Spotify Used 'Pirate' MP3 Files In Its Early Days: Report (torrentfreak.com) 44
According to Rasmus Fleischer, one of the early The Pirate Bay figures, Spotify used unlicensed music in its early days. From a report: "Spotify's beta version was originally a pirate service. It was distributing MP3 files that the employees happened to have on their hard drives," he reveals. Rumors that early versions of Spotify used 'pirate' MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained 'Scene' labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn't been obtained officially. Solid proof has been more difficult to come by but Fleischer says he knows for certain that Spotify was using music obtained not only from pirate sites, but the most famous pirate site of all.
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... Pandora: Your one true source of legitimately paid for music.
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Well now im confused, judging from the news articles for month i had assumed that microsoft had bought slashdot, now you say it was pandora??
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If it's in a box, don't open it.
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I went to school with a girl called Pandora. Never let me see her box, though...
Fuck pandora (Score:1)
I use TIDAL , where i sniff many vaginas for a fair monthly rate
Wow... (Score:1)
https://news.slashdot.org/stor... [slashdot.org]
Almost like this was a planted counter article...
Hearsay. (Score:5, Interesting)
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"than" you, genius.
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having said that, to use a line from hillary clinton "what difference, at this point, does it make!!!?!??!" That was how long ago now???
next up, napster was a pirate site before it wasnt????
Well, isn't it legal? (Score:1)
As long as you pay license fees who cares where you get the recording?
shocking! (Score:1)
Rare form for the record labels! Think of all the revenue they could have lost out on had they stuck to their tried and true tactics? (that is shutting down spotify with a series of lawsuits)
They're slipping towards survival apparently.
The evidence (Score:3, Insightful)
So, despite my sig, I browsed TFA.
It appears the only evidence provided is that one artist who had chosen to distribute via The Pirate Bay turned up on Spotify. Oh, and also a Pirate Bay dude saying "oh yeah, I know this is a fact".
That argument seems kind of tenuous. It's like saying that all of my music was downloaded from artists' websites simply because I own Radiohead's "In Rainbows".
Yawn (Score:3, Insightful)
And we care...why?
At this point is is one of the top music sites, loved by millions. SOmehow I really doubt any of those millions will go "Oh Fuck. God, now I can't listen to Spotify any more because they cheated in the beginning. Back to 45s for me".
Now a better story would have been of Spotify used the blood of RIAA executives to perform a dark ritual that helped them get the funding they needed to make it a viable business.
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I certainly don't plan to support businesses that grew successful through illegal means.
He says as he hops into his Uber for the ride to his AirBnB
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With his microsoft OS running on an intel chip...
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there was nothing illegal about this. The source does not matter in the least.
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You should pitch this to the MPAA... I'd pay money to see that!
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MPAA = Motion Picture Asshats of America
RIAA = Recording Industry Assclowns of America
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It's actually pretty interesting if true since it is yet another example of a useful service that followed the "first get popular then get permission" model and would not have made it to profitability if it had to go through all the proper legal channels.
Youtube, did it and it worked (bought by Google).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
Imeem did it and got popular, but sold itself to Myspace to avoid the legal hole it dug itself into.
https://www.cnet.com/news/repo... [cnet.com]
By contrast, Grooveshark was sued into ob
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Just lile 99% of all shoutcast stations (Score:2, Informative)
back in the day. Media companies grew on the backs of and money stolen from music artists.
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back in the day. Media companies grew on the backs of and money stolen from record labels.
FTFY. There wasn't shit to be made on those pissant streams back then, so once the labels took their cut of whatever they would have gotten, the artists would have seen shit.
Now that new media companies are maturing, many of those artists actually are seeing some money. I can't cry too much over someone who is essentially a pimp losing out on a little cash in the beginning only to make a shit-ton more from it later.
Similar challenges when XM Radio was starting (Score:2)
I worked in IT at XM when it launched and we spent a lot of time hunting down these shadow-IT caches of of MP3s. Mad props to them for taking it seriously even back 16 years ago.
Honestly not surprised. (Score:1)
If you want something from them; like, for example, adequate quality mp3 files, you just need to fill in these 32 forms, get authorisation from 17 different departments, one of which was abolished 5 years ago, and once you manage that, you get a mono WMA file recorded at 8kHz.
I bloody hate Spotify (Score:1)
...I installed the linux version of this a couple of days ago so I could see what people at my old job are listening to (we had a shared playlist that everyone could add to). All went well and I could see they were (still) listening to crap music. But later I started getting facebook crap in my inbox and I deactivated that rubbish years ago. It seems that it cheekily reactivates facebook. Not happy at all.
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You can sign up with just an email.
If you signed up with Facebook and just want to use an email, they will break the connection to Facebook and bring over anything for you.
https://support.spotify.com/us... [spotify.com]