Spotify's Beta Used 'Pirate' MP3 Files, Some from Pirate Bay (2017)

Original Article ↗ Hacker News Discussion ↗

Early Spotify and Pirate MP3s

  • Multiple early users say beta-era Spotify clearly contained pirated files, often matching known scene/BitTorrent rips (same glitches, bad encodes, inconsistent bitrates).
  • Some recall the beta catalog being a superset of employees’ and testers’ private libraries, with huge breadth and many obscure or bootleg releases.
  • Early clients reportedly scanned local drives, uploaded missing tracks to Spotify’s backend, and even shared local music on the network—enough for some workplaces to block it.

Legal and Copyright Nuances

  • Central question: if Spotify was paying labels, does the pirated origin of the file matter?
    • One side: if rights holders are compensated, using a convenient pirated copy is practically and morally minor.
    • Other side: if they were downloading from public torrents and seeding, that’s still infringement, regardless of later licensing.
  • Discussion of US vs EU law: ripping your own CD vs downloading an identical MP3; some jurisdictions treat “illicit lineage” of bits as legally significant.
  • RIAA/MPAA are seen as lacking formal enforcement power but wielding huge practical power via ruinous lawsuits and license blackmail (e.g., playlist and trademark disputes).

Startups, Crime, and Survivorship Bias

  • Many frame Spotify as part of a broader pattern: early success via piracy or regulatory arbitrage (YouTube, Crunchyroll, Uber, Airbnb, various file lockers).
  • Viewpoint A: “Don’t worry about regulatory—if you get big enough, you can clean it up later.”
  • Viewpoint B: this is corrosive; most who try this fail or get crushed (Grooveshark, Megaupload, Kim Dotcom, FTX, Theranos), and we only remember the winners.
  • Several draw parallels to modern AI training on copyrighted data: same “break rules first, legalize later” dynamic.

User Reactions, Lock-In, and Self-Hosting

  • Many fondly remember beta Spotify as “magical” compared to today’s more restricted, label-driven catalog; lots of playlists were gutted once licensing went legit.
  • This pushed some users permanently back to “files on disk,” NAS setups, or services like Bandcamp, Tidal, or self-hosted music lockers.

Spotify vs YouTube and the Rogan Factor

  • Some resent a perceived fixation on Spotify’s sins while YouTube, with much larger cultural and infringement impact, is treated as inevitable infrastructure.
  • Others single out Spotify for aggressively platforming and paying Joe Rogan, describing personal harm from COVID discourse and vowing to boycott Spotify regardless of YouTube’s behavior.

Artist Compensation and Alternatives

  • Several argue the real immorality isn’t the early piracy, but that Spotify’s mature model still underpays artists while aligning tightly with labels.
  • Proposed alternatives include:
    • Donation/“pay what you want” layers where users direct most of their subscription money to chosen artists.
    • Decoupling distribution from payments: use any files (even torrents) but report plays to a payment system that compensates rightsholders.
    • Relying on human-curated radio (KEXP, KCRW, others) plus Bandcamp purchases instead of algorithmic playlists.