2024-10-10

On owning media in the digital age.

I've been thinking quite a bit about my thoughts on acquiring media, both physical and digital. I believe my opinions about physical media is quite similar to most of my friends (i.e. acquire it whenever possible; digital, particularly streamed or any other third-party buy is not forever), but I think my thoughts on digital material might differ from others. I've been steadily moving away from using services that aren't within my own control, both for a want of ownership of it and for ethical reasons (my data on my computers, not for sale). At the present, the biggest things I use third-party services for that I could do something about is email and music. Email isn't going to change anytime soon (unfortunately a gmail is Damn Nice To Have), but music could. I mostly listen to things on Spotify, Apple Music if I'm feeling fancy/using nice speakers, and have a few albums that I've purchased digitally or been gifted from friends on my laptop.

And this is where I start to drift into the realm of what's the right choice. When listening to music on Spotify, I'm doing so with the understanding that very little of my subscription fees are going to the artist. Apple Music is a little better, but I know that when I buy music from the artist that the Single Dollar I pay them for a song will be worth more than streaming that song a thousand times (which happens very rarely). If the artist basically isn't receiving any income from streaming, than why is it unethical to just pirate the album to have locally? Combined with particularly fucked licensing and copyright agreements, many of my favourite albums aren't available to stream anymore (or only in other countries), or a friend will decide to stop paying the hosting fee and it gets grayed out. The streaming service still has the music, so why can't I?

So, in short, I've started noinking music. For the most part its been limited to hard-to-find albums (think advantage Lucy's first album, which was a bitch to find flacs of) and music I already own physically (on CD or LP) but not digitally. That latter case feels the most justifiable: I literally already own the music, I'm just converting the format in the easiest way possible. Hard-to-find is fine too. But a part of me gets rather upset when I grab something that I could have acquired with money. It would've been a little pricey (10$ or so), but not the worst. But it would get fussy when I'm listening to a bunch of new music and have to pay for it all, but again, managable. The same goes for ebooks, which are easy to grab online and offer instant satisfaction when my library has a two month hold-wait. But, crucially, (and what many anti-piracy arguments harp on,) this means that money doesn't go to the artist, to the author, to the creator. I love these creative projects (I have a writing-focused website and all), but it sucks to not give cash to the folks I want to support. So I do give them cash when I have it, and pirate shit otherwise.

Anyways, 

here's a list of all the music I currently own if you're interested. I'm happy to pass it along and it feels a bit more /ethical/ than straight noinking it to me (because someone has paid the artist for this, yknow?).

alice<AT>ahclauss.com  or  @legallyahc@isometry.group

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