In just a couple of years, many have finally left the life of piracy behind and decided to opt for streaming services for a small monthly fee. However, the prices are no longer "small" nowadays, and people are starting to turn to illegal downloads again.
Piracy Websites Saw a Surge in Visits
Piracy is and will always be illegal, but people who want to see or hear content sometimes have no choice with the currently absurd prices that streaming services are implementing. You might have to pay upwards of $50 monthly to keep more than one subscription.
With those costs, it's predictable that people are returning to illegal downloads. Music piracy websites, in particular, saw 17 billion visits all over the world last year, which is a 13% increase from 2022, as reported by Gizmodo.
The research firm Muso revealed that in music streaming, the price increases of Spotify and Apple Music are what's pushing people to go back to illegal downloads. It doesn't help that it's easy enough to convert YouTube videos to .mp3 files as well.
Around 40% of music piracy was done through this method. All you have to do is search for a "YouTube to MP3" site, paste the link of the YouTube video you want to convert and download the converted file from the site.
There are already ten sites that you can use on the first page of Google Search alone, most of which have similar processes. You'd think that Google would be more vigilant with these sites, considering that they own YouTube.
However, there's also a sneaky way that Google can profit from these sites. For one, people will be using Google to search for these sites. Second, they will need to open the video from YouTube before they can get the link, which in turn, will generate revenue as well.
Still, Google does take action when someone reports these piracy sites. Perhaps no one has reported the sites that are still widely used until now, but even if it does get taken down, it's likely that another site will just take its place.
Why Piracy Can Be Harmful
It might sound good since piracy, after all, is free. However, you might find yourself regretting using these sites if you're not careful. Whether it's for music, movies, or shows, there are still a ton of sites that could be hosting files with malware.
One wrong download and you could be subjected to corrupted files, cyberattacks, and more. Some malware that you can contract from pirated files is capable of searching for personal and private information on your device and sending them to a threat actor.
Even if there are no hackers waiting on the other end, some malware are just meant to ruin your files for the hell of it. Even without that risk, you'll also be taking away the much-deserved compensation for the people behind the content you're illegally downloading, so you might want to try and avoid it either way.
