Not sure why the jump to piracy here, but it’s consistent with your thoughts on the rest of the thread. “Won’t somebody think about the music labels that screw artists? It’s piracy ruining everything!”

Tell me you don’t know how Qbittorrent works without doing so. It’s not a streaming service. If you’re redownloading on BT each time you want to listen, my god, are you wasting disk space.

In particular, the rule will require online platforms to confirm the ages of users before showing them algorithmically-curated feeds or sending them notifications at night.

Oh, no! Notifications at night! Here’s an idea: Charge your kids’ devices (phone, tablet, laptop, what have you) in the kitchen so they don’t have them in bed. I don’t understand why we need laws to address shitty parenting that don’t begin to touch on shitty parenting.

There are more than two sides to almost all topics. Polarization has led to the death of nuance.

Yeah, but the truth gets you fired these days.

Not just the left, a trans roommate. It’s like the junta is ordering off the menu.

Well, that’s a fun assessment. Essentially we’ve hit the era of killing real people “for the lulz” and internet points? I mean, at least he went for someone vile instead of just killing random students as one usually does.

Any opportunity to foment outrage.

“If you don’t pay for it then you are pirating” is not a discussion, it’s an erroneous blanket statement.

My 1,700 tracks, most at 320kpbs, take up 20GB. Albums add another 4GB. My four-year-old phone has 256GB of storage. I’m not sure where this “fortune” comes from. Especially when you’re paying extra for data monthly just to stream. You’re still spending the money, just pretending it’s unrelated to music.

Being subscribed is not the same as listening. In fact, I use a Firefox add-on to specifically exclude what I’ve categorized as music. It is vanishingly rare that I turn that setting off.

I strongly associate any given track with the mood I was in when I first heard it, and I’ve not been in anywhere near a good mood since the election, so listening to new stuff at this point would give it negative connotations that would forever follow that track around in my mind.

So I stick with “college road trip” or “I just met my (ex-)wife” sorts of stuff. I don’t exercise or anything, and my earbuds are lost somewhere in my van. I rarely listen to music, period, because it reminds me of not being homeless.

Wait … people still listen to the radio?

“Here’s a shitload of ads and someone in Cincinnati choosing what hundreds of stations play.”

Almost all of my collection was pirated in college (it didn’t help that someone stole my 96 CD binder from my car). Once I was making OK money and paid downloads became a thing, I slowly rectified that. It was hard to find electronic music any other way in the '90s.

Are most artists still aligned with labels these days? I was under the impression that there’s been a massive shift to going independent.

LOL. “I’ve been considering CDs” is not something I’ve heard since the '80s. And you don’t really need specialized hardware to rip tracks to digital. Literally any optical drive can do that.

Generic and shitty is the most common form of electronica.

Source: was raver in the '90s.

I hope you enjoyed feeling like you had a “gotcha” moment. When on my computer, yeah, I watch some YouTube, but mostly news and late-night monologues. I sure as shit don’t pay for it.

OK, so fix the tax code to the extent that corporations are actually the main funder of the government (since they’re the only constituents with any power) and pay me a living wage, and I’ll … oh, no, wait. The vast majority of my purchase doesn’t go to the artist?

“Rights” are for the rich.

I highly doubt any artist would genuinely care if someone pirated their music

That’s literally what happened with Napster. Metallica were rather pissed, and Napster shut down, leading to the fun P2P days of Whac-a-Mole.

OK. Lots of assumptions here. I haven’t listened to the radio since the '90s, and I’ve never paid for cable.

My preferred genres are progressive house and trance, and I got into the rave scene about the time I stopped listening to the radio. I started my collection via fservs on IRC, ratio FTP sites and then Napster and P2P, totally obviating the record labels. I’m subscribed to various music producers on YouTube for when I’m thinking I want something new, and if it makes me cry, off to Beatport I go.

So, like, not to be rude, but you got every assumption wrong.