The first one is pretty much down to, as Gabe Newell puts it, “piracy is a service problem”. Spotify came along and (initially) provided a much better service compared to pirating your music at the time. Once they created the market segment, competitors started their own streaming subscriptions. I’d also say the Google music “upload 50,000 tracks for free” got a lot of former pirates to jump.
Now the services are going through the same enshittification that most popular online services seem to be going through, we can see piracy increasing again. Someone will notice and fill the gap in providing a good service again at some point and the pendulum will swing once more
The first one is pretty much down to, as Gabe Newell puts it, “piracy is a service problem”. Spotify came along and (initially) provided a much better service compared to pirating your music at the time. Once they created the market segment, competitors started their own streaming subscriptions. I’d also say the Google music “upload 50,000 tracks for free” got a lot of former pirates to jump.
Now the services are going through the same enshittification that most popular online services seem to be going through, we can see piracy increasing again. Someone will notice and fill the gap in providing a good service again at some point and the pendulum will swing once more