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Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There

Apparently it's a common business practice. Spotify (even though I can't find any proof) seems to have build their software and business on pirated music. There is some more in this Article [0]. https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files-some-from-pirate-bay-170509/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotifys-beta-used-pirate-mp3-files... Funky quote: > Rumors that early versions of Spotify used ‘pirate’ MP3s have been floating around the Internet for years. People who had access to the service in the beginning later reported downloading tracks that contained ‘Scene’ labeling, tags, and formats, which are the tell-tale signs that content hadn’t been obtained officially.

motbus3 1y ago
They had a second company (which I don't remember the name) that allowed users to backup and share their music. When they were exposed they dug that as deep as they could
- pyman 1y ago
  No. There's no credible evidence Spotify had any secret second company that allowed users to back up and share music without authorisation
pyman 1y ago
It was the opposite. Their mission was to combat music piracy by offering a better, legal alternative. Daniel Ek said: "my mission is to make music accessible and legal to everyone, while ensuring artists and rights holders got paid" Also, the Swedish government has zero tolerance for piracy.
- pyman 1y ago
  I know this might come as a shock to those living in San Francisco, but things are different in other parts of the world, like Uruguay, Sweden and the rest of Europe. From what I’ve read, the European committee actually cares about enforcing the law.
- eviks 1y ago
  Mission is just words, they can mean the opposite of deeds, but they can't be the opposite, they live in different realms.
KoolKat23 1y ago
There's plenty of startups gone legitimate. Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas. Plenty of people have ideas. We only really see those that successfully cross it. Small things EULA breaches, consumer licenses being used commercially for example.
- pyman 1y ago
  There's no credible evidence Spotify built their company and business on pirated music. This is a narrative that gets passed around in certain circles to justify stealing content.
  - YPPH 1y ago
    "Stealing" isn't an apt term here. Stealing a thing permanently deprives the owner of the thing. What you're describing is copyright infringement, not stealing. In this context, stealing is often used as a pejorative term to make piracy sound worse than it is. Except for mass distribution, piracy is often regarded as a civil wrong, and not a crime.
    - pyman 1y ago
      Pirating a book and selling it on claude.ai is stealing, both legally and morally. Pirating 7 million books, remixing their content, and using that to make money on Claude.ai is like counterfeiting 7 million branded products and selling them on your Shopify website. The original creators don't get payment, and someone's profiting off their work. Try doing that yourself and you'd get a knock on the door real quick.
      - KoolKat23 1y ago
        Properly remixing the content so that it can be considered distinct would be fair use. You can't copyright a style, concept or idea. Also mostly this would be a civil lawsuit for "damages".
pjc50 1y ago
"recording obtained unofficially" and "doesn't have rights to the recording" are separate things. So they could well have got a license to stream a publisher's music but that didn't come with an actual copy of some/all of the music.
techjamie 1y ago
Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009. https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technology-e-gang-09-japan.html#18aa3f54576a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol... https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-anime-content/ https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...
- haiku2077 1y ago
  Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.
  - techjamie 1y ago
    Pirated games translated to Polish if possible, because game devs weren't catering to the market with translations, and Poland didn't respect foreign copyright.
- Cyph0n 1y ago
  Yep, they were huge too - virtually anyone who watched free anime back then would have known about them. My theory is that once they saw how much traffic they were getting, they realized how big of a market (subbed/dubbed) anime was.
- Shank 1y ago
  And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!
dathinab 1y ago
not just Spotify pretty much any (most?) current tech giant was build by - riding a wave of change - not caring too much about legal constraints (or like they would say now "distrupting" the market, which very very often means doing illigal shit which beings them far more money then any penalties they will ever face from it) - or caring about ethics too much - and for recent years (starting with Amazone) a lot of technically illegal financing (technically undercutting competitors prices long term based on money from else where (e.g. investors) is unfair competitive advantage (theoretically) clearly not allowed by anti monopoly laws. And before you often still had other monopoly issues (e.g. see wintel) So yes not systematic not complying with law to get unfair competitive advantage knowing that many of the laws are on the larger picture toothless when applied to huge companies is bread and butter work of US tech giants
- benced 1y ago
  As you point out, they mostly did this before they were large companies (where the public choice questions are less problematic). Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody.
  - FirmwareBurner 1y ago
    >Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody. Are all music creators better off now than before Spotify?
    - megaman821 1y ago
      The music pie is bigger now but it is split between more people. Spotify brings in the most revenue for musicians as a whole.
      - oblio 1y ago
        Is that why the biggest source of income for musicians these days are live shows? Streaming basically killed recording income for 99.9999% of musicians.
Workaccount2 1y ago
The common meme is that megacorps are shamelessly criminalistic organizations that get away with doing anything they can to maximize profits, while true in some regard, totally pales in comparison to the illegal things small businesses and start-ups do.
reaperducer 1y ago
Apparently it's a common business practice. It's not a common business practice. That's why it's considered newsworthy. People on the internet have forgotten that the news doesn't report everyday, normal, common things, or it would be nothing but a listing of people mowing their lawns or applying for business loans. The reason something is in the news is because it is unusual or remarkable. "I saw it online, so it must happen all the time" is a dopy lack of logic that infects society.
- marapuru 1y ago
  You are right on that. I’ll edit my post to reflect that. Edit: Apologies, I can’t edit it anymore.
lysace 1y ago
You are missing the point. Spotify had permission from the copyright holders and/or their national proxies to use those songs in a limited beta in Sweden. They didn't have access to clean audio data directly from the record companies, so in many cases they used pirated rips instead. What you really should be asking is whether they infringed on the copyrights of the rippers. /s
pembrook 1y ago
It wasn’t just the content being pirated, but the early Spotify UI was actually a 1:1 copy of Limewire.
NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago
This isn't as meaningful as it sounds. Nintendo was apparently using scene roms for one of the official emulators on Wii (I think?). Spotify might have received legally-obtained mp3s from the record companies that were originally pulled from Napster or whatever, because the people who work for record companies are lazy hypocrites.
- idonotknowwhy 1y ago
  The Nes classic console. The roms had an iNes emulator header lol. And the playstation classic used an opensource ps1 emulator. There was also some steam game ported from GameCube, and it had the Dolphin Emulator FPS counter in the corner of part of the trailer :D I also remember reading that 2 of the PCSX2 devs ended up working on the EmotionEngine chip emulator for PS3 consoles with partial software emulation of PS2 (The CECH 02 and later models where they removed the EmotionEngine chip)
cmiles74 1y ago
Google Music originally let people upload their own digital music files. The argument at the time was that whether or not the files were legally obtained was not Google’s problem. I believe Amazon had a similar service. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1447323/google-reportedly-launching-online-music-locker-service.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1447323/google-reporte...
leviathant 1y ago
YouTube's initial success came from being able to serve, on a global scale, user-uploaded, largely uncredited copyright violations of both video and audio. Facebook's "pivot to video" similarly relied on user-uploaded unlicensed video content, now not just pulling from television and film, but from content creators on platforms like YouTube. Today, every "social" platform is now littered with "no copyright infringement intended" and "all credit to the original" copy-and-paste junk. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of remix culture – but I believe appropriating and monetizing the work of others without sharing the reward is a destructive cycle. And while there are avenues for addressing this, they're designed for the likes of Universal, Sony, Disney, etc. (I've had original recordings of original music flagged by megacorps because the applause triggered ContentID.) AI slop further poisons the well. It's rough going out there.

motbus3 1y ago

They had a second company (which I don't remember the name) that allowed users to backup and share their music. When they were exposed they dug that as deep as they could

pyman 1y ago
No. There's no credible evidence Spotify had any secret second company that allowed users to back up and share music without authorisation

pyman 1y ago

It was the opposite. Their mission was to combat music piracy by offering a better, legal alternative. Daniel Ek said: "my mission is to make music accessible and legal to everyone, while ensuring artists and rights holders got paid" Also, the Swedish government has zero tolerance for piracy.

pyman 1y ago
I know this might come as a shock to those living in San Francisco, but things are different in other parts of the world, like Uruguay, Sweden and the rest of Europe. From what I’ve read, the European committee actually cares about enforcing the law.
eviks 1y ago
Mission is just words, they can mean the opposite of deeds, but they can't be the opposite, they live in different realms.

KoolKat23 1y ago

There's plenty of startups gone legitimate. Society underestimates the chasm that exists between an idea and raising sufficient capital to act on those ideas. Plenty of people have ideas. We only really see those that successfully cross it. Small things EULA breaches, consumer licenses being used commercially for example.

pyman 1y ago
There's no credible evidence Spotify built their company and business on pirated music. This is a narrative that gets passed around in certain circles to justify stealing content.
- YPPH 1y ago
  "Stealing" isn't an apt term here. Stealing a thing permanently deprives the owner of the thing. What you're describing is copyright infringement, not stealing. In this context, stealing is often used as a pejorative term to make piracy sound worse than it is. Except for mass distribution, piracy is often regarded as a civil wrong, and not a crime.
  - pyman 1y ago
    Pirating a book and selling it on claude.ai is stealing, both legally and morally. Pirating 7 million books, remixing their content, and using that to make money on Claude.ai is like counterfeiting 7 million branded products and selling them on your Shopify website. The original creators don't get payment, and someone's profiting off their work. Try doing that yourself and you'd get a knock on the door real quick.
    - KoolKat23 1y ago
      Properly remixing the content so that it can be considered distinct would be fair use. You can't copyright a style, concept or idea. Also mostly this would be a civil lawsuit for "damages".

pjc50 1y ago

"recording obtained unofficially" and "doesn't have rights to the recording" are separate things. So they could well have got a license to stream a publisher's music but that didn't come with an actual copy of some/all of the music.

techjamie 1y ago

Crunchyroll was originally an anime piracy site that went legit and started actually licensing content later. They started in mid-2006, got VC funding in 2008, then made their first licensing deal in 2009. https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technology-e-gang-09-japan.html#18aa3f54576a https://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/online-anime-video-technol... https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-anime-content/ https://venturebeat.com/business/crunchyroll-for-pirated-ani...

haiku2077 1y ago
Good Old Games started out with the founders selling pirated games on disc at local markets.
- techjamie 1y ago
  Pirated games translated to Polish if possible, because game devs weren't catering to the market with translations, and Poland didn't respect foreign copyright.
Cyph0n 1y ago
Yep, they were huge too - virtually anyone who watched free anime back then would have known about them. My theory is that once they saw how much traffic they were getting, they realized how big of a market (subbed/dubbed) anime was.
Shank 1y ago
And now Crunchyroll is owned by (through a lot of companies, like Aniplex of America, Aniplex, A1 Pictures) Sony, who produces a large amount of anime!

dathinab 1y ago

not just Spotify pretty much any (most?) current tech giant was build by - riding a wave of change - not caring too much about legal constraints (or like they would say now "distrupting" the market, which very very often means doing illigal shit which beings them far more money then any penalties they will ever face from it) - or caring about ethics too much - and for recent years (starting with Amazone) a lot of technically illegal financing (technically undercutting competitors prices long term based on money from else where (e.g. investors) is unfair competitive advantage (theoretically) clearly not allowed by anti monopoly laws. And before you often still had other monopoly issues (e.g. see wintel) So yes not systematic not complying with law to get unfair competitive advantage knowing that many of the laws are on the larger picture toothless when applied to huge companies is bread and butter work of US tech giants

benced 1y ago
As you point out, they mostly did this before they were large companies (where the public choice questions are less problematic). Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody.
- FirmwareBurner 1y ago
  >Seems like the breaking of these laws was good for everybody. Are all music creators better off now than before Spotify?
  - megaman821 1y ago
    The music pie is bigger now but it is split between more people. Spotify brings in the most revenue for musicians as a whole.
    - oblio 1y ago
      Is that why the biggest source of income for musicians these days are live shows? Streaming basically killed recording income for 99.9999% of musicians.

Workaccount2 1y ago

The common meme is that megacorps are shamelessly criminalistic organizations that get away with doing anything they can to maximize profits, while true in some regard, totally pales in comparison to the illegal things small businesses and start-ups do.

reaperducer 1y ago

Apparently it's a common business practice. It's not a common business practice. That's why it's considered newsworthy. People on the internet have forgotten that the news doesn't report everyday, normal, common things, or it would be nothing but a listing of people mowing their lawns or applying for business loans. The reason something is in the news is because it is unusual or remarkable. "I saw it online, so it must happen all the time" is a dopy lack of logic that infects society.

marapuru 1y ago
You are right on that. I’ll edit my post to reflect that. Edit: Apologies, I can’t edit it anymore.

lysace 1y ago

You are missing the point. Spotify had permission from the copyright holders and/or their national proxies to use those songs in a limited beta in Sweden. They didn't have access to clean audio data directly from the record companies, so in many cases they used pirated rips instead. What you really should be asking is whether they infringed on the copyrights of the rippers. /s

pembrook 1y ago

It wasn’t just the content being pirated, but the early Spotify UI was actually a 1:1 copy of Limewire.

NoMoreNicksLeft 1y ago

This isn't as meaningful as it sounds. Nintendo was apparently using scene roms for one of the official emulators on Wii (I think?). Spotify might have received legally-obtained mp3s from the record companies that were originally pulled from Napster or whatever, because the people who work for record companies are lazy hypocrites.

idonotknowwhy 1y ago
The Nes classic console. The roms had an iNes emulator header lol. And the playstation classic used an opensource ps1 emulator. There was also some steam game ported from GameCube, and it had the Dolphin Emulator FPS counter in the corner of part of the trailer :D I also remember reading that 2 of the PCSX2 devs ended up working on the EmotionEngine chip emulator for PS3 consoles with partial software emulation of PS2 (The CECH 02 and later models where they removed the EmotionEngine chip)

cmiles74 1y ago

Google Music originally let people upload their own digital music files. The argument at the time was that whether or not the files were legally obtained was not Google’s problem. I believe Amazon had a similar service. https://www.computerworld.com/article/1447323/google-reportedly-launching-online-music-locker-service.html https://www.computerworld.com/article/1447323/google-reporte...

leviathant 1y ago

YouTube's initial success came from being able to serve, on a global scale, user-uploaded, largely uncredited copyright violations of both video and audio. Facebook's "pivot to video" similarly relied on user-uploaded unlicensed video content, now not just pulling from television and film, but from content creators on platforms like YouTube. Today, every "social" platform is now littered with "no copyright infringement intended" and "all credit to the original" copy-and-paste junk. Don't get me wrong, I'm a fan of remix culture – but I believe appropriating and monetizing the work of others without sharing the reward is a destructive cycle. And while there are avenues for addressing this, they're designed for the likes of Universal, Sony, Disney, etc. (I've had original recordings of original music flagged by megacorps because the applause triggered ContentID.) AI slop further poisons the well. It's rough going out there.