I am sure most of you might be aware that Google plans to bans the simple act of sideloading [though I presume adb driven sideloading remains] on it’s platform in name of security. At the same time Play Store itself remains riddled with malware. However, here I wish to throw light on a different rising case of apps, a set that actually deserves to be pirated.
With the start of the so called subscription driven economy where one time purchases are becoming a thing of the past,everything needs to be a subscription. Some things like a newspaper make sense, a music tracking app does not. Let us turn our eyes to Stats.fm. It aims to link to Spotify/Apple Account and present data in good format. It was a one time purchase back in the day when I barely used Spotify, so I got the legit version. Spotify usually retails for INR [Indian National Rupee] 1200 per year but was retailing for 500 as an initial promotional scheme last week. Fed up with the mess that YT Music is [Yes, I do hoard music via Soulseek as well], I thought why not give Spotify a try. So, I installed both the streaming app and this fancy scrobbling service which as I repeat, was a one time purchase linked to a Google account.
As soon as I open the app, I am told I need to subscribe [bait and switch]. To put salt on wound, their cheapest plans were INR 750 for 6 months, which ironically is equivalent to YT Premium [when equating to per year]. So, what is basically a Last.fm clone with little third party support [Last.fm offers a largely working free tier and has open APIs that make it work with third party plugins/clients] and now did a classic bait; is it not ethical to pirate such kind of stuff?
I would go on a limb and say that Google actually has a case for asking money for YT Premium since they offer 2 services : music and video streaming [yes, the apps are shit, I know that] which incur server costs. But am I to truly believe that equivalent server costs are incurred by err,a music tracking app that ONLY tracks one music client?
As Cory Doctrow coined the term enshittification, we are heading down that route. I am sure many more apps would have done that bait and switch. [I even saw an Wear OS watch face as a yearly subscription option once].
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Google is doing much more than banning user app installation, they are going to ban abd side loading as well, because it’s not about security is about control. Whenever someone tells you they are taking away a freedom you have for something harmless like installing your own apps for your safety, it’s always about control.
Google is also banning emulators and many types of software that the corporate cartel don’t like. They have already been doing this as well. If people offer ad free apps they get removed from the play store. There is about a 9/10 chances that if there was a decent app, it’s been removed. Not anything anticorporaye they just hate ad free good software on the store.
This has led to a situation where nearly every piece of software on the store is junk, and to stop people from downloading decent apps from the internet, they are doing this nonsense.
There is so much wrong that Google does, lock bootloaders, banning user apps, taking away root access, stopping users from being able to to basic configuration of their devices like stopping software updates, they spy on people, censor the internet, the interfere in democratic elections, they target activists and stuff with demonization while allowing the absolute worst people on earth like conservative superpacs and think tanks to operate on their site, often times given them preferential treatment, like they did with corporate media over independent media.
Google is like the only phone OEM with unlockable bootloader…
Do you mean android-compatible? Because there are a lot of android-compatible device manufacturers with unlockable bootloaders outside of Google themselves. Like the OnePlus I’m currently using.
OnePlus is the “like” in my comment, they’re the only alternative I know of that allows you to still plug your phone to a PC and unlock it.
So you mean android-compatible devices with a supported method for unlocking? Because you can also jailbreak most locked bootloaders through unsupported means.
I wasn’t actually aware that OnePlus have a supported route and that they were the only other brand who do. I jailbroke my own OnePlus :P
I listen to video game soundtracks from the 80s and 90s, and most of it is japanese from the pc98/pc88 and x68000. There is no streaming service with this. I have a collection of about 5000 soundtracks that I change out from time to time on my mp3 player which I paid about $30-40USD for and I wear conventional headphones. I have a pair of redundant backups for my collection which is about 150gb. No need for any music streaming. If anyone is curious and wants to hear it- my favorite soundtrack right now is called “X-na” on the x68000. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpvM2IcXai4
I bought stats.fm back when it was called spotistats or something. I just checked and seem to still be grandfathered in to full features with no sub. I would be pretty pissed off if I were you though, that is such a shitty move by any company.
I still just keep an offline existing music collection that I update every once in a while. remove stuff I don’t really listen to anymore, add stuff I’m listening to now (through various sources, youtube or buying an album download, etc)
this whole streaming thing is just a nightmare through and through and being tied to an internet connection constantly is a bit stressful. especially when out and about.
I highly recommend a personal library if its a feasible spacewise for your devices.
I am beginning to do this.
I have an old music Collection my nas, around 150GB.
How do you organize that? Maybe from a phone point of view?
I just go by folders still. I have stuff fairly well organized in their own separate folders.
if you meant software, I still use Foobar2000 for android. yes its old, but I’d be open to suggestions for new software. I’m just used to how foobar does its organization.
I wish foobar was on Linux
me too, man. me too =( I am trying to find a player for linux that is lightweight and kickass like foobar. I’m certain there are some I just haven’t taken the time.
I didn’t knew foobar2000 was available for mobile as well. I only knew it because it was so popular as a lightweight modular player for Windows. I used to be on Strawberry, a Clementine fork on Linux before moving to Deadbeef, which is like Foobar2000 but misses few features.
If you are already into, or want to get into self-hosting you could set up a media server like Jellyfin or Navidrome and use a mobile client that works with the one you choose. I am using Jellyfin with the Finamp beta on Android. I use it only in offline mode when I am out and about.
I sometimes hear people complain about some issues with Jellyfin, although I have not had any of those myself (I have a comparable collectiom to you). I run all music through Musicbrainz Picard before adding it to the server, so I think that may be a pre-requisite for a smooth experience. Navidrome is perhaps more forgiving.
I have jellyfin running, didnt had the idea to use it for music…
Thanks fir the input :)
Navidrome + tempo (or any other subsonic clients)…
And spotizerr to fetch from deezer/Spotify once. Or Slskd for a nice soulseek experience
Spotify is killing the music business and the CEO invests in military tech to kill people. It’s evil. Don’t do it.
They also allow ICE to recruitment ads on their platform.
Could you tell me an alternative that allows for third party clients? On Spotify, I can configure a terminal client even on Linux and stream music with very low overhead [contrast with YTMusic with required a permanent browser tab opened]. Yes, local media streaming can do that but there is only so much space at one time on my HDD.
I imagine there would be several YouTube front ends for Linux, but I’m out of the loop as I’ve not had a Linux box in ages. On Android, I use NewPipe and others like Revanced (haven’t tried). You might also want to check out self-hosting comms. Those folks are very knowledgeable about going completely independent.
Once can stream audio from YouTube via terminal on Linux but problem is all of that is limited to 128 kbps AAC. There is no way to stream proper 256 kbps AAC that YouTube Music Premium provides. One can download such streams via yt-dlp (it needs to be given authorization cookies) but there is currently no way to stream high quality audio from YouTube without using the webpage.
I don’t think you can download premium streams with ytdlp if you don’t have a premium subscription. Also the default stream for me using Metrolist on Android (custom YTM Client) is 145-210Kbps OPUS audio which is high res enough for my daily listening.
Can you actually hear the difference between 128 and 256kbps on the devices you are listening on?
I have a tendency to want “the best”, but have rarely actually needed “the best”. I export my lossless FLAC music collection to much lower bitrate opus files, which I can then access from my VPS. The switch to opus makes the space requirements for the VPS drastically cheaper. Going with the lower bitrate might make things easier for you.
One of my favorite sayings, which I rarely follow myself, is: Perfect is the enemy of good.
Yes, you absolutely can hear the difference. Once you get to 160-192kbps, it gets more difficult to tell. But 128 is garbage, and insulting to the people who created, recorded and mixed/mastered the music.
I’m sorry if I’ve insulted someone. I’ll up the bitrate next time I’m doing an export 🙂
I was under the impression opus was much better at the lower bitrates than the more common codecs.
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It is law of diminishing marginal utility. There would be more sonic distinguishness between a 64 kbps and a 128 kbps file, than say when making the same upgrade to 256 kbps. It becomes less and less obvious as one approaches 44.1 kHz/16 bit flac (beyond which it is useless to hoard unless one is mastering the albums themselves).
I have a DAC paired with Sennheiser IE 600 which is not audiophile level, but ought to be decent enough.
Either case, my point was not about audio quality and whether or not a person can distinguish a flac from say, 320 kbps mp3. Countless threads are made on that and viewpoints presented. My argument was that YouTube Music does not present first, to stream music in high quality and second, even if the quality was indistinguishable, there is no way to manage a library since most of the desktop third party clients remain without login.
You hoard English and hindi songs too? Any other?
From Kinks to Camel to obscure Krautrock stuff like Dissidenten, Out of Focus, Embryo. Ironically I have < 50 Hindi songs in my collection because the era I like the most [50s - 60s], good quality stuff is hard to come by. Like the files even on Soulseek or torrents are so incredibly compressed that it is a pity. The vocals sound so tinny that one wonders that how did the original masters sounded like.
I’m with you in loving hindi songs from 50s and 60s and want to build a collection of best possible versions available. The saddest thing is that even the companies owning the rights (Saregama et al) don’t care at all. They don’t even seem to have a definitive catalog of movies/songs/artists.
I tried looking up for such songs through nicotine but it is a futile pursuit. The few hindi songs available there are a jumble of artists that seems impossible to make use of.
A while ago, i poked around in the saregama endpoints that appear in their website through developer options and was able to scrape metadata for around 200k hindi songs. I need to clean it up and maybe try to download them using the JioSaavn APIs that are floating around.
I have come to respect YouTube users like TommyDan who are digitization and cleaning best possible versions of old movies that are out of copyright (he’s reached into 60s now). There are people who are digitizating vinyl records and I wish they would also upload them in places other than YouTube.
More than anything, i want to compile a database of the songs/movies/artists but don’t really know where to begin so that others could also collaborate.
/RANT
There are open existing databases you can contribute to.
Musicbrainz for music Thetvdb.com for shows Themoviedb.org for movies
I’m not sure if it is unique to the subcontinent, but Hindi songs need to be tagged differently since we like to search the songs by their singers, music directors, lyric writers in addition to albums they belong to. I explored musicbrainz with this in mind but I found it lacking to the best of my understanding. I’ll have a look at it and the other databases once again. Maybe it is time to be the change I’m looking for. Thanks for your suggestions nonetheless.
I wasn’t expecting tommydan from YouTube to be mentioned here :p. Best of all he does, what companies themselves couldn’t do, maintain the original aspect ratio. I remember that Shemaroo restored certain old Hindi films but the original aspect ratio for them was 4:3 whilst the restored ran into 16:9.
In fact, I have been seeing the odd old Hindi film from an unexpected source. The Russian site Ok. I am still not sure if it is a social media site or not since the English UI is not there for me but for all Intents and purposes, it is used to upload videos only. Some guy ended up uploading whole filmography of Rajesh Khanna on the site (much of it mirrored later to Archive.org). Whilst the irony remains that there is probably not a single legal hub to see the lesser known films.
Heck, I was hunting an out of print (like literally unavailable to stream or purchase anywhere short of anyone having the original CD/DVD) 1996 film and the only way was to pirate it (from a single source).
In some cases, piracy becomes an act of media preservation ( cues back to when BBC wiped some Doctor Who episodes in the late sixties and only way few were gotten back was because some folks had gotten audio transcribed or something at home).
The aspect ratio crime was something I wanted to write in my comment too but it was getting too long already. For the amount of money these music companies earn the least they could do is to create/fund a proper database and digitize from master recordings wherever available before it is too late. It was so nice to see the restored versions of Satyajit Ray classics like Charulata but I am afraid most Hindi films will never get that kind of love ever.
I will explore the Russian site that you mentioned and see if I can find something useful there. I’ll also look again at musicbrainz, as suggested in the other comment, to see if it can serve the purpose I want to use it for. Meanwhile, will it be okay if I DM you to stay in touch regarding this common pursuit?
Feel free to DM.
