One thing I noticed a few years ago, was that Spotify was using a massive amount more upload bandwidth than download. Upon digging it actually appeared they were streaming FROM my computer, similar to how a torrenting system works. I'm assuming their current platform is doing something similar.
If this is indeed the case, they can stream music to everyone's phones / computers, then use their network to stream to their other customers. It's truly brilliant, and saves them tons on network costs. At the same time, it is somewhat disingenuous to me - hence I'll never go back.
It's not at all surprising that their initial "success" is tied to torrenting as well.
EDIT: Yes I know they supposidly stopped this program [1]. I still thought I should share it, as many people don't/didn't know (and it is relevant to the article).
For those who didn't use Skype at the time, they had an algorithm which would promote some nodes to "super node" status. Those nodes would then be used for processing power, uploads, etc.
I guess Microsoft didn't like the possible legal implications and this "feature" went on the chopping block quite early after the acquisition (unless my memory's failing me and Skype dumped it even before the acquisition).
> ...the Skype peer-to-peer network architecture elected certain nodes to be "supernodes", to help maintain the index of peers as well as handle parts of the NAT [network address translation]/firewall traversal for other peers. This election algorithm chose only machines with open Internet connectivity, substantial uptime, and which were running the latest version of our peer-to-peer code.
I probably misunderstood the first part of his comment to mean that they also wanted to distribute some of their processing to clients.
It's probably fair to attribute this to Skype since it's the same people, but didn't that design originate out of the Kazaa file sharing network way back in the day? As I understood it there was some degree of protocol / code-sharing between Kazaa and Skype at least early-on.
and because Skype didn't own the IP for their p2p implementation, or even the source code to it.
"An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Joltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that provides users throughout the world with free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code, however"[0]
For some reason the notion that an arbitrary piece of desktop software might be an unholy mixture of proprietary binary blobs from different companies, and to which no one entity has the complete source code, fills me with dread.
Yet, dissonantly enough, this is exactly the model you accept if you use proprietary drivers on your system. Arguably, it's the model you accept if you use any proprietary software - programs are not perfectly isolated from each other.
If you found this revelation about Skype to be vaguely shocking, as I did, consider if your reaction is consistent when it comes to the other things in your life - like your Android phone.
wow I thought this was a 'tinfoil' hat theory but you weren't kidding. I'm amazed that fewer people are aware of this. It looks like it was shut down in 2014 though.
Actually it's mentioned in the article itself: "The technology deployed by Spotify was also familiar. Like the majority of ‘pirate’ platforms at the time, Spotify operated a peer-to-peer (P2P) system which grew to become one of the largest on the Internet. It was shut down in 2011."
The date appears to be wrong though, since the other sources (including the linked article) are from 2014.
So basically, you're saying that since they (according to you) weren't plastering news about their P2P design across all their marketing (as if most people would even be able to understand that, from a marketing perspective), and DESPITE the fact that it was well-known enough for academic papers in 2011 to be written on the design (http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats...), that's why you'll never return to them, even though they've since entirely removed that functionality? Because you never heard of that part of the design until you detected it on your own network?
This isn't someone "robbing your bandwidth" IMHO, I'm not for example angry when I torrent something open-source and have it set to reupload 2x what I downloaded... In fact here's Netflix debating going to a P2P design in 2014: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfl...
If I torrented for a year ("as a downloader") without realizing how it worked, and then found out it was uploading what I already downloaded, would I have the right to be indignant about my own ignorance?
That said, a lot of new endeavours (especially on the Internet) have questionable legality when they first emerge (mp3 scene, bitcoin, digital content distribution in general, etc) and then acquire legitimacy later on. It's fine (... I guess?) to feel unlimited righteous indignation about a company (I feel that way about Microsoft, actually), but it's not fine IMHO if it's not based on reality.
I'm not telling you not to use their service, my wife (for example) continues to use Spotify.
However, I personally will never use their service again. When they thought it was alright to use my network (that I pay for) to make money, then I have a right to turn my back on them.
Questionable legality is one thing, I personally could care less about laws. I break probably 5 or 6 laws an hour. Laws have nothing to do about morality. It's "illegal" to go 1 mph over the speed limit, it's "illegal" to cross the street without a sign, etc. As a society the vast majority of the laws we don't care about or follow.
What most people do is try to be moral and civil with one another. In the case of distributing music, most people seem willing to pay (hence Spotify has become popular). However, that didn't give them a right to use my network without my consent.
That is immoral, and that will get a visceral reaction from people. In this case, it didn't surprise me they were using torrented content in their service. I shared what I found interesting, and why it didn't surprise me, and also my opinion about how they were shady.
> even though they've since entirely removed that functionality?
If a company is shady, I'm not going to trust them with my money / data unless I have to (i.e. Comcast / Verizon / AT&T). If I have a choice, I'd use someone else. This is my "vote" of dissatisfaction. I vote with my wallet, and I share my insights / knowledge such that others will vote (informed) as well.
I think the parent's point was that people and companies make mistakes. Voting with your wallet is a great idea -- often times when I pull funding from a company for a perceived slight, if they react to my vote, I'll vote again by paying for their service.
err... did you ever consider that perhaps those systems weren't actually powerful enough to support the "full" Killer Instinct experience, so there was no way for it not to seem "downgraded" from the real deal?
(I was in my early 20's when that came out in the arcades. I remember it well)
You boycotted Nintendo because of what Rare did to their own game when porting it? Do you also boycott Microsoft now that they own Rare or do you have some kind of weird double standard?
I was making that point, and ALSO the point that the perceived slight was purely in the eye of the beholder, I edited my comment to add a link to a 2011 academic paper on Spotify's P2P architecture that proves that they were not being cagey or secretive about this part of the design, it was already "out there" and if it just so happened to first cross this guy's radar when he saw the outbound traffic on his own network, he can't really blame Spotify, he can only be indignant at his own ignorance.
So now every ordinary person is going to read academic papers to ensure that a service or product meets decent moral and ethical standards?
If it wasn't on their website designed for selling, then they don't really have an excuse. That is the spot where those kind of details should be mentioned.
> a service or product meets decent moral and ethical standards?
I don't know what your standards are here but "an app that both sends and receives data from the Internet" pretty much describes every app in popular existence right now
The issue I'm taking with this is that Spotify did not try to hide, be cagey or act deceptively about the p2p aspect of their design at all; in fact here is a 2011 article on an academic paper on the design http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats... and here is a question-and-answer from their support community about it, from 2013: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux-Windows-Web-P... Hardly a design aspect that everyone who actually cared about such things was intentionally kept in the dark about.
I would feel it is justified to be miffed if they tried to do it in secret and it was determined that they did indeed try to hide or downplay this fact, but this is not in fact what happened. Their stance seemed to be "yeah, this is currently how it works, we know some customers are unhappy with the arrangement, so we'll eventually change it, but you can't currently turn uploads off." Thus, you are basing your indignation off your own ignorance, and not reality.
Full disclosure: Am long-time Spotify fan (hey, gotta be honest!)
This is not a counterargument. P2P is not something that most people would understand and thus, including it in marketing materials would turn people off. Thus, not including it in marketing materials is not a sign of intentional deception. I can't go back in time but I bet if you googled "spotify p2p" or "spotify architecture" in 2012 you'd find a wealth of information on it
You, and several other people in this conversation, are trying to tell the person you originally replied to how to feel.
They said nothing but "this is how I felt, this is why I stopped using it". If I had a bad experience with some software, I too would uninstall it, even if I'm told "but you see, you didn't experience it correctly".
They are of course entitled to their feelings, but saying that Spotify was doing something nefarious is unreasonable. Being able to send a receive information is part of how the Internet is supposed to work. That's what's makes it different from other things like cable TV.
It's DRM, data caps and walled gardens that have convinced people otherwise. The next logical step is separating clients and servers altogether. Why should I pay for data if I'm only a consumer? In that case we might as well let youtube and netflix pay to deliver the content. And then it's back to cable TV again.
PS. You also have to remember that Spotify is 10 years old. Internet infrastructure and things like cloud offerings wasn't as good. It wasn't just a move to save bandwidth, but to actually be able to offer a good service (low latency, high throughput, for free). Which still isn't easy.
You know... you're right. You can't rationally argue someone out of a feeling. But (to me) that feeling should at least (to the best extent possible) be based on rational fact.
If I mistakenly believed you killed my mother and shot you in the heat of the moment, would I be entitled to my feeling?
I make no argument with your position (in fact fully agree you should vote with your wallet in this case) but I think it should be pointed out you most certainly gave consent to allow them to use your network when you agreed to their terms by using their service. I can't imagine anyone who reads every line before they sign up for a service or install software so I understand why you feel the way you do. Objectively, to me, it feels like more of a moral gray area than completely immoral.
I don't read the previous post as complaining about legality, but instead about taking an actin that could cost him as a user either financially (through bandwidth charges) or inconvenience (through reduced bandwidth available to other applications, or getting cut off or speed limited instead of charged for the extra bandwidth which is how some mobile plans work).
I'm not the OP. But I can see why they would not wish to go back; it is a breach of trust between company and consumer. Their product was using network to stream personal data, and gave no warning about it. The fact that they were caught does not matter, what matters is that because they thought they could get away with it in the first place, they did it anyway.
There is a common element here. The original developer of uTorrent sold his product to BitTorrent and teamed up with the Spotify guys as the key engineer, and was critical to the success of the early product.
Ludvig is a badass. He's been one of my favorite programmers since the early uTorrent days. That's why Spotify was such a good product back in beta, he basically had control over everything technical.
Thus the P2P approach to bootstrap their service (I didn't mind. It was actually a pretty cool solution to an engineering problem) and the use of pirated media to test the product. Ludvig helped create Spotify in an attempt to turn his love for P2P into an actual commercial product.
Of course, Spotify sucks now and BitTorrent has mutilated uTorrent. I hope he leaves Spotify and starts a new project.
In comparison to the other garbage, yeah it might be the winner. But it's still garbage.
I was one of the first users of the beta program. At the time, Ludvig's philosophy of simplicity + hidden functionality via interactive views shone through the UI and it was very pleasant to use. The 5 star rating system was the icing on the cake. A step down in functionality from Amarok's playlist creation system, and lacking the fine search and organization capabilities of foobar2000, but it did the job.
However, the UX of Spotify has hideously morphed over time. Now the UI mostly uses Chromium Embedded Framework which brings huge overhead and causes lots of rendering latency. The font size and padding has grown, then shrunk, then grown again, each time showing less tracks on a page at once. Views that were once interactive with left and right clicks became static. Star ratings turned into Like/Unlike.
Their user behavior tracking has naturally been cranked up to 11, though it is better than a lot of similar products, I still have no desire for a music service to track anything other than the music I search and play. Even tracking the song titles in my personal library is an unacceptable breach of privacy.
The slow and steady social creep and tracking through Facebook is also unacceptable.
It doesn't utilize P2P anymore, which I considered a plus because I love supporting and legitimizing P2P tech.
It has become less of an engineer-led company and more of a traditional company with shareholder interests
I could really go on. The downsides of Spotify as a music player are much greater than they were at product launch.
The most infuriating thing about it is that Spotify never fielded these changes with users before committing to them, and each and every time when a simple addition to the settings panel could make the changes optional, they were instead forced upon us.
I don't like a music player that frequently changes its UI without my approval. I like a music player that puts me in charge of the UI.
I no longer pay for Spotify and have returned to getting my music through other means.
On my Linux and Windows machines, I mostly use foobar2000 and VLC, and Amarok when I need powerful playlisting tools. If Radionomy ever gets their shit straight with Winamp (They bought it from AOL in '14 and have to clean out all proprietary code) then I will definitely consider going back.
Give me a streaming service that doesn't spy on me unnecessarily and has an API so that I can implement a plugin to my favorite existing media player or otherwise an absolutely beautiful and immutable interface, and of course a large library and doesn't shaft its artists, and I will pay for it. Anything less than that, in 2017, sucks.
I noticed the same use of upload bandwidth. Worse, using dtruss on Mac OS, I could tell that it was reading files out of places other than where it was installed (e.g., ~/Music/). There was no way to tell what files it was exfiltrating from our network. I had to ban use of Spotify in my company for this reason.
I strongly suspect, but cannot prove, that Skype was also exfiltrating audio files from the clients PC at one time.
When they opened their high-quality audio service the songs had clear artifacts of having been encoded more than once. If you had access to the original uncompressed audio stream, you'd simply encode a higher quality version. Many albums weren't available for high quality streaming at all.
The logical explanation was they didn't have a database of lossless audio from which to re-encode, and we already knew they were using P2P. Why not use the P2P to raid users music collections as well.
That is probably a little out there. Skype was heavily reverse engineered back in the day. It is possible folks missed it, but Skype got a lot of RE attention.
Plus, simpler reversing techniques like strace / Sysmon would have caught this sort of thing.
Yes, if you used Spotify Beta it was very obvious. On release the library was reduced to a fragment of its former self. It was also something everyone said: "in the Beta they used the employees' MP3 libraries, that's why it used to be so good".
It was amazing. A massive library of obscure releases across all genres. Merzbow box set, thousands and thousands of country LPs, music from African and Asian countries. Gradually it got whittled down to what certain labels would agree to.
You can stream torrents [0], how long until someone makes a Spotify clone using torrents with a curated home page and integrated torrent search? Like Popcorntime and Netflix?
Can confirm. Spotify had a dedicated server at a notorious ISP that downloaded quality mp3 warez from TPB among other places. Scene people were also present at their release party.
I'm happy they succeeded. It's an awesome service built by some very skilled hackers. I wish there was a Spotify for movies and TV series too.
"For a company that has attracting pirates built into its DNA, it’s perhaps fitting that it tempted them with the same bait found on pirate sites. Certainly, the company’s history of a pragmatic attitude towards piracy means that few will be shouting ‘hypocrites’ at the streaming platform now."
What is this attitude to piracy that will prevent them from being called hypocrites? I do think that aiming to eliminate piracy while using it is hypocritical.
Unless they needed to use that pirated music to reduce pirated music overall, in which case they did well from a consequentialist standpoint.
Piracy is also a form of convenience. What you want, when you want it. No stupid geographic delayed releases, no stupid DRM where you have to prove you're not a thief every time you want to access the content, no internet connectivity requirements, etc.
> No stupid geographic delayed releases, no stupid DRM where you have to prove you're not a thief every time you want to access the content, no internet connectivity requirements, etc.
To be fair those haven't been issues with digital music purchases for a long time. Buying music couldn't be more convenient these days.
I thought we were talking about purchases, not streaming. How would DRM-free streaming work?
I haven't seen regional releases in ages.
Platform exclusivity? Again, for streaming maybe, but we were talking about purchases, right? I buy my weekly releases in a digital, lossless format from a range of stores. The files I receive are mine. Non of the issues you mentioned apply these days.
Streaming, however, while convenient can have disadvantages like the ones you mentioned. More importantly, you don't own your collection, you just rent the music and albums may disappear at any point.
However none of this justifies piracy since there's a flawless alternative: Buying music.
To me, Beta is different than building a business model around piracy. It's quite clear Spotify has spent a metric fuck-ton of money trying to appease Rights Holders (ahem, I didn't say Artists for a reason...) and do their thing. Disclosure: Longtime Spotify artist by way of DistroKid, have very much enjoyed the 'Discovery' aspects for foreign countries to find my tunes.
One thing I noticed a few years ago, was that Spotify was using a massive amount more upload bandwidth than download. Upon digging it actually appeared they were streaming FROM my computer, similar to how a torrenting system works. I'm assuming their current platform is doing something similar.
If this is indeed the case, they can stream music to everyone's phones / computers, then use their network to stream to their other customers. It's truly brilliant, and saves them tons on network costs. At the same time, it is somewhat disingenuous to me - hence I'll never go back.
It's not at all surprising that their initial "success" is tied to torrenting as well.
EDIT: Yes I know they supposidly stopped this program [1]. I still thought I should share it, as many people don't/didn't know (and it is relevant to the article).
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
This peer-to-peer streaming architecture was definitely a part of Spotify in the early days. It has been removed as of 2014.[0]
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
Spotify apparently stopped their P2P distribution a few years ago:
https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
They removed P2P streaming around 2014[0].
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
The good old Skype strategy, with super nodes.
For those who didn't use Skype at the time, they had an algorithm which would promote some nodes to "super node" status. Those nodes would then be used for processing power, uploads, etc.
I guess Microsoft didn't like the possible legal implications and this "feature" went on the chopping block quite early after the acquisition (unless my memory's failing me and Skype dumped it even before the acquisition).
I thought it was more about punching through firewalls than borrowing processing power
Could be.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe...
> ...the Skype peer-to-peer network architecture elected certain nodes to be "supernodes", to help maintain the index of peers as well as handle parts of the NAT [network address translation]/firewall traversal for other peers. This election algorithm chose only machines with open Internet connectivity, substantial uptime, and which were running the latest version of our peer-to-peer code.
I probably misunderstood the first part of his comment to mean that they also wanted to distribute some of their processing to clients.
It's probably fair to attribute this to Skype since it's the same people, but didn't that design originate out of the Kazaa file sharing network way back in the day? As I understood it there was some degree of protocol / code-sharing between Kazaa and Skype at least early-on.
With a P2P architecture you basically have to use "super nodes" to get through firewalls. There are three main reasons Skype dropped P2P:
* The nefariousness one: So Microsoft can let NSA and the cops listen in.
* Because mobile clients don't work well with P2P.
* Because servers and bandwidth got really cheap.
and because Skype didn't own the IP for their p2p implementation, or even the source code to it.
"An executable-only object code form of the GI Software was licensed by Joltid to Skype, a well-known Internet-based company that provides users throughout the world with free or low-cost telephone services over the Internet. Skype did not obtain a license to the GI Software source code, however"[0]
[0] - https://techcrunch.com/2009/09/18/new-lawsuit-brings-clarity...
For some reason the notion that an arbitrary piece of desktop software might be an unholy mixture of proprietary binary blobs from different companies, and to which no one entity has the complete source code, fills me with dread.
Yet, dissonantly enough, this is exactly the model you accept if you use proprietary drivers on your system. Arguably, it's the model you accept if you use any proprietary software - programs are not perfectly isolated from each other.
If you found this revelation about Skype to be vaguely shocking, as I did, consider if your reaction is consistent when it comes to the other things in your life - like your Android phone.
wow I thought this was a 'tinfoil' hat theory but you weren't kidding. I'm amazed that fewer people are aware of this. It looks like it was shut down in 2014 though.
https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
They used to use peer-to-peer to speed up music download (and reduce the load on their servers, presumably) but I believe that it is no longer the case: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
Actually it's mentioned in the article itself: "The technology deployed by Spotify was also familiar. Like the majority of ‘pirate’ platforms at the time, Spotify operated a peer-to-peer (P2P) system which grew to become one of the largest on the Internet. It was shut down in 2011."
The date appears to be wrong though, since the other sources (including the linked article) are from 2014.
> hence I'll never go back.
So basically, you're saying that since they (according to you) weren't plastering news about their P2P design across all their marketing (as if most people would even be able to understand that, from a marketing perspective), and DESPITE the fact that it was well-known enough for academic papers in 2011 to be written on the design (http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats...), that's why you'll never return to them, even though they've since entirely removed that functionality? Because you never heard of that part of the design until you detected it on your own network?
This isn't someone "robbing your bandwidth" IMHO, I'm not for example angry when I torrent something open-source and have it set to reupload 2x what I downloaded... In fact here's Netflix debating going to a P2P design in 2014: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/04/netfl...
If I torrented for a year ("as a downloader") without realizing how it worked, and then found out it was uploading what I already downloaded, would I have the right to be indignant about my own ignorance?
That said, a lot of new endeavours (especially on the Internet) have questionable legality when they first emerge (mp3 scene, bitcoin, digital content distribution in general, etc) and then acquire legitimacy later on. It's fine (... I guess?) to feel unlimited righteous indignation about a company (I feel that way about Microsoft, actually), but it's not fine IMHO if it's not based on reality.
I'm not telling you not to use their service, my wife (for example) continues to use Spotify.
However, I personally will never use their service again. When they thought it was alright to use my network (that I pay for) to make money, then I have a right to turn my back on them.
Questionable legality is one thing, I personally could care less about laws. I break probably 5 or 6 laws an hour. Laws have nothing to do about morality. It's "illegal" to go 1 mph over the speed limit, it's "illegal" to cross the street without a sign, etc. As a society the vast majority of the laws we don't care about or follow.
What most people do is try to be moral and civil with one another. In the case of distributing music, most people seem willing to pay (hence Spotify has become popular). However, that didn't give them a right to use my network without my consent.
That is immoral, and that will get a visceral reaction from people. In this case, it didn't surprise me they were using torrented content in their service. I shared what I found interesting, and why it didn't surprise me, and also my opinion about how they were shady.
> even though they've since entirely removed that functionality?
If a company is shady, I'm not going to trust them with my money / data unless I have to (i.e. Comcast / Verizon / AT&T). If I have a choice, I'd use someone else. This is my "vote" of dissatisfaction. I vote with my wallet, and I share my insights / knowledge such that others will vote (informed) as well.
I think the parent's point was that people and companies make mistakes. Voting with your wallet is a great idea -- often times when I pull funding from a company for a perceived slight, if they react to my vote, I'll vote again by paying for their service.
There are some transgressions that people don't forgive easily or at all.
I have been taking part in a one man boycott of Nintendo for over 20 years.
Not that it hurts them. Not that they care. I was just done with them.
I hesitate to ask, but what did Nintendo do to justify this lifetime ban? ;) (also, I kind of want a Switch, but anyway)
The way they butchered what was my all-time favorite arcade game "Killer Instinct" with the SNES port and then KI Gold for the N64.
I have never been able to forgive the company.
err... did you ever consider that perhaps those systems weren't actually powerful enough to support the "full" Killer Instinct experience, so there was no way for it not to seem "downgraded" from the real deal?
(I was in my early 20's when that came out in the arcades. I remember it well)
The SNES certainly wasn't able to reproduce the arcade experience. The N64 should have been.
Over the years, I have considered buying an old arcade cabinet just to re-experience the magic.
I just need to find the space for it.
You should do that. Don't lose the wide-eyed kid inside. :)
Many years ago, someone made a PC based Killer Instinct emulator and I played it whenever I was feeling nostalgic.
I had problems getting it to run under XP, I wonder how well it would work under 7.
You boycotted Nintendo because of what Rare did to their own game when porting it? Do you also boycott Microsoft now that they own Rare or do you have some kind of weird double standard?
I was making that point, and ALSO the point that the perceived slight was purely in the eye of the beholder, I edited my comment to add a link to a 2011 academic paper on Spotify's P2P architecture that proves that they were not being cagey or secretive about this part of the design, it was already "out there" and if it just so happened to first cross this guy's radar when he saw the outbound traffic on his own network, he can't really blame Spotify, he can only be indignant at his own ignorance.
So now every ordinary person is going to read academic papers to ensure that a service or product meets decent moral and ethical standards?
If it wasn't on their website designed for selling, then they don't really have an excuse. That is the spot where those kind of details should be mentioned.
> a service or product meets decent moral and ethical standards?
I don't know what your standards are here but "an app that both sends and receives data from the Internet" pretty much describes every app in popular existence right now
The issue I'm taking with this is that Spotify did not try to hide, be cagey or act deceptively about the p2p aspect of their design at all; in fact here is a 2011 article on an academic paper on the design http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats... and here is a question-and-answer from their support community about it, from 2013: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux-Windows-Web-P... Hardly a design aspect that everyone who actually cared about such things was intentionally kept in the dark about.
I would feel it is justified to be miffed if they tried to do it in secret and it was determined that they did indeed try to hide or downplay this fact, but this is not in fact what happened. Their stance seemed to be "yeah, this is currently how it works, we know some customers are unhappy with the arrangement, so we'll eventually change it, but you can't currently turn uploads off." Thus, you are basing your indignation off your own ignorance, and not reality.
Full disclosure: Am long-time Spotify fan (hey, gotta be honest!)
So how many journals and forums do you subscribe to in order to find out what the programs installed on your computer are doing?
This is not a counterargument. P2P is not something that most people would understand and thus, including it in marketing materials would turn people off. Thus, not including it in marketing materials is not a sign of intentional deception. I can't go back in time but I bet if you googled "spotify p2p" or "spotify architecture" in 2012 you'd find a wealth of information on it
You, and several other people in this conversation, are trying to tell the person you originally replied to how to feel.
They said nothing but "this is how I felt, this is why I stopped using it". If I had a bad experience with some software, I too would uninstall it, even if I'm told "but you see, you didn't experience it correctly".
They are of course entitled to their feelings, but saying that Spotify was doing something nefarious is unreasonable. Being able to send a receive information is part of how the Internet is supposed to work. That's what's makes it different from other things like cable TV.
It's DRM, data caps and walled gardens that have convinced people otherwise. The next logical step is separating clients and servers altogether. Why should I pay for data if I'm only a consumer? In that case we might as well let youtube and netflix pay to deliver the content. And then it's back to cable TV again.
PS. You also have to remember that Spotify is 10 years old. Internet infrastructure and things like cloud offerings wasn't as good. It wasn't just a move to save bandwidth, but to actually be able to offer a good service (low latency, high throughput, for free). Which still isn't easy.
You know... you're right. You can't rationally argue someone out of a feeling. But (to me) that feeling should at least (to the best extent possible) be based on rational fact.
If I mistakenly believed you killed my mother and shot you in the heat of the moment, would I be entitled to my feeling?
I make no argument with your position (in fact fully agree you should vote with your wallet in this case) but I think it should be pointed out you most certainly gave consent to allow them to use your network when you agreed to their terms by using their service. I can't imagine anyone who reads every line before they sign up for a service or install software so I understand why you feel the way you do. Objectively, to me, it feels like more of a moral gray area than completely immoral.
> If a company is shady, I'm not going to trust them with my money / data unless I have to ...
They are shady, few years ago they forced new users to have a fazebook account in order to sign up. I don't know how it is now, do they still?
> have questionable legality
I don't read the previous post as complaining about legality, but instead about taking an actin that could cost him as a user either financially (through bandwidth charges) or inconvenience (through reduced bandwidth available to other applications, or getting cut off or speed limited instead of charged for the extra bandwidth which is how some mobile plans work).
I'm not the OP. But I can see why they would not wish to go back; it is a breach of trust between company and consumer. Their product was using network to stream personal data, and gave no warning about it. The fact that they were caught does not matter, what matters is that because they thought they could get away with it in the first place, they did it anyway.
Skype used to do that too, although according to them they also moved away from it[0]
[0]https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud
There is a common element here. The original developer of uTorrent sold his product to BitTorrent and teamed up with the Spotify guys as the key engineer, and was critical to the success of the early product.
Ludvig is a badass. He's been one of my favorite programmers since the early uTorrent days. That's why Spotify was such a good product back in beta, he basically had control over everything technical.
Thus the P2P approach to bootstrap their service (I didn't mind. It was actually a pretty cool solution to an engineering problem) and the use of pirated media to test the product. Ludvig helped create Spotify in an attempt to turn his love for P2P into an actual commercial product.
Of course, Spotify sucks now and BitTorrent has mutilated uTorrent. I hope he leaves Spotify and starts a new project.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
"Of course, Spotify sucks now".
Spotify is awesome and convenient. In comparison to other services, for me as a user, it's a clear winner.
In comparison to the other garbage, yeah it might be the winner. But it's still garbage.
I was one of the first users of the beta program. At the time, Ludvig's philosophy of simplicity + hidden functionality via interactive views shone through the UI and it was very pleasant to use. The 5 star rating system was the icing on the cake. A step down in functionality from Amarok's playlist creation system, and lacking the fine search and organization capabilities of foobar2000, but it did the job.
However, the UX of Spotify has hideously morphed over time. Now the UI mostly uses Chromium Embedded Framework which brings huge overhead and causes lots of rendering latency. The font size and padding has grown, then shrunk, then grown again, each time showing less tracks on a page at once. Views that were once interactive with left and right clicks became static. Star ratings turned into Like/Unlike.
Their user behavior tracking has naturally been cranked up to 11, though it is better than a lot of similar products, I still have no desire for a music service to track anything other than the music I search and play. Even tracking the song titles in my personal library is an unacceptable breach of privacy.
The slow and steady social creep and tracking through Facebook is also unacceptable.
It doesn't utilize P2P anymore, which I considered a plus because I love supporting and legitimizing P2P tech.
It has become less of an engineer-led company and more of a traditional company with shareholder interests
I could really go on. The downsides of Spotify as a music player are much greater than they were at product launch.
The most infuriating thing about it is that Spotify never fielded these changes with users before committing to them, and each and every time when a simple addition to the settings panel could make the changes optional, they were instead forced upon us.
I don't like a music player that frequently changes its UI without my approval. I like a music player that puts me in charge of the UI.
I no longer pay for Spotify and have returned to getting my music through other means.
On my Linux and Windows machines, I mostly use foobar2000 and VLC, and Amarok when I need powerful playlisting tools. If Radionomy ever gets their shit straight with Winamp (They bought it from AOL in '14 and have to clean out all proprietary code) then I will definitely consider going back.
Give me a streaming service that doesn't spy on me unnecessarily and has an API so that I can implement a plugin to my favorite existing media player or otherwise an absolutely beautiful and immutable interface, and of course a large library and doesn't shaft its artists, and I will pay for it. Anything less than that, in 2017, sucks.
I started using Spotify Premium while I was travelling recently (stick to Foobar2000 at home) and the UI seems utterly counter-intuitive.
> It's not at all surprising that their initial "success" is tied to torrenting as well.
Two founders of Spotify came from uTorrent after the sale.[1][2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
[2] is not a co-founder, according to [1] the co founder is Martin Lorentzon.
I noticed the same use of upload bandwidth. Worse, using dtruss on Mac OS, I could tell that it was reading files out of places other than where it was installed (e.g., ~/Music/). There was no way to tell what files it was exfiltrating from our network. I had to ban use of Spotify in my company for this reason.
I strongly suspect, but cannot prove, that Skype was also exfiltrating audio files from the clients PC at one time.
When they opened their high-quality audio service the songs had clear artifacts of having been encoded more than once. If you had access to the original uncompressed audio stream, you'd simply encode a higher quality version. Many albums weren't available for high quality streaming at all.
The logical explanation was they didn't have a database of lossless audio from which to re-encode, and we already knew they were using P2P. Why not use the P2P to raid users music collections as well.
That is probably a little out there. Skype was heavily reverse engineered back in the day. It is possible folks missed it, but Skype got a lot of RE attention.
Plus, simpler reversing techniques like strace / Sysmon would have caught this sort of thing.
Oh god im an idiot. I meant Spotify. :)
Ha, now that I would not doubt nearly so much :-)
Yes, if you used Spotify Beta it was very obvious. On release the library was reduced to a fragment of its former self. It was also something everyone said: "in the Beta they used the employees' MP3 libraries, that's why it used to be so good".
It was amazing. A massive library of obscure releases across all genres. Merzbow box set, thousands and thousands of country LPs, music from African and Asian countries. Gradually it got whittled down to what certain labels would agree to.
You can stream torrents [0], how long until someone makes a Spotify clone using torrents with a curated home page and integrated torrent search? Like Popcorntime and Netflix?
You could re-sell a one click VPN for revenue.
It's been on my backlog for quite a while at this time.
I forgot to add links
http://butterproject.org
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
Can confirm. Spotify had a dedicated server at a notorious ISP that downloaded quality mp3 warez from TPB among other places. Scene people were also present at their release party.
I'm happy they succeeded. It's an awesome service built by some very skilled hackers. I wish there was a Spotify for movies and TV series too.
So did Grooveshark. But Spotify played ball with RIAA.
What does the author mean by this?
"For a company that has attracting pirates built into its DNA, it’s perhaps fitting that it tempted them with the same bait found on pirate sites. Certainly, the company’s history of a pragmatic attitude towards piracy means that few will be shouting ‘hypocrites’ at the streaming platform now."
What is this attitude to piracy that will prevent them from being called hypocrites? I do think that aiming to eliminate piracy while using it is hypocritical.
Unless they needed to use that pirated music to reduce pirated music overall, in which case they did well from a consequentialist standpoint.
Piracy is also a form of convenience. What you want, when you want it. No stupid geographic delayed releases, no stupid DRM where you have to prove you're not a thief every time you want to access the content, no internet connectivity requirements, etc.
> No stupid geographic delayed releases, no stupid DRM where you have to prove you're not a thief every time you want to access the content, no internet connectivity requirements, etc.
To be fair those haven't been issues with digital music purchases for a long time. Buying music couldn't be more convenient these days.
DRM might not be an issue any more (at least for purchases), but regional releases, platform exclusivity, etc. sure as hell are.
I thought we were talking about purchases, not streaming. How would DRM-free streaming work?
I haven't seen regional releases in ages.
Platform exclusivity? Again, for streaming maybe, but we were talking about purchases, right? I buy my weekly releases in a digital, lossless format from a range of stores. The files I receive are mine. Non of the issues you mentioned apply these days.
Streaming, however, while convenient can have disadvantages like the ones you mentioned. More importantly, you don't own your collection, you just rent the music and albums may disappear at any point.
However none of this justifies piracy since there's a flawless alternative: Buying music.
To me, Beta is different than building a business model around piracy. It's quite clear Spotify has spent a metric fuck-ton of money trying to appease Rights Holders (ahem, I didn't say Artists for a reason...) and do their thing. Disclosure: Longtime Spotify artist by way of DistroKid, have very much enjoyed the 'Discovery' aspects for foreign countries to find my tunes.
I don't see any problem with that as long as they have had the license. It's not like the bits are tainted.