Forget spaceships, I just want my music
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- čas přidán 11. 12. 2023
- What is ownership in the digital age?
The big media companies want to redefine what it means to purchase content. They want everything to be a rental, even if you pay full price. That's dumb.
Here are the articles I reference in this video:
- Sony yoinks everyone's Discovery content: arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/...
- Enshittification: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshitt...
- Cory Doctorow's article: pluralistic.net/2023/12/08/pl...
- My video on Jellyfin and ripping content: • Better than Disney+: J...
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"Piracy is service problem" as once wise man Gabe said.
Eh, so he isn't wise any more? 😛
Gabe can lock you out of your games at any moment. Steam is a rental service.
so u own games u buy on steam?
I know they are almost screaming that U PURCHASE THIS, to assure u about it but read their rules. U own shit there and this is not new. I just google it and u can find 2013 posts about steam stealing your stuff
@@jimvonmoon yes, this is why most of my games are from gog.
@@samuelt321 sorry, my inner yoda messed up word order :) my steamdeck is telling my he is still wise :P
“And in the case of ‘Oppenheimer,’ we put a lot of care and attention into the Blu-ray version… and trying to translate the photography and the sound, putting that into the digital realm with a version you can buy and own at home and put on a shelf so *no evil streaming service can come steal it from you.”*
- Christopher Nolan
Nolan has been on that train for a while
LOVE Nolan.
@@marcogenovesi8570 yep, just wanna reiterate that physical copy is still superior than digital copy, be it a movie or a music album.
This just made me an immediate Christopher Nolan fan. I'd literally buy a blu ray copy just for that statement alone.
I havent seen that movie.. but if that is true, then this makes me want to go and buy that blu-ray version of it.
These big companies have forgotten they aren't competing with each other, they're competing with piracy, and piracy has gotten extremely convenient.
They’re competing with themselves (meaning like Netflix is competing with itself) because they themselves cause piracy (more-so). If these offer proper services it would be hardly an issue. For example, Netflix no longer allows the user to choose what quality to stream in, instead you get forced to some shitty 1080p stream with a horrible looking bitrate if you’re on a non-4K proprietary piece of hardware. I’ll keep the comment short, so that’s just one gripe about the service…
@@Those2menovertherehow is 1080p shitty?
I feel like they know that they can't defeat piracy.
A billion dollar campaign against piracy happens to be a good taxwrite off though.
@@Lowmandavis ya, imagine living in an age where 1080p is considered shitty.
@@Lowmandavis Probably not the resolution per-se but that the content has had the bits compressed out of it.
I've always said that if "you don't hold it, you don't own it". But I'm going to have to add "If buying isn't owning, the piracy isn't stealing" into rotation.
Yeah. That should be etched into a tablet.
Especially since it's more like "even if you hold it, you still don't own it" at this point.
@@juanblanco7898 The MAGIC of DRM, it bumfucks us all
This is why Physical media is starting to come back for a lot of people. We all wanted a long time ago to get things a la carte, but this is not how we wanted it. It also why piracy becoming a bigger thing AGAIN.
I honestly thought back when Steve Jobs announced DRM-free MP3s were for sale on iTunes, the rest of the media world would start to turn over too...
But once he died, it seems like that whole concept got buried.
Digital is fine but you need to have full rights to download and use how you see fit
One other aspect: when my dad passed, his record collection became especially poignant to me.
@@JeffGeerling These companies have no-incentive to offer anything DRM free, so they won't. The majority of people don't care about the issues of digital ownership, preservation or consumer rights etc and they are fully aware of that.
I envy those who can use physical media. I am someone who this past year listened to 3'500 artist and many of which don't have physical media but if I were to buy an album from each I don't have over 35k spare. I listen to so many because every song has a limited number of listens (between 1 and 40, until I don't want to hear it again) so buying music just does not work for me no matter how much people who hate streaming services tell me to, my music experience is perfect for streaming. People who have Spotify just to listen to a few artists should just consider buying the music
Piracy already is and will continue to be the best Digital Archaeology tool.
This tell us a lot about how we conduct our society.
Capitalism imirite
@@zyansheep yeah the personal mp3 libraries of ordinary citizens were simply booming in feudalism, absolute monarchy, fascism and communism.
@@o00nemesis00oi still remember playing "top X hits to play while dying from the bubonic plague" in 1348.
@@o00nemesis00ocapitalism stans are so bizarre 🤦♀️
@@o00nemesis00o Capitalism isn't a form of government, democracy is. Capitalism is an economic system. So you're comment is invalid.
Hey, Hey, remember when Sony put a root kit onto their CDs to try and stop piracy...
This is why, in my opinion, once you buy something digitally, the company must give you the raw file without DRM. It's ridiculous how broken the digital ownership landscape is.
Thankfully buying iTunes music does this (but sadly not iTunes movies)
The point of DRM was to prevent distribution, and yet it fails to do this job, only acting to end up harming the honest consumer every time now.
Louis Rossmann covered this issue on his channel as well.
If you already paid for the content, then torrenting it isn't stealing, you're literally obtaining a copy of what you paid for.
This is the utopia we live in: "you will own nothing and be happy".
There was a Dutch court case years ago that concluded this. Even obtaining a copy from an 'evidently illegal source' was deemed the legal equivalent of a DVD rip. As long as you own a legally obtained copy and only use it for personal/home use, it's all totally fine.
That is such a strong alignment between legally and morally right. It makes me proud to be Dutch. Now I just need to hope this doesn't get overturned (if it isn't already).
@@rikwisselink-bijker As far as I know that verdict is not specifically Dutch, but its part of international copyrights system.
You can always make or obtain a copy of something that you own, regardless of the source (even if source is illegal)
@@rikwisselink-bijker Since this is a very significant, far-reaching issue (and has really got people riled), I wonder if the EU government will get involved.
@@hubertnnn there is no such thing as "international copyright system"
@@rikwisselink-bijker my question here: how do you obtain a legal ownership of a netflix show? Your subscription is just renting, the show is not available anywhere else, so...
You either lose access to it forever (let it be music, shows, etc) OR you pirate it illegally and watch it.
Content licensing is my kryptonite, I live in a third world country and streaming services are just laughably bad. There is so much content its literally impossible to consume legally, piracy is very literally my only option.
Artist deserve to be paid, but not everyone should have to pay to enjoy the art. Michelangelo deserved to be paid, but I shouldn't have to pay to look at a photo of David.
I believe in compensating artists, I do it to the best of my ability, but art is for everyone, it is timeless, and it belongs to the world.
It used to be like that in my country because the US would give us their stuff YEARS later so the whole country felt like it was 10 years behind culturally/relevantly. It wasn't until high-speed internet became common-place that we started catching up and America realized they can't just keep giving us stuff 2+ years later because people were just pirating everything.
@@TheRealNullcallerToothere’s a difference between legal and moral. There’s no “legally imo”. That said, I think the entire idea of copyright for over a hundred years, and after everyone who worked on something’s death is ridiculous. I also think pirating media that you didn’t have the funds to pay for/ weren’t gonna pay for in the first place is fine morally.
And the cost, too. Due to rigged x-rates, content can cost an arm and a leg in other countries.
Hel, I live in CANADA, and the streaming landscape is a goddamn nightmare. We just straight up don’t have Hulu, for example. Never have, probably never will. HBO Max? Nope. The services we do have are hacked to bits library wise, and if the shows ARE available, they’re spread over three other services instead of just one. The list goes on.
My wife and friends kept asking me for years why I still bought CD's/DVDs/Blu-Rays and even music off of Band Camp. Now while watching Studio Ghibli movies in the theater my wife had an Ah-ha moment and said we need to finish our blu-ray collection of Ghibli movies because she would hate for them to disappear off of Hbo Max or even Amazon where we own them digitally. More people are coming around. I find it funny as retail stores are removing physical media, which I feel is more of a move by studios to enforce digital renting of media versus buying physical. Some media I want was never released to physical media or for download. Time to build a bigger NAS and sail the seven seas.
Couldn't agree more, I still buy optical media copies if I find movies or music I like. There's a lot of sentiment out there that "optical media is old and should be dead already" with the assumption that any technology that isn't cutting-edge is somehow a curse on society. As the saying goes, be careful what you wish for. If optical media dies then the ownership of media dies with it. And everyone will be thrown into the streaming service hellscape of paid subscriptions, internet bandwidth limitations, content blocking, server shutdowns, link rot.....everything that destroys long-term media enjoyment.
I get not being able to "officially" support piracy, but I get the impression that, "unofficially", you don't look down on people who do. And given your line of work, that's probably the best you can offer without getting squashed out of existence. As someone who has lost a *massive* amount of media over the years to companies shutting down, I work hard to preserve what I can, and do what I can to make sure creators get the value they are owed. Thanks for being awesome about this.
The reason I got the elgato capture card was to rip my own content, it lasts forever 😮 for 1 price
I honestly do the same. I keep backups of games that my friends online like to play in case the DRM or storefront screws em over. OFC it is a bit pointless, like with EA titles like Spore, which require EA servers with creatures to actually be playable
@@JamesTDGI did buy a game recently on dvd. Man was I angry when the installer said... Activate on steam. I do not buy much games an often on Steam or play older stuff
@@JamesTDG Spore is absolutely 100% playable offline. Won't get any synced creatures from other people or put your own in the cloud, but the game in all it's functionality works.
it's easy to miss how many songs/movies/shows used to be available on the internet and have since disappeared if you *aren't* a datahoarder. if you have old stuff saved, or at least have references to older videos (especially Japanese ones), and try to find them again today, you'll quickly come to the depressing realization that "nothing is ever deleted off the internet" is dead. the best you can do is to put aside some disk space and seed.
There are "archivist" groups on torrent trackers. There is a lot of stuff (shows, movies, books, press, music) that do not exist anywhere else at all. People digitize old records ot 16mm films and bunch of gazettes from 1880s they had layiing around. If some stuff gets "deleted from internet" - likely because it's not really worth keeping.
"Where they burn books, they will also burn people."
In modern times internet videos and music is what books were when this quote was made.
The end in nigh.
Given various copyright strikes are still going against Internet Archive itself until now, it is become more important for everyone to unite and fight together in data preservation support, both locally and globally
That "nothing is ever deleted off the internet" has naver been true. Sites die off all the time. Where is your Myspace with the emo cringe images and soundtrack? GONE
@@marcogenovesi8570 cringe emo myspace is literally trash. But typical examples of such things are being documented and preserved.
I often collect video games and I don’t like how digital ownership works for video games nowadays. I remember reading on reddit how some ubisoft users lost their games from their library for not logging in for a while. EA banned a player from all their games for saying one swear word on Apex Legend by mistake. And some games make you pay $60 and still need internet connection to play solo. If the server is down, you can’t play the game you bought.
Yeah, at least songs aren't programmed in a way that they can't be read out if Sony or WMG's server is offline! (Yet.)
@@hillppari Please don't just post a link without any context.
GOG is bad in regards to missing family sharing completely, Cyberpunk is good in regards to having no copy-protection (so my sister still could play it on her PC).
wait until they start using proprietary codecs where you have to maintain a subscription to playback that codec@@JeffGeerling
@@AntonioNoack Dafuq did I just read? Afaik Steam doesn't let you play multiple instances of the same game (especially on multiple machines) no matter what (unless at most one is online & no bypassing is happening at least). It literally boots you out from all but the last opened when it notices. GoG literally doesn't require a login other than to purchase, download or for some multiplayer or progression. Literally the entirety of humankind can play any game an account owns simultaneously w/o cracking or illegally distributing (unless they suspect unlawful conduct & temporarily prevent downloading that is).
How would you imagine family sharing working on GoG?
@@whohan779 "unless at most one is online"
That's fine with me. Only one family member can play that game at a certain time.
"How would you imagine family sharing working on GoG?" I'd imagine it works like it does on Steam.
Each account has their own saves.
100% correct on all fronts. Let's get this right, massive collections of 'Art' will disappear if we leave it to greedy, faceless corporations to manage for us.
"If Buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" ❤
"If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" goes hard
Companies not understanding WHY people love streaming services is the most frustrating thing ever. I didn't get rid of my $100/month cable service to then get the equivalent with streaming services ... I got rid of a few services last year and started getting blurays and ripping them to put them on my jellyfin server. Best decision ever!
Remember to make backups!
Are you a WKDU DJ?
They know exactly why people like streaming services, they don't care. This-quarter profits are all that matters.
at first streaming services seemed like the future, but then big media got to them and ruined them completely
They do understand, its just that they want money
I hit up thrift shops often for my physical media collection. 99¢ for a music album and $1.99 for a movie. It's cheaper than renting.
Since I retain the physical copy after I rip it and put it in my Plex server, it gets me by any qualms about piracy.
You just have to inspect each disk to make sure it's in playable condition.
And make sure the disc is actually in the case! :)
In Denmark we have municipal recycling yards, you can bring anything, it'll get recycled (sold for scrap) or reused. You can also leave stuff for "immediate reuse", and take stuff from there as well. I have - completely for *free* !!! - built a fairly decent DVD collection over just a couple of years, a nice mix of old classics, more recent block-busters and award winners, and even a few not too common French art movies. I am sure we'll see a big war beteeen consumers and the film and music industry soon. We won the first battle, when compact cassette and VHS made recording possible, and mostly lost the digital battles, but with a few important victories. With their "services" they have secretly invaded the homes of us all, but now is the time to fight again. RIP in peace!
@@lhpl Honestly, the day they start suing the consumers is fast approaching, and it will be the optimal time to strike hard.
Yeah, that's the thing, an artist can remove their songs from Spotify and Apple Music for various reasons, yet the listings stay there as if it's possible to get them again eventually or you have to move in another country to listen to them again... There is no difference between being unavailable for copyright reasons and being straight up removed, and that's just bad UX here, thanks to the large music labels, I guess.
As a mild counterpoint, straight up removing the listing isn't good UX either. Soundcloud does that, and when you've got thousands of songs saved it can be hard to remember the song/artist as all trace is removed. I'll listen to a playlist and notice when a song is *not* there, but not remember enough details to be able to find the song again.
I've had to write custom software to track and archive my playlists there for when things disappear. Just in the last year alone I've had 4% of my library vanish.
Part of it is so you can call the record label and bitch them out.
I don't agree with this assessment. I think it's good UX that the listing stays in your collection-it's much better to communicate and show you what is missing than for you to get no notice something in your library is gone. It also lets you know why, so you can choose if you want to do something about it. If they just deleted it from your playlists, half the time people wouldn't even notice it missing at first, and then would have zero ways to figure out where it went when they do.
I've kept to downloading the music I like off of soundcloud, uploading it to my network, and playing it via winamp. It still whips the llama's ass@@Saand1338
Imagine carrying a physical CD across the border and the customs/airport security says you can't take them out of your country
"Oh sorry, your CD is region locked"
as a Norwegian I'm like "even if this isn't geo locking, I'm glad you're getting fucked too"
I often find entire artists missing or individual tracks on albums etc just greyed out... and this isn't a new issue either.. even back in the 80s I remember the extreme discrimination on movies for example... often being years late. Sure it wasn't that impactful then since we didn't have the internet...but it was there. The selection on streaming services is vastly different.. not just for music but movies, tv series and books are affected too. Games less so as most consoles are not region locked anymore. It's not uncommon to find some tv series you want to buy, but I just find it in stores where "we don't ship to your region" pops up... and while over there you at least could see tv series in the iTunes.. tv series was never even available in mine for rent or purchase.
So when I hear people in the "industry" complain about piracy, my only reaction is "fuck off"...
Remember Region Locking? And DVD players that only allowed switching regions a few times... Media companies really like to shoot themselves in the foot.
@@jonragnarsson I 'member. They think they are geniuses by demanding more money for a "regional exclusive", classic suit move
Greetings from Australia 🇦🇺 I feel your pain
Agreed... It's even worse for legacy Japanese media...
Especially those anime soundtrack from the older animes in the 2000s... Many are grey out like the video showed...
Yeah, as a fellow Norwegian, it was kinda frustrating to get 24/7 bombed in your face about how awesome this new tv series or movie is that just came out is, that of course you don't get to watch yet because you don't live in the US so you have to wait for however many months until its released where you live. (Unless you pirated it of course) Thankfully it's not as bad these days here as it used to be but you still have to deal with a lot of geoblocking and availability on streaming services that vary widely depending on country (and VPNs don't really help all that much despite what all these youtube ads claim). Hell we can't even buy the Steam deck from Valve yet, only from grey marked imports... And I'm sure it's way worse if one is from a smaller country not in Europe.
I want both. I want access and control of the things I buy (digital or otherwise), and I want spaceships to mars and more asteroid samples collected. Both I say!
Maybe spaceships will help us reach a planet where a couple media companies control like 99% of all media distribution! :D
@@JeffGeerlingor better yet the government controls everything.
Hear hear!!
i sail the high seas. i have countless backups of my personal legal music library and nobody can take it away from me
@@JeffGeerling honestly that sounds like what we have now? There aren't that many companies and the problem isn't the number of companies but the fact that they are driven by greed to the point they will not license any of their "intelectual property" to other streaming companies because they can make more money if they do it themselves
I've always pirated stuff I could never afford but these situations makes pirating such a more satisfying adventure
Another thing that's frustrating with streaming is gift giving.
A friend was traveling and I wanted to get them some movies/shows that are set in the city they were traveling to.
I ultimately gave up on the idea after much frustration, which sucked.
I really miss physical media!
Recently went through a similar thing with Final Space, one of my favorite shows. It was removed from my Amazon library (where I paid for the whole show) and from streaming services, because Warner Bros decided to turn it into a tax write-off. Without a physical copy I wouldnt ever be able to legally watch that show again...
It's also getting yanked from international Netflix catalogues imminently (well UK + Europe at least I know of) for the same reasons... I appreciate they're not ownership in the same sense, but it's infinitely stupid that any tax system exists where it's more financially viable to simply destroy content than allow it to live on, even with a small level of continuing royalty payments.
🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️
what was written when u bought this? Rent or buy? If buy then - at least in europe - u have full law to make copy of that.
so just download it, u paid for this already
Not to mention shows that have had individual episodes pulled such as Workaholics.
If a production get into tax write-off. Copyright should be vanished, because the compony dont want the production anyways.
We all know Jeff's guilty pleasure is Baby Shark do doo dooo doo do
Thank you for bringing more attention to this. Cory also pointed out that §1201 of the DMCA is "felony contempt of business model", which is how companies get away with it.
This is a loophole that companies use to prevent uses of their product that they don't like: it criminalises working around any restriction they put on what you own.
Don't live in the US? Doesn't matter. WIPO means we all get this law, whether we asked for it or not.
I used to work on DRM for a large tv streaming platform in the UK. It was infuriating the amount of ‘business requirements’ that just straight up made things worse for customers and made the system overall more complex than required.
Funny thing is, these extra paywalled features ended up getting very little subscriptions. (Think cable companies charging for a second set top box in another room)
Lol, I remember my satelite provider forcing us to pay extra to record more things at once.
Before even watching I know what this is about and honestly why TF does region locking even exist anymore
Eh ok I was slightly wrong but I just stopped supporting these services either by not watching or using P2P “resources”
Your question does have to do with this too though as lot of piracy also happens due to that idiotic region locking. They claim it that it's due to licensing contracts, but they are the ones making the damn contracts anyway. Same with games like Forza Horizon 3 for example. Can't obtain it at all anymore because some of the licensing deals ended.
Region locking is still a thing because TV broadcasters buy licenses to broadcast certain franchises. If those franchises are already on Netflix everywhere on day one, those licences become worthless. So it's usually part of the agreement to not have a show available on a streaming service until it has been broadcasted at least once. And if a broadcaster in a region is the only one allowed to broadcast a certain show, but don't bother with broadcasting it, the show may never become available in that region.
So basically, it's because media producers want to be paid over and over for the same product.
Because the corporations only want a "Global Economy" when it benefits them financially - for example, labor - else they're strict and militant protectionists.
@@CheapBastard1988 Yay dipping times 8 or so what a great system we live in.... also I agree with that user name :) lol
As long as a show has a DVD that can be bought, you might want to check with your local library. Most libraries these days have DVDs you can check out. What you do with them once you get them home is up to you though ;)
Well another thing I've done before is purchase bulk library extras-they offload the 2nd/3rd copies they buy after a few months/years (depending on the show's popularity), and you can get them for pennies on the dollar a lot of times!
@@JeffGeerling
And if the disc stops behaving well, you could jump on to a legally grey website and grab a copy
If anyone gets angry, just say that you are checking your own backup against a known good backup
@@MrHack4never You can legally download any copyrighted content or make any copy for your own use (even from pirate sources) as long as you own a legal copy.
You can possibly rip the content for a local backup, but you can’t download it legally, it must just be from your own copy. I’m no lawyer, that’s just what I heard about this. I’m also not against any of this necessarily, just correcting misinformation.
I should add that this is in the U.S. If you live in a country that cares about consumer rights it is probably legal there.
This is why I have 2043 CDs in my collection ATM. During the pandemic I realized that they way I was listening to music was terrible. Streaming Amazon Music through TV speakers is this what we have come to? We live in the day of Hi Def video but of low fi music with Bluetooth everything and low quality MP3s. I missed good sounding music. So I did research and I bought a good quality 2-Channel Amp, speakers, DAC, 5 disc CD changer and built a music streamer out of a Raspberry Pi 4 with a sperate hat and Volumio. I stream hi res music through Qobuz or flac files from my NAS(726GB worth) when I am feeling lazy. And break out the CDs in my 5 disc changer when I want to enjoy it more. I also have invested in a good portable headphone DAC and good in ear monitors to use with my phone when I am not home. Music and audio has now become a passion and hobby of mine. Be careful, it can become an expensive hobby very quickly.
Welcome to Australia Jeff 😊
Lots of content isn’t even available on any service - then they call us “the biggest pirates in the world” when all we want to do is watch or listen to their stuff 🤷♂️
Thanks Jeff for addressing this issue. It has been getting worse in the last couple of years. That made me decide to go to Plex and start buying CDs again and ripping them so they are "always" available for me. Also, it makes me much more selective on what spend my money. This seems to be the only alternative in this new "you don't own nothing" world we are living today.
💯
I hear that! When Google decided to shut down its near perfect Play Music service in favor of the astoundingly bad CZcams Music, I saw that as a wake up call. Went right back to buying CDs and ripping them.
I never really stopped caring about physical media personally. Some of the music I like simply cannot be streamed. That combined with streamable content being removed and it just makes sense to archive. To that end, I've got about 2TB of music alone in Plex plus associated content. This whole streaming deal just seems to wax worse in pursuit of profit.
I remember maybe a decade ago that the KLF discography wasn't available anywhere, so i had to go and buy a used CD of it all because the band decided they wanted to delete their WHOLE back catalog. God i hate streaming platforms.
That was an "artistic" decision, like burning the £1,000,000
So much for "Kopyright Liberation"
Well. KLF, what did you expect...
Alot of music would be lost media without piracy. Theres alot of punk, industrial and gothic that hasnt been repressed on cd or vinyl since more than 2 decades. None of it is on streaming either.
OMG I just remembered I have the "Justified and Ancient" CD single in a desk drawer in my bedroom, and the cassette single in a box in my basement.
"Mu Mu Land, Mu Mu Land, All bound for Mu Mu Land..."
I had that exact same issue with the original Chris Moyles’ parody album, so I found my old iPod that had all the songs, used some iPod-music-ripping software called sharepod and manually added it to my library on Apple Music. I honestly give up with streaming services and am probably buy a new denon amp or turntable.
I always tell my co-worker who only buys digital movies: you don't know those movies, you are just buying a license to view them.
the past couple of years I have been trying to get all my favourite shows on my plex server for this reason, I hate paying for multiple streaming services when they can remove my favourite show for whatever reason. I am glad you talked about this, and I want to see it get talked about more!
Have you tried PlexAmp for music???🤔
I had a movie taken away. Am I spending an excessive amount of money to keep all my stuff? Probably. But fuck relying on streaming services, especially with how convenient Plex and similar media services have gotten.
same thing here, except i also try to download anything i may watch that has already ended production, so that in case it disappears i can still have the opportunity to watch it
Stop using plex then. Jelly Fin.
@audas huh? Read again what you just wrote. As far as I can tell, everyone in this immediate thread is FOR using PLEX Server. No mention of "for" or "against" "JellyFin" has been made in this immediate thread. Check the context!!!😬
A service I used announced it would shutdown, and it would suck as I bought things on it. Then I found out a possible way to… have a local, drm free copy of the original files. I’m sad a service giving access to otherwise not available content has gone away, but as it was the only way to get said content legally? Not bothered by my workaround.
Hey Jeff, I really love the fact that you raised this issue. I’ve been working on a (legal) solution to this problem. However, I find it pretty difficult to point my focus on the whole digital media enterprise as there are so many legal nuances that pretty much make the whole “purchasing digital media” go against any consumer. Jellyfin is good and Navidrome (for music) is even better and since I want to put my focus on creating an actual open source license manager I’d really love to hear what you might think of my idea if you ever want to have a small conversation about this topic
"I play Bluey and Baby Shark for my kids!"
Me playing Rammstein and Opeth:
And this is why I still buy CDs and Blu-rays and put the extracted content on my server. And it's not just streaming services pulling the content just because it suits them - sometimes the streamed version is not complete, or missing features, and for some artists there are no streaming options accessible to me (some SE Asian artists in my case).
I caught hints of this in other episodes, but I didnt realize how strongly you felt about all this.
I thought I was just a crazy person getting old, but it seems more and more people are speaking out about this.
There has to be a way to hold permanent ownership of media that is purchased and released within an entirely digital substrate.
🤔🤔🤔🤔
This is definitely a situation where we the consumers can help each other.
And if the "help" ends up overcorrecting and enabling some actual freeloaders? Well maybe the IP brokers will relearn appreciation for customers and the value we place on their imaginary product.
I'm totally with you there Jeff. Over here in the UK the main subscription TV provider is Sky TV in their store they usually have the option that if you buy a movie in their store for a couple of extra pounds they will send you a bluray copy. Its a no frills copy with just the move and no extras, but at least you get to keep the copy.
when your streaming service disagree, it is time to sail the high sea
I wanted to expose my kids to music that my parents played when I was little.
Johnny Cash, the Beatles, Elton John, Elvis, etc.
And they loved it. I’d mix in their stuff too.
When my kids and their friends would bicker in the back seat, I’d let it go for a bit, boys will be boys, but rather then yell at them to stop, I’d quietly change to Andrea Bocelli, singing opera arias. “Dad! What is this? It’s HORRIBLE! It makes our ears hurt!”
So funny. I’d respond, “I’d rather listen to opera than bickering.”
And then, one day, “Dad, play that Funicula song!”
And that was the day I knew I’d accomplished something.
Later, when they were older, Led Zeppelin, Boston, Pink Floyd. The Eagles - Seven Bridges Road. Everyone would sing.
My 3 year old goes "ha, ha, ha, staying alive...."
indeed, there has been enough music produced until now that we don't need the media-less music productions of today.
@@Gunstick Everyone I listen to still has phsyical releases for new releases, both CD and Vinyl usually.
Some of them even basically run a website like mailorders worked back in the 80s and 90s.
Just now its more acessible and safer than back then, so you don't easily get restricted to top 40s music that major labels demand you listen to.
Its just the major labels trying to turn the most corporate and stale stuff in existance (aka the top 40s) into a live service. I wouldnt even know the names of the artists, considering I intentionally avoided listening to the radio for more than a decade by now. No point in that when I can listen to actually interesting music I like that is relatable to me instead.
It’s also tough when you are paying for streaming services but struggle to find the content you want to watch. Some services like Netflix are notorious about NOT integrating fully with the set top box experience, so I can’t search for content that’s hosted by Netflix through my AppleTV search that covers literally all of my other apps.
I use an app called JustWatch for cross-platform search. Do Apple maybe charge a fee to be included in their search? JustWatch include them so I can't see how other services couldn't.
"If I can't buy it, I can't steal it"
Honestly this is why I still love physical media plus purchasing MP3s to download. I have complete control over my music still to this day. I use Media Monkey on all my devices and pay for the sync part so I can have them on my phone. Best thing I ever did period for my music.
I am definitely looking more into hosting TV shows and movies I like in a NAS server in my home. Jeff, can you please do some more videos on backup? You made an excellent one two years ago but I (and I'm sure many others) would appreciate some more tutorials and how-tos around home lab backup and restore procedures whenever your video schedule/workload allows. Thanks as always :)
Recently encountered a similar thing with CZcams Music, but this one's bizzare. When I'm on wifi - all my playlists play as intended, but when I'm on mobile data, on the same phone, in the same app - more than 50% of songs are greyed out and unavailable. This doesn't happen on CZcams app directly. And I've seen forum posts of people having the same issue on random phone brands as far back as 5+ years ago. CZcams support has not responded.
It could be that the music you have is just video. The official music version is a lot more reliable as access goes... Many of the video on YT music have some sort restrictions due to copyright or just plain usage restrictions.
Nope. Every song has a separate "song" and "video" option when on wifi, and most just aren't available at all on data. Also, all of the same songs played as expected, in all playlists, up until a certain point when they didn't anymore.@@PrograError
With the exception of some game purchases, the only digital content that I pay for is music. DRM-free is the standard, and I feel reassured that my purchase can last in perpetuity so long as I take reasonable steps to maintain it. I'm living abroad now, and there are a ton of books and shows that I want to purchase, but the simple inability to easily transfer it out for back-ups or to use on other devices stops me. I've been screwed on digital purchases before. The exception for books is the occassional humblebundle that catches my eye.
It's not easy, but if you really want to own ebooks, a fair number of authors/publishers sell their ebooks without DRM. It will say so in the product description when you purchase. For example, a lot of TOR fantasy is sold without DRM, so your purchase gets you a .epub file that you can store wherever you like and can never be taken away from you. The product description will say something like, "At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied."
I never switched to streaming services for my music. It sucks that I can't discover new songs as easily, but I'd rather have my library on demand rather than hope that I have a good signal and listen to my music.
For what it's worth, all streaming platforms have offline mode. You can download content to listen to without an internet connection.
Heh, I honestly just rely upon recommendations, pull up the artist's page, and if it is outside the 18th century copyright terms, I'll pirate the music, if it is less than 15 years and I'll consider seeing if there are any physicals being sold by the artist that I can rip, but chances are I'll opt to just find an unofficial upload and just download that. I ain't giving Michael Jackson's family a dime if I wanna listen to thriller just once
EHHHHHH, that is iffy at best. Louis Rossmann covered it in one of his videos before, where even though he DOWNLOADED THE FILE, because he had no internet in the middle of nowhere, he could not listen to it. @@brennzzz
Yup, this is why I never "purchase" digital assets like movies and music. Unless they give you the raw file to keep. If you have to download their app to watch your purchased content. Then you don't own it. They can stop anytime and leave you hanging with no recourse. And likely says that in the TOS that they can stop providing you access at any time.
They've done that to me before, and it shoved me down the path of piracy
This is why among the digital stores for digital goods, i like GOG. They let you own the games you buy through them. Offline installers, rarely any drm, etc.
Last month, I spent some time in hospital. I took my mobile phone with me, on which I had something like 125 albums, most of them ripped from CDs but with a handful of purchased downloads, stored on the SD Card. I also downloaded the Spotify app so I could get at some favourite playlists on my account that I listen to on my laptop. After the surgery, to cheer myself up, I opened the Music Library on my SD card (phone) to listen to something.......not a single piece of music there. The entire Library, a week's worth plus of music that I've been carrying around and listening to for a good 10 years, has disappeared. I Deleted the Spotify app (since its addition was the only change I had made to my phone) but the Library is still missing. I am absolutely furious about it, but I have no idea what has happened nor who to contact!
"Welcome to the party, Pal." As I found out in the late nineties when my wee one was of that age, Disney would pull things out of print for periods of time (driving the ebay market for their vids up) and then bring them back into print after a while. I'm sure that they're doing the same thing now, both with physical media as well as on-line "purchases", having burned people by pulling things from their Amazon library, as Rebecca found out back in 2012 when AMZN pulled her purchase of Puss in Boots from her library "due to licensing restrictions".
As to music choices, yes, she did the usual kid music, although we steered her towards Muppet versions of things … and our morning commute music was one of the local college radio stations. She enjoyed head-banging to punk way back when. When it came time for her senior thesis in college, she chose Stravinsky.
🤘
I have my own home server hosting my ripped movie collection but it's getting harder to purchase physical media. Best buy announced they are going to stop selling blu-rays, and many shows I watch aren't available on physical media. I'm in my mid 30's and have NEVER pirated content but as streaming services multiply, the costs rise and the content gets removed from here and added there... the high seas are calling pretty loud.
(A friend of mine) Just stated pirating again for the first time in over 10 years… feels good!
Get a VPN and join us!
I had a strange thing happen with a movie I had bought on iTunes. We went to watch it on the Apple TV but I couldn't see it, so I went through my purchased movies and found that it wasn't available any more because it had been replaced with a different edit. So I'd have to buy it again if I wanted to see it on the Apple TV. However with Apple, as it was still in my library, I could download a local copy of it and stream it from my computer to the Apple TV. Not an elegant solution but it's nice to know that the movie I paid for is still available....For now...
Every landlord's dream: "I'm renting. So it's not I have a right to anything" (c) Jeef Geerling
“You will own nothing all you’ll be happy”.
Piracy is no longer a crime 😈
Very much appreciate this measured response to the way things have gone. I recall way back when Netflix and CZcams were starting to gain popularity people would say they would pay for streaming rather than pirate because it was more conveniently offered, but things have gone the other way again and accessing the content you want has gotten harder. I've been backing up my movies for over a decade and as I got good deals on the content I enjoy I gradually dropped streaming services that dropped the content I watched, now I'm down to some "free with ads" stuff and Crunchyroll (because anime on Blu-ray is unreasonably priced for seasons and movies prices stay high for too long, if they ever come down).
Spot on! I would much prefer to pay monthly for access to all of my content and not have to host and manage a server and hardware, but nothing provides the content the way I want. So I, like you, host it myself on my NAS, and I couldn't be happier.
Dude I think this is the first video that feels actually conversational. it feels relatable getting mad about shows not being available, songs being gone etc.
Reasons I buy a lot of my favourite music and have mp3/WAVs on a hard drive:
It's the interesting that you bring up music in the topic of enshittification of movies and TV shows. Piracy of music was a massive problem before Spotify showed how if you have all the content you want it one place people will be willing to pay for it. Netflix also discovered this when they offered their catalogue of films for streaming. Unfortunately Netflix failed to learn the lesson of Spotify and instead of broadening their library, they stopped hosting content people actually wanted and started creating their own (presumably because this was cheaper than buying licensing fees). As soon as other platforms started to fracture the market and more specifically, people actually started paying for multiple subscriptions, the course towards enshittification was set. Piracy is the only way this problem will get solved.
To be fair to Netflix, they jumped onto producing content themselves when they saw the writing on the wall. Once the large movie studios saw the profit margins Netflix was earning in the early days of streaming services, they decided they wanted a larger slice of that pie and decided to become streaming platforms themselves, pulling their content from Netflix' catalog. So what choice did they have? Plus, when Netflix begged to let them keep some of that stuff in the catalog - like "Friends" for instance - they had to pay large extortion fees in order to do so for a limited period. We should all be directing our anger towards those assholes at Disney and Warner Brothers instead...
@@RogerioPereiradaSilva77 they could have done what Spotify did and give more of their profits to the rights holders to temp them away from building their own streaming platform. But yes to be fair to Spotify, they did the right thing to improve short term profits which is no more than we can expect in a capitalist system.
@@aspuzling Not sure that whatever monetary value Netflix would be willing to share would amount to much more than scraps from, say, Disney's perspective. Not even sure that there is such a thing as an actual number that would satisfy the appetite of that particular company! But just for the sake of the exercise, let's say you are the owner of the IP of both Star Wars and Marvel and you have the resources to host your own streaming platform; why on Earth would you share the profits coming from these IPs with someone else when you can keep everything in the house?
And it is not like Netflix didn't try, is it? They paid the extortion fees to keep Friends in their catalog for another year and for all we know they fought to keep the rights for the Marvel TV shows that they produced themselves during their brief partnership with Marvel. One has to draw the line at some point.
One of the big issues is *exclusive* licensing deals. From the pre-internet days, the Movie and TV producers historically had a culture of exclusive licensing deals as part of their distribution model. They'd license each piece of content to a single home video distributor, one cable network, syndicate to one local TV station per market, etc. (often a different one in each country). Before the feds told them to knock it off, the movie studios even owned their own theaters. Music never had that: they always sold their music through a assortment of distributors and distribution channels, like how most other products work, and didn't really care as long as they got paid for it.
With my kids, it seems that the disapointments have taught them it's just not worth it. They don't listen to music and watch tv/movies like I did. And there's always another game to distract them. I don't listen or watch content like I use to. There's just too many hands trying to get into my pockets. I read alot and watch youtube (for now).
I JUST got into a band who’s music is available to stream everywhere, but not to buy anywhere. I found FLACs on a digital store but they won’t sell them to me in Canada or North America as a whole, but they will to my friend in Ireland. I’m just gonna get her to buy them all for me and pay her back, region licensing be darned.
I’m not much of an audiophile but I am a preservationist, so having all the music I like in lossless is important to me. I’ve never subscribed to a streaming service because I’d rather own what I love so it can’t be pulled away from me at any point. Screw streaming, let us own our music and movies and whatnot.
I just need to figure out how to play music through my Google home that isn't a streaming service.
im not a huge pirate; i do like to own physical copies of media and so far i havent run into all that much that i straight up cannot get physically, but like, if theres something i want, ima go get it. sometimes that means spending 30£ to import a 15 year old DVD from overseas, sometimes that means sailing those seven seas myself.
It's interesting because i ripped my CD collection 15 years ago and have ALWAYS bought mp3 albums since then. I've completely ignored the music streaming trend even though this approach makes me a dinosaur. But even normies are discovering the downsides of a world where you don't have the content in your control.
This man said mp3. If it's not flac or another lossless medium than your wasting your money and time.
Forget spaceships, I’ll just sail the high seas!
It even gives me this message with music I downloaded the MP3 of, not even on the iTunes store!! At least I rarely use my old iPhone SE for playing music, but even still it's really annoying.
We need strong user rights for digital content purchases. I like the "if buying isn't ownership statement" a lot.
I was here before the algorithm
but how?!
how?
same
"he who shall not be named"
Member probably??
this is why I always buy my music and movies, anything I cannot buy I pirate because I literally have no choice
3 or 4 years ago I went to the UK from USA for a vacation. I had CDs I had bought from Amazon back when they had a deal that if you bought the CD they'd provide them to you online also. I also had tracks and whole albums I'd bought the digital copies of. In preparation for the trip I downloaded them all onto my Kindle Fire. On the way to the UK I listened to music off the Fire the entire way. On reaching the hotel in the UK I connected the Kindle to the hotel wifi. Later, I tried to play something and found the entire downloaded library of digital music I had paid for had been erased off my Kindle. Apparently, bringing my Kindle to the UK meant I had taken it out of the "license" area and they erased everything. No music on the way back to the USA. And I got rid of my Fire and will never use an Amazon product for music again.
I think Louis Rossmann says we should all sail the high seas as the only correct thing to do. I only buy physical copies now, once I can no longer do that I'll be hoisting the jolly roger jk.
There;s a reason I have my own backup of music, locally, STORED. No stupid big boy dip corpo can mess with what I have, locally.
Unless I get a ransonware attack, designated to my machine(s). Which are slim to nun.
And that, I think, is actually Jeff's angry face.
this
is the first time I've seen this in music, but it isn't a new problem, its actually a really smart foresight from decades ago. Smart in a corporate way, not user-friendly way.
Wayy back when, before streaming services, publishers would have to spend loads of money to get stuff distributed internationally. This was way more prominent in video content since there was a very limited amount of channels, but the effect was that if a publishing company or tv network wanted to get stuff out there they'd need to do it through a foreign broadcaster.
These broadcasters drew up contracts which, particularly in television, specified exclusive distribution rights for their particular region. These contracts weren't specifically for television broadcasting, they foresaw that other means of broadcasting might be invented or even overtake conventional TV channels.
Of course the companies wanting to get their stuff sold internationally signed these contracts because they worked well for them at the time, and as they continued to release content internationally they kept renewing these contracts.
Then streaming services came around.
But the exclusivity in the contracts was non specific, it included streaming services, and the companies who drew up the distribution contracts aren't going to drop that part as it would make them redundant. So lets say HBO wants to make a new show and they want to sell it in Germany. Whichever company they leased German channels from can step in and say "nah-ah, u signed this contract back in 1970 something that means we have to distribute that on our services, and we don't have a streaming service, so legally you can't put that show here"
Its foreward thinking in the most bullshit way possible
Thank you for speaking out on this. Media preservation is so important. I have been buying more physical media than ever lately.
Dealing with Warner and UMG is a lot of work for streaming services. Some smaller labels like The Orchard are even worse. The only way anybody gets access is by having an agreement which can be almost instantly revoked from any/all markets by the label. They just need to push updated DDEX metadata to the service’s private API for labels. People don’t notice and don’t care … until they do LOL. But music on no-name labels is the most precarious. They randomly freak out and remove everything. Or make their own weird app. And obviously they didn’t hire a team of developers, so it’s always a sketchy situation with no hope of any real longevity for the pseudo-platform.
That is first class rant for the first world. I hope you somehow get access to the ladybug tunes your kids love .We are definitely at the mercy of big cooperations when it comes to these sort of issues
This is why I have all my music physically on SD card in my phone.
But that kills my storage💀💀💀
I’ve been doing this but for film and TV series on Blu-Ray for a few months using MakeMKV + a Pioneer BDR-UD04 drive.
One example is “The Martian” (2015) which I originally bought on iTunes but then it got removed. Plus the Blu-Ray releases often offer nice extras that streaming or digital purchase don’t.
EDIT 0: Also some standup routines from Robin Williams etc. aren’t available anymore on Spotify. I wish they were.
EDIT 1: At least some recent Star Trek shows do get Blu-Ray releases; like “Picard” and “Discovery”.
True, if you love the BTS stuff, the physical media is still the easiest (and sometimes only) way to see all that footage!
And some films like “Apollo 11” (2019) don’t have a nice 4K Blu-Ray so I had to go sail the seven seas of piracy and burned my own copy with the Pioneer BDR-UD04.
I fully support you on this Jef. The big companies stealing things you already paid for. They are the criminals here!
This is why I'm still as old schooler - I love to hold in hands album cover, what I just purchased and read lyrics while it's playing.. I can take out, even, old vinyls from countries, that didn't exist anymore and put them on player to enjoy.. 😂
And my daughter does the same..
As for Ladybug music, it would be a shame if someone downloaded the 320meg APK file on to your computer, unzip'ed it (because the APK is just a zip file), and extracted all the MP3 files in the archive because they are not encrypted. Though that would only give access to Blue, Pink, Green, and Summer one collections (and some free songs too).
It would also be a shame if someone decompiled the application and took a peek how it accesses the other collections.
Don't to that, that would be very very naughty and santa wouldn't bring you any presents this year!
I'm trying to transition back to buying physical media - the lack of ownership of something I pay money for is a huge concern.
And this is why I buy all my movies and music physically.
Yes, I miss out on the last 3 seasons of Expanse, any Star Wars series and such... But short of someone coming in to my house and taking away the disks, I will always have access to it.
CZcams music doesn't have this since you can always fall back on videos for audio
Love it. You need a new channel "Cranky Jeff". You and louis rossnann have it right.
#rantmode
I'd like to argue that some of the media disappearing is simply the end of contracts and business partnerships. The company has to remove it no matter what.
But I do agree that it sucks that things are designed not to be owned but borrowed long term. I fear what will happen if Valve ever stops being a company and Steam ends service.
IMO they shouldn't be allowed to use the terms 'buy' or 'purchase' if they are loaning out content on the terms of a temporary contract. Instead you could either 'rent' or 'lease' content, maybe.
@@JeffGeerling Yes!!! The fact that they don't use those terms is a form of Marketing 'Art'. It's subtle and insidious.
It's likely buried in that EULA or Purchase Terms we never read.
Such contracts should only restrict future sales, not content accessibility to those who have already purchased the content.
I worry about that too since especially since Microsoft had a plan to buy Valve. Every time there's a sale I check out GOG to see if some game from my back library is super cheap. GOG purchases are DRM free.
If you are not going to be able to honor a paid for copy (rather than rented) then offering it is fraud.
the reason i start recollecting movies, shows and music - i still enjoy streaming stuff (mainly music) for ease of use and to stumble upon stuff i didn't know... the xp - looking through your library in your shelf vs a display - is very different too.
I set up a jelly fin media server on the back of your recommendations and videos Jeff. Very rewarding project. I've become quite the data hoarder too this year. Thanks for your expertise
Yeah..!!! This is a very serious problem...over worldwide....Here in INDIA also we encounter this notification saying "This song/content isn't available in your region/country....!!" Then why the heck you show the title...?? that seems like the song is available but when I try to play it ....the notification pops-up...🤷🏻♂
Yeah, I'd rather they don't tempt you by showing the song... then saying 'you can't actually listen to it, haha!'
Every newly minted MBA should have a permanent shock collar attached. Whenever the rest of us hit some kind of en-ification like this, or forced arbitration, or price increases, or unskippable ads, or whatever, we could hit a button to deliver shocks to the responsible parties.
For these same reasons I have started to again download my music through 3rd party sites
I bought digital copies of my favourite movies to not have to bother with multiple streaming services. Well 5 years down the line 33% of them are already gone from my library. I’m looking to invest in a new NAS now….
if buying isn`t owning, piracy isn`t stealing i love that hehe