You might want to clarify the part where you use the term Pirate (and be careful how you use it in the future), as talking about piracy is against the terms of service here and will get this thread locked if you DIDN’T mean someone who scours Soundcloud for the tracks that are legitimately available for free download rather than ripping tracks that aren’t supposed to be downloadable. (They’re all going to be low quality that way anyway, so why would you want them?)
I spend all my time scouring the net for tracks that have been posted for free download myself, my collection is probably about 95% free, and I do it for the same reason – I am not making the dosh right now to buy a lot of music. Funny thing, though… I’ve got a pretty brilliant collection of music. The number of artists who are giving their music away is pretty astounding, I do it myself (it would feel hypocritical not to, though I do post the really good stuff as PWYW in case anyone wants to toss a tip my way).
Now, to the like-to-download things… yeah, these guys can be annoying. It’s a standard feature of the various hosting services the folks are using.
Following the artist and liking the track I’m downloading not only seems fair, but is part of my process, so I’m OK with giving an automated like if the track is good enough to download – I’ve already clicked like before I’ve downloaded it. I was already liking the tracks that are free downloads before all this started to mark the track so I didn’t accidentally download it twice.
I tend to be a little stingy with my reshares, though… they tend to really clutter up the stream, which sucks, and just because I’ve downloaded a track doesn’t mean it will survive to make it into my setlist, so it seems to be putting the cart before the horse to reshare a track before I’ve had a chance to really work with it. If the app forces a reshare, I just un-reshare it as soon as it’s done. I leave the Soundcloud page open until the track is downloaded anyway, so this is easy to do… but I leave the like in place.
If the app forces a comment, then I back out and don’t download the track. I go back and comment on tracks that I have something to say about, but I’m not going to make something simple and stupid up on the spot just to download it… I mean, yeah, it’s free, but that’s pushing good taste beyond my boundaries. I’ve been considering “I don’t like forced comments,” but I find the practice tacky and just don’t support it by downloading the track and working it into my sets. Sometimes, I’ll comment “Don’t like forced comments, didn’t download,” but rarely. I do make an exception if the track blows me away enough that a comment is easy to come up with, but usually, I have to spend a bit of time with a track before it blows my mind.
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