How I started listening to music legally and why it's still inconvenient

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Five reasons that prove streaming is not as convenient as it is commonly believed.

Over the past two years, I've tried all of the Big Three's streaming services: Apple Music, Google Play Music, and Yandex. Music. I also had to use the less popular Deezer and Zvooq. This experience led me to a disappointing conclusion: all streaming services are terrible. And that's why.

1. There are no necessary tracks in the library

The lack of favorite tracks is a real headache for those who decided to stop stealing music. This is most clearly manifested in the Yandex. Music library, in which one cannot find discography even of such popular performers as Arctic Monkeys or Franz Ferdinand.

"Google Play Music" is also not far away, which has only two Rammstein tracks in its database. Many services allow you to upload your songs, and this partially solves the problem. Only this is inconvenient and not particularly legal, so it doesn't count.

There are only two Rammstein songs from the soundtrack to "Lost Highway" in the "Google Play Music" and "Yandex. Music" library.

Hot Chip is a popular British band performing at fashion music festivals, including in Russia. The group's discography includes more than 20 releases, but Yandex. Music offers only remixes

If you listen to underground music, then even Apple Music will not cope with your requests. Many musicians don't bother uploading their tracks to streaming services, distributing them to more suitable Bandcamp, SoundCloud or, if everything is really bad, VKontakte.

So the process of creating an ideal media library turns into a titanic work: you have to put together what is scattered all over the Internet. Of course, you can subscribe to Boom and listen to what has been collected in the VKontakte playlist for years, but this shop will also be closed someday.

2. Tracks and albums disappear

Tracks that you listened to yesterday may become grayed out and not playable. This is not a service glitch - this is the complex nature of the relationship between copyright holders and sites. Sometimes songs and albums are deleted or re-uploaded. As a result, they disappear from the cache or from the service's music library.

This is not a very common problem. In my two years with Apple Music, I only came across it a couple of times. But still, my attitude towards my player in my smartphone has changed. Now I'm never 100% sure if it has everything I need.

3. No high quality music

Most of the services offer music at either 256 or 320 Kbps. The outsider in this field is Boom with a random bitrate of custom music, and the leader is Deezer with access to lossless tracks for 339 rubles per month. At the same time, the service does not meet the needs of owners of mobile devices with good sound chips and gives access to FLAC only in desktop mode.

Of course, you can buy music in FLAC and ALAC separately, but if we are talking about package deals for audiophiles, there is nothing to choose from.

4. Music is inconvenient to save

To add an album or playlist to yourself, you need to click on "Add" once, and then again to save the music for offline listening. The algorithms in different services may differ, but downloading music with extensive discographies is always a pain.

If we talk about the discographies of popular artists, there is a great risk of downloading the same songs several times: as part of albums, maxi-singles and various Greatest Hits compilations. This is how endless takes of Let It Be and Bohemian Rhapsody appear in the smartphone's memory.

5. Everyone uses different services

When I am asked to drop a track or playlist, I don’t know how to do it. My Apple Music link will not help anyone who subscribes to Yandex or Google Play. "Yandex. Music" is becoming the most universal with the possibility of free listening online, but it is still inconvenient. I do not want to search for anything and make playlists in other services. I want to click Submit and let computers solve human problems for themselves.

The fact that a song is an encoded file that cannot be transferred via Bluetooth or written to a USB flash drive is unthinkable for many. We can only hope that someday Spotify will come to us, everyone will subscribe to it together and be able to share music in a couple of taps. None of the other services have been able to unite even half of those with whom I share music.

As inconvenient as it is to listen to music legally, being a pirate in 2018 is even worse. Some solutions for bypassing locks are still found on Android, but it is much easier for Apple users to pay a couple of hundred rubles than to suffer with the creation of an illegal music library.

Streaming and legal content have not yet come into our lives completely, but downloading albums from trackers is somehow even indecent. If you are still in doubt whether to start paying for music or not, then I have bad news for you - sooner or later you will have to do it. And even worse, you will have to pay, including for the lack of tracks in the service databases, the inability to share music with everyone and the instability of your own offline collection.