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].
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.