streaming platforms I've read/heard have rarely mentioned piracy as a motivation at all, and never as a primary reason. Spotify got popular because it was free. It was free because it provided tons of user information to advertisers and music catalogues for targeting. Artists that weren't part of the big music catalogues joined because of the huge user base.
Ask a musician and get back to me. You have no perspective or common sense.
So, no evidence for your claims, then?
Wow, you got back to me very quickly. So what did your musician friend say?
Ken Parks, CEO of Spotify, said “Piracy was sort of ingrained in that culture (in reference to pirating programs like Napster). But now Spotify is ingrained in that culture in a way that’s reduced piracy greatly. It’s removed the incentive to pirate.”
Spotify told British MPs in a parliamentary inquiry that raising its monthly subscription above £9.99 could “push users into piracy” using the piracy threat to resist price increases that would have meant higher royalties for artists.
Spotify was founded in 2008, a moment when the music industry had been devastated by online piracy. Revenue had already dropped from $14.6 billion in 1999 to $6.3 billion by 2008.
Spotify has since added filters that cut royalty payments to tracks that don’t reach a certain stream threshold, further adding pressure to smaller artists who had the least leverage to begin with.
The rise of piracy led directly to the creation and power of streaming services like Spotify. Need me to spell anything else out for you?
Edit: Waaaaaiting for a response!
All of my musician friends (3) do all their paid music creation live, and aren't on Spotify. So, they couldn't tell me their motivation for being on Spotify is; none of them have ever complained about piracy.
That's not the evidence I asked for, those are canned statement from Spotify. Do you believe everything Spotify says? They have misled people about their motives before.
Still, thanks for an least engaging with the premise.
Ratio. They don’t sound like very successful artists lmao
I wonder why they wouldn’t be on Spotify if it’s so good for artists? 🤔
Please explain what you mean by “canned statement” exactly? Is a factual statement not relevant if it comes from someone you don’t like?
By "canned" I mean "made palatable for the masses and packaged compactly".
Those statements aren't evidence any more than your claims are. For evidence, we would need some measurements of reality.
Spotify wouldn't be the first company to claim "piracy" as their motivation even tho their actions leave the rate of piracy virtually unchanged, so I do doubt their motivational claims. But, it's also not what I asked for. I want to see if there was an actual observable effect on piracy that has anything to do with Spotify.
I buy from Bandcamp, but I'll stop pirating the rest when Zuck is behind bars for stealing everything at once.
Mate, I'm sorry, but I will absolutely not accept any attempts to shame me into supporting the incredibly exploitative music industry. Artists will create art even without being paid, because that's how human creativity is. I'm literally an open source developer and I've written millions of lines of code without seeing a single penny for my work. Keep yelling into the void if you want, it changes absolutely nothing. If it helps, I also support stealing from corporations.
You’re an idiot if you think paying musical artists for their work is exploitation. Seriously, brain dead. You don’t deserve music.
if you have a way of giving to artists directly, then sure, that's fine! buying physical media from record labels etc. isn't worth it imo, you're just propping up an exploitative industry just so you can feel warm and fuzzy about supporting artists. i don't want to pay for that, because i do not believe it is righteous.
my morality is that, I should limit my spending as much as possible, so as to bring about a complete economic collapse of not only the music industry but the entire economy. my morality is likely completely different from yours, which is why I don't give a shit about your attempts to shame me. it's literally meaningless to me. your (dis)approval and that of the wider society means less than nothing, because this society we live in is fundamentally sick and disgusting
They all sell their music online. I can do without all the personal, emotional garbage from you. Please keep your point succinct.
lmfao, you don't get to tell me what i'm allowed to talk about and not talk about, don't be so silly!
Lmfao ok. Does this mean you’re done arguing your shit point? If you pirate music you are supporting artists even less than Spotify does. Hope you feel good about that, you managed to one up the predatory corporation.
i never started arguing, i just explained why we won't ever see eye to eye, i'm not arguing with you at all, you're just crashing out, yelling at me about shit i don't give a fuck about
Wait, so when you use emotional language it’s “I’m allowed to talk how I want” but if I follow your rules and do the same you call it a “crash out”. Nice perspective and nice new account.
“Argument” isn’t just when your parents yell at each other and your dad hits your mom. You were very clearly making an argument. And now you’re arguing that you were not making an argument. Now you’re backing away from your argument because it can’t be argued anymore. Hope this explanation helps.
dude you're so obviously just raging at me because you want to feel something, please consider therapy
Ratio :)
btw its really funny that you came here to tell me about this, i forgot you even existed, happy to hear i'm living rent free in your brain
did you look into therapy yet?
i dont have downvotes enabled on my instance, nor do i give a shit about your opinion nor anyone elses. i do what i know is right, if others disagree with me, they can do what they think is right. i don't need external validation