Skip to main content

Spotify, DRM, and other musings...

This year my music listening habits have changed to listening to my music library and to Spotify.

I found that I really like Spotify, since it gives me the right balance of the music I like while letting me discover new music based on my tastes. It also has the plus that the artist get paid for their work.

There is only one thing that I don't like about Spotify, and it's use of digital rights management(DRM). I can't agree on the use of DRM, since it restricts users right to control the software that runs on their devices.

DRM is not the way to help artists make a living, since efforts should be concentrated on making it easier for user to support their favorites artists. Adding artificial restrictions like DRM doesn't do much for help artists, and harm the user in more than one way.

Instead of restricting users, ways to make easier to support artists should be made available. In some ways, artists, producers and content creators should realize that once their creations are made public, they lose some of the control over it. People will use their work for their own purposes, and there isn't much they can do to stop this from happening.

The business model of the music industry has changes, and thus the way of making money has to change as well. The relationship between artists and their fans has changed as well, as such artists have to adapt.

For better or worse, artists and producers don't have as much control over their creations as they did before. New channels need to be found in order for them to be able to make a living.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Machenike and Linux Mint: quite a nice combo.

I've been using a Machenike L16A  with Linux Mint  as my daily driver for four months now, and I must admit that I'm impressed with how good the experience has been so far. The Machenike was recommended to me by a close friend about six months ago, since I told him that I was looking for a new laptop. He had bought one a while ago, and said that it was a solid machine. Not only that, Machenike laptops were quite a great value for the money since they are significantly cheaper than comparable laptops from the competitions. And to be honest, when I got my laptop i expected to be so, but not to the extent it has been so far. After four months, my laptop feels really snappy and the performance is just great. And since I upgraded to Linux Mint 22 Wilma, it only has gotten better. One of the areas where I see most improvement, in on the Bluetooth connectivity. It connects more consistently with the three Bluetooth headphone I use, and now I can see how much battery the headphones I...

Machenike L16A: a great value for the money.

I recently got a Machenike L16A to replace the HP laptop I've been using for about 4 years now, and it has been quite a good upgrade. The value for the price has been excellent, it has really felt like an upgrade. Specially going from 8Gb of RAM to 16Gb. I specially notice the better performance when at work, since I use a remote desktop. I simply don't see as much slowdowns on the same use. Most of the time, at work I've the remote desktop app, Firefox , Thunderbird , Spotify , or sometimes Rhythmbox , open at the same time and having 16Gb of RAM gives the performance I need since at time around 6-7Gb are used. I also feel the AMD Ryzen CPU has been quite an upgrade, since it has more cores and threads than the Intel CPU my HP laptop has. That makes for a better user experience. But, where I see the better user experience is on the keyboard, and display side of things. The keyboard keys got stuck often, making the track pad unusable and characters to repeat themselves. ...

Linux Mint going for the long-term support model was the right choice.

Ever since I stared using  Linux Mint  with the long-term support mantra with the version 19 Tara release, I've come to prefer Linux distros  that use development model rather than distros that release updates more often with shorter support windows. Even though I upgrade to the new Linux Mint release as soon it becomes available, knowing that I don't have to rush it and that the testing to make sure nothing is broken with the new release is a bit more intense, gives me feel a bit safer about thing will continue working as I used to and expect them to. Besides, all the apps I use are updated as continuously. As such, I don't need to worry using versions of those apps that fall behind. Not only the that, with updates to Linux Mint come as needed and the point releases keep bring the big releases that weren't included at the original release of the OS. For my needs, Linux Mint cover them all, and it gets better with time. With each release, Linux Mint keeps feeling like ...