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].

  • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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    15 hours ago

    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.

    • DontNoodles@discuss.tchncs.de
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      14 hours ago

      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

        • DontNoodles@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 hours ago

          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.

      • kirk781@discuss.tchncs.deOP
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        13 hours ago

        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).

        • DontNoodles@discuss.tchncs.de
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          9 hours ago

          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?