Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming? • Hacker News Board

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#71

Post by easy_rider » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:16 PM UTC

path411 wrote: post #59

bobsy wrote: post #18

I have never liked this about Spotify... So the solutions outlined by Spotify are... 1) Suck it up. Its how the system works. 2) Use the web player. (Seems to be invite-only beta - US Only) 3) Use offline mode. Unlimited members pay for the service and cannot download tracks so not much use to those. Somewhat kills music discovery. Means you cannot use the radio option. Do social options work in offline mode? Not muc…

I'm mostly shocked at how I simply was uninformed that spotify was using my connection so. I know over the past few months I've had occasional and even sometimes frequent spikes of latency while gaming. I'm often left confuddled at these spikes as I won't have anything open I would consider requires much bandwith. Also, even though I would have high latency, opening a browser and navigating through sites would work a…

I agree. I've been promoting spotify in word of mouth to my Friends. My co-workers all use it, which means a good chunk of our upstream bandwidth is swallowed by spotify? In any case they're being completely shady about it. I.e. not making any effort to define Spotify as a P2P service. Understandable in a marketing sense. Ethically questionable and actually upset since well. I pay a monthly fee and all..

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#72

Post by Jhsto » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:19 PM UTC

bobsy wrote: post #18

I have never liked this about Spotify... So the solutions outlined by Spotify are... 1) Suck it up. Its how the system works. 2) Use the web player. (Seems to be invite-only beta - US Only) 3) Use offline mode. Unlimited members pay for the service and cannot download tracks so not much use to those. Somewhat kills music discovery. Means you cannot use the radio option. Do social options work in offline mode? Not muc…

Just wanted to point out that the web player is not US only. I'm from Europe and got it working by following this guide: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-test-spotifys-new-...

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#73

Post by nm7 » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:21 PM UTC

If their excuse is that their servers can't handle it then they are jokers. Plenty of services without paying customers handle more bandwidth than Spotify. Why don't they do what Netflix does and use AWS? Forcing paying customers to participate in a p2p network doesn't make any sort of sense.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#74

Post by rgrieselhuber » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:24 PM UTC

bobsy wrote: post #18

I have never liked this about Spotify... So the solutions outlined by Spotify are... 1) Suck it up. Its how the system works. 2) Use the web player. (Seems to be invite-only beta - US Only) 3) Use offline mode. Unlimited members pay for the service and cannot download tracks so not much use to those. Somewhat kills music discovery. Means you cannot use the radio option. Do social options work in offline mode? Not muc…

Or use Rdio? I've never been impressed with Spotify. The experience on Rdio has been great for me.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#75

Post by nicholassmith » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:25 PM UTC

jlogsdon wrote: post #37

nicholassmith wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does actually say in the T&Cs that it's going to use you as a p2p node if I remember rightly, it's been a while since I've seen the header but it was listed as 'Computational resources'.

Yeah, and everyone reads those.

Well, you are kinda meant to read them. If you say you've read and agreed to something you don't have much scope for whinging.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#76

Post by adrinavarro » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:26 PM UTC

MetricMike wrote: post #42

crazygringo wrote: post #35

What is the best way, under OSX or Windows, to selectively limit upload (or download) speeds per-application ? Is there a way? It would be so nice if something like this were built into the OS, but is there any kind of third-party software which will do that?

http://superuser.com/questions/135719/windows-program-to-lim... NetLimiter (free) and NetBalancer (paid, free for 5 processes) have been the go-to solutions for Windows for a little while. IceFloor ( http://www.hanynet.com/icefloor/index.html ) is the OSX (10.7+) analog.

Sadly IceFloor doesn't seem to have an option to quickly filter out in a per-program basis. And Little Snitch, well…maybe a bit overpriced if it's just to block Spotify (hell, they should be the ones providing a setting for that).

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#77

Post by allbutlost » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:27 PM UTC

Jhsto wrote: post #72

bobsy wrote: post #18

I have never liked this about Spotify... So the solutions outlined by Spotify are... 1) Suck it up. Its how the system works. 2) Use the web player. (Seems to be invite-only beta - US Only) 3) Use offline mode. Unlimited members pay for the service and cannot download tracks so not much use to those. Somewhat kills music discovery. Means you cannot use the radio option. Do social options work in offline mode? Not muc…

Just wanted to point out that the web player is not US only. I'm from Europe and got it working by following this guide: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-test-spotifys-new-...

Indeed, the web player isn't U.S. only, just that the beta testing currently concentrates on new users from the U.S. It is however possible to gain access - there are many guides online on how to do so.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#78

Post by Ao7bei3s » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:31 PM UTC

alpeb wrote: post #58

freehunter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What sucks is that here at work (I work in corporate information security), we have developers who love to listen to music when they're programming. I support it. I like listening to music too. The problem is, some of them like Spotify. And since Spotify is peer-to-peer (and p2p applications are against the policy), it gets flagged in our security monitoring tool. And when it gets flagged, I have to make that action…

A good solution nowadays is to ban everything that is not work-related and have people just use their cellphones with their own data plans for that.

No, thats just stupid. A good solution would be a guest WLAN that is, for example, on a separate VLAN. There is no reason to force people to use the slow and expensive cellular network -- both your employees and the people who actually need to use the cellular network will thank you.

Also, the GP companies no-peer-to-peer-at-all policy seems... not well thought out, even thought it might be a pretty common policy. That an application is p2p has nothing to do with wether or not it can be trusted. (If the application wanted to steal data, wouldn't it be easier to just go for some central dump server?)

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#79

Post by dguaraglia » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

rgrieselhuber wrote: post #74

bobsy wrote: post #18

I have never liked this about Spotify... So the solutions outlined by Spotify are... 1) Suck it up. Its how the system works. 2) Use the web player. (Seems to be invite-only beta - US Only) 3) Use offline mode. Unlimited members pay for the service and cannot download tracks so not much use to those. Somewhat kills music discovery. Means you cannot use the radio option. Do social options work in offline mode? Not muc…

Or use Rdio? I've never been impressed with Spotify. The experience on Rdio has been great for me.

I'll be honest, I tried Rdio and didn't get where the "music discovery" part comes in. In the month I used it I was only suggested completely unrelated, but obviously 'featured' albums (on their "frontpage" so it wasn't even on my face.)

All in all, I just didn't find the service that interesting unless you consider the technological angle.

Re: Why is Spotify chugging upload bandwidth when it is not streaming?

#80

Post by edgesrazor » Thu, Feb 21, 2013, 6:32 PM UTC

I agree that rdio is the better service, but unfortunately since they dropped their free tier, I think most people will just grin and bear it with Spotify. Let's be honest - probably the majority of Spotify's users don't even know what upload bandwidth is, let alone why they should be concerned about it.