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).
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] lettergram|9 years ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] drakenot|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
[+] [-] MikeKusold|9 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] kakarot|9 years ago|reply
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
[+] [-] mcculley|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] simias|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dublinben|9 years ago|reply
[0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
[+] [-] pmarreck|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] npongratz|9 years ago|reply
https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
[+] [-] oceanghost|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] arprocter|9 years ago|reply
[0]https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud
[+] [-] awake|9 years ago|reply
https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Kiro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crucialfelix|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrownhwn|9 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhaps0dy|9 years ago|reply
"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.
[+] [-] thrownhwn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 6stringmerc|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] atemerev|9 years ago|reply