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Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

engineering.atspotify.com

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Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#81

Post by loudtieblahblah »

hk__2 wrote: post #43
toastal wrote: post #29

Just a reminder that downloaded audio files work offline, can have very high or lossless quality not restricted by bandwidth, have a concept of ‘ownership’ with no DRM, don’t have ads or tries to sell your data (though voluntarily contributing to ListenBrainz is admirable), don’t require a monthly fee, and if bought legally gives a bigger slice of the money pie to artists. Also podcasts are just RSS audio.

According to Last.fm I’ve listened to 156k songs from 16k artists (35k albums) over a little less than 10 years. Last time I bought music it was on iTunes and the lowest price was €0.79 per song. That would be a total of €123k. Over the same period, I gave exactly €1200.93 to Spotify [1]. [1] note: it’s a pure coincidence that this is ~ €10 * 12 months * 10 years; the price has not always been the same.

I'm 10 years ive spent 1000s on vinyl.

In 20 years spent even more on digital.

I have tons of things not available on streaming.

Regardless, the fact my listening gets to be an isolated activity, the fact no one can take it away? Priceless

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#82

Post by loudtieblahblah »

rightbyte wrote: post #69
hk__2 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to Last.fm I’ve listened to 156k songs from 16k artists (35k albums) over a little less than 10 years. Last time I bought music it was on iTunes and the lowest price was €0.79 per song. That would be a total of €123k. Over the same period, I gave exactly €1200.93 to Spotify [1]. [1] note: it’s a pure coincidence that this is ~ €10 * 12 months * 10 years; the price has not always been the same.

How do you find so many different songs? Shuffle? You are essentially listening to 40 new songs per day.

You buy albums

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#83

Post by rospaya »

toastal wrote: post #29

Just a reminder that downloaded audio files work offline, can have very high or lossless quality not restricted by bandwidth, have a concept of ‘ownership’ with no DRM, don’t have ads or tries to sell your data (though voluntarily contributing to ListenBrainz is admirable), don’t require a monthly fee, and if bought legally gives a bigger slice of the money pie to artists. Also podcasts are just RSS audio.

I'll admit Spotify (and other platforms in a smaller degree) aren't ideal and operate in an ethical gray spot the size of the moon, but the convenience is so hard to beat, it would literally take hours every week to make my music listening experience anywhere near enjoyable.

On the other hand I buy merch and go to concerts as much as I can, but at this point I could actually ditch Spotify and Deezer only if they confess to killing puppies, the difference is that big.

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#84

Post by carstenhag »

trutannus wrote: post #66
w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #60

The main problem of the outage was that users were logged out and thus unable to play what songs they had downloaded / cached.

That and the accounts appearing locked, with password reset links not working. For the first few minutes of the outage, I thought I my accounts were what was compromised. Caused genuine concern for a while there since it appeared I had lost control over my Spotify account, and there's credit card data in there.

My better half thought that her account was hacked. So yeah, the logout thing is even worse than not being able to log in. Doesn't help that the error message they have is not very useful (there should be a "yeah it's our fault" message)

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#85

Post by autoexec »

toastal wrote: post #29

Just a reminder that downloaded audio files work offline, can have very high or lossless quality not restricted by bandwidth, have a concept of ‘ownership’ with no DRM, don’t have ads or tries to sell your data (though voluntarily contributing to ListenBrainz is admirable), don’t require a monthly fee, and if bought legally gives a bigger slice of the money pie to artists. Also podcasts are just RSS audio.

I'd add versatility to that list too. With DRM free files you can edit songs, remix individual tracks, create mashups of multiple songs, create your own mix-tapes/compilations, use them in your own videos and projects, convert them unto whatever formats you want etc.

They're also amazing for portability. Every phone, desktop PC, laptop and tablet I have can play MP3s, and while most can also run spotify, the same can't be said for all the TVs, DVD/blu-ray players, CD players, ebook readers, and game consoles that support MP3. It must have been an easy bullet point to add to a feature list because I see MP3 and other music formats supported in a huge number of devices. I've seen it supported in GPS navigation devices, alarm clocks, children's toys, workout equipment, and toothbrushes

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#86

Post by [deleted] »

toastal wrote: post #29

Just a reminder that downloaded audio files work offline, can have very high or lossless quality not restricted by bandwidth, have a concept of ‘ownership’ with no DRM, don’t have ads or tries to sell your data (though voluntarily contributing to ListenBrainz is admirable), don’t require a monthly fee, and if bought legally gives a bigger slice of the money pie to artists. Also podcasts are just RSS audio.

[deleted]

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#87

Post by e1g »

dastbe wrote: post #78
charcircuit wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was known in advance that HTTP/3 support would eventually be enabled for the load balancers. If you wanted to force support for it or force it to not support it there was an override setting. Mozilla did not override the behaviour meaning that they did not mind HTTP/3 to be advertised as being supported.

so this is my "worked in aws" informed take, but you absolutely do not force default behavior change on anyone unless it is absolutely necessary, and advertising http/3 isn't necessary.

AWS had a similar oopsie with their Load Balancer: introduced a new flag to strip some headers, enabled it by default for all existing public ALBs, and the effect was that all custom headers with an underscore in the name (“x-access_token”) started getting stripped. Took down a few APIs https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=923182

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#88

Post by ngngngng »

w4rh4wk5 wrote: post #60

The main problem of the outage was that users were logged out and thus unable to play what songs they had downloaded / cached.

Yeah I was surprised that wasn't clearly stated in the incident report. They made it sound like I wasn't logged in when the outage occurred when I'm always logged in across all my devices.

Re: Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8

#89

Post by pmmr9 »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #76
rightbyte wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you find so many different songs? Shuffle? You are essentially listening to 40 new songs per day.

Can't say for them, but for me I have a single playlist 6,994 songs on shuffle. I try to add songs every week, haven't recently as I also should be moving off of Spotify.

To what alternative are you moving into?
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