Comments on: Spotify Starts Shutting Down Its Massive P2P Network

By: goltan

goltan — Sat, 14 Jun 2014 00:23:00 +0000

It’s not that you can’t exclude cell phones….its that some services just don’t give a rat’s ass since it saves them on server costs. If your a 100% mobile app service with limited hiring budget for I.T. with heavy bandwidth needs, then p2p becomes a very convient way to provide content on the cheap. Just look how many services utilize 3rd party download sites with porn ads to distribute versus thier own servers.

By: Vance Decker

Vance Decker — Fri, 30 May 2014 05:57:00 +0000

It’s called an if/else statement, and it is taught in Programming 101 in ever college campus which has a computer science department in America.

IF cellphone… else…

any questions?

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:18:00 +0000

Personally, I think Skype was at its end the day it was released, since no one seems to have fixed a single bug since that day some 11 years ago.

Actually, now that Microsoft decided to have Skype make more use of the centralised servers it requires anyway, it slowly starts to become barely usable. I mean, it had IM functionality without offline messaging, for crying out loud! And finally, you don’t receive old messages marked as new for as many times as the number of devices you use Skype on anymore. Those were horrible issues, and they were only fixed thanks to a less complete reliance on P2P.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:15:00 +0000

Spotify don’t have a brilliant track record when it comes to giving people choice. And even just giving the option probably wouldn’t have helped at all. Make it opt-in, and 99.99% of people will never activate it, defeating the purpose of the whole thing. Make it opt-out, and most people at workplaces will still be too lazy or stupid to turn it off, getting it banned anyway.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:12:00 +0000

I’m sure *someone* over there has done the math. P2P isn’t free either. The code needs to be developed and maintained. It might increase customer support queries. Maybe most importantly, it leads to lost subscriptions because the upload got Spotify banned from many office networks. And I guess it could lead to legal/contractual difficulties with licensing partners, too. I heavly doubt that Spotify would’ve chosen to drop P2P if it meant they would make less money. Their payments to the rightsholders are a percentage of their revenue, so what’s bad for the artists is bad for Spotify.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:08:00 +0000

I figured something like that. I heard about Spotify being blacklisted at many workplaces. This makes more sense if you consider that it occupied upstream bandwidth without asking, and without offering an opt-out.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:06:00 +0000

I agree with the sentiment. The move to “everything in the cloud” and losing ownership of your data and software is terrifying and will hopefully blow up in everyone’s face big time.

In the case of Spotify though, that it’s a cloud-based solution is more or less the point of the whole thing. That’s why you pay next-to-nothing for access to 20-stupidillion tracks. No one was led to believe that you were actually purchasing music (as opposed to what other industries like to do), it was never advertised as anything else but a “library access subscription”.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 20:03:00 +0000

For what it’s worth, scarcity is most definitely not artificial when it comes to mobile data connectivity. Try surfing the web in an area with a smallish gathering of people. Shit breaks down immediately. There are very tight limits on power/range and bandwidth cell towers can achieve. Wireless communications are a frustratingly limiting field of technology, because they collide with stupid real-world physics (just like batteries).

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 19:58:00 +0000

Major corporations are afraid of technologies like P2P because they feel like they’re giving up control, even though they’re not. Spotify did it because they were a start-up, they wouldn’t have if they were founded by a major record label.

Also, I guess it would have less of an effect on streaming HD video anyway when compared to music, because the majority of Internet users have a relatively narrow upstream.

By: ᅠᅠᅠ

ᅠᅠᅠ — Wed, 21 May 2014 19:56:00 +0000

I don’t think desktop is going anywhere, but I agree that a major reason is probably the percentage of mobile clients which don’t participate in P2P anyway. It makes P2P less effective, yet it still has to be developed and maintained, so it still costs Spotify money to keep running. Plus many customers probably don’t appreciate their upstream being used up.