6 ms·

Spotify might be killing SSDs by design errors?

102 points by mciancia 10y ago

Kikawala 10y ago
constantly updating the sqlite temp file.
- aruggirello 10y ago
  If I recall correctly, there was a similar issue with Firefox.
- std_throwaway 10y ago
  Is this just a guess or did you investigate?
  - Kikawala 10y ago
    I used perfmon and procmon and saw the Spotify process was writing to a file in my temp folder named etilqs_{random string}. The first part of the name is SQLite in reverse. This was on Windows. I also noticed three other etilqs files but they were owned by the Google Chrome process.
ivraatiems 10y ago
Spotify does not care and will not fix this unless there is a major outcry. They've been ignoring user complaints since "1.0" dropped quite a while ago. They don't even post changelogs anymore. Features are added one day and disappear the next. It took months for them to reintroduce CTRL-F. They don't care. If another platform had the cross-device operability and catalog, I'd switch immediately.
- coolgoose 10y ago
  Deezer maybe ? Never used spotify but i'm kinda happy with deezer at the moment.
  - wlesieutre 10y ago
    Pandora is said to be working on a competing service to launch next year. They bought what was left of rdio, so I'm expecting the client won't be as generally bad as Spotify's.
    - ivraatiems 10y ago
      Pandora's radio is already superior to Spotify's. I'd jump all over that if it happened.
      - wlesieutre 10y ago
        I'm planning to do the same, I have a hard time imagining that it could be worse. http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/13/pandora-to-launch-%E2%80%A810-streaming-service/ http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/13/pandora-to-launch-%E2%...
- eiliant 10y ago
  how's tidal?
- mrep 10y ago
  They probably won't even fix it if there is an outcry. Their software is pretty bad. Back when I had an android phone (galaxy S5), their app would constantly crash on me multiple times per day. Unfortunately their competition is not so great. Apple music has the worst UX I have ever experienced. I tried google music when it first came out but I liked spotify's catalog and ability to share playlists better at the time. And finally, there is Tidal which I haven't tried but I have heard it's not that good. 4 big competing streaming services and they all have glaring issues/missing features and yet seem to not be doing anything about it...
  - kikimaru 10y ago
    Windows Phone had Nokia MixRadio, and it was great. And then MS killed it.
    - rasjani 10y ago
      ex-mixradio guy here, MS didnt kill it really - they "sold" is to Line Corporation which eventually killed us ..
- roboguy12 10y ago
  I've been using Google Play Music since it launched, and I'm very happy with the service. It works very well on web/Android/iOS, and there's rarely anything that I find missing from its catalog. And, for the rare times that I do, Google Play Music comes with YouTube Red, which gives you ad-free playback and offline caching.
- smpetrey 10y ago
  Apple Music is decent, Google Play is probably more worthwhile
op00to 10y ago
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... No.
- corobo 10y ago
  Even if that was a hard rule, the headline has been altered. Original headline is "Spotify killing my SSD"
btown 10y ago
Anyone know if this occurs on the Mac client?
- dkarp 10y ago
  On Mac, 13GB Written by Spotify in the last 4 hours as reported by Activity Monitor. I only listened to 10-20 songs.
  - smcguinness 10y ago
    I've been listening for a few hours now, just checked AM and saw 44GB on disk, but oddly for Network, it has only received 176MB. Where is all the data coming from then?
- mrep 10y ago
  My spotify is showing 168.23 GB written and 1.45GB read. Meanwhile, chrome has only written 51.27 GB and read 6.03 GB. This is also on my home computer where I rarely listen to music (usually I listen on my work computer or phone).
elcct 10y ago
Maybe it is time to charge companies for resources they use to run their apps.
thenewwazoo 10y ago
For funsies, I just started Spotify, and closed the window. Nothing playing, no user interaction, no UI to draw. 25 minutes later, and Activity Monitor reports it's written 1.05 GB to disk.
K0nserv 10y ago
I'm a heavy Spotify user and my Intel 330 SSD just died catastrophically and I am just about to install a brand new Samsung Evo today. This is definitely concerning, especially the lack of communication from Spotify on the matter.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
vini 10y ago
I just checked and it is insane, for a 4 minutes long song the Spotify windows app made 163.165 writes to the mercury.db-wal file. http://imgur.com/a/rDhPS http://imgur.com/a/rDhPS
jamesmcintyre 10y ago
After seeing this post today I made a script to install a Electron wrapper for the Spotify web client so that you can still have the "dedicated desktop app" feel/behavior without the SSD-killing part! https://jamesmcintyre.github.io/spotify-electron-client/ https://jamesmcintyre.github.io/spotify-electron-client/
- mciancia 10y ago
  How can I enable flash in electron to make it work?
fuzzfactor 10y ago
Who is the CTO and what does he say about it so far? Without a qualified representative making a statement, it simply looks like a case of either poor engineering or pith-poor engineering, difficult to be sure which. Definitely the type of defect that needs to be corrected in soft-wares before they can actually become worth money.
zerd 10y ago
This is probably related to the bittorrent client included in Spotify https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-blessed-by-record-labels-110617/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-bless...

102 points by mciancia 10y ago

Kikawala 10y ago

constantly updating the sqlite temp file.

aruggirello 10y ago
If I recall correctly, there was a similar issue with Firefox.
std_throwaway 10y ago
Is this just a guess or did you investigate?
- Kikawala 10y ago
  I used perfmon and procmon and saw the Spotify process was writing to a file in my temp folder named etilqs_{random string}. The first part of the name is SQLite in reverse. This was on Windows. I also noticed three other etilqs files but they were owned by the Google Chrome process.

ivraatiems 10y ago

Spotify does not care and will not fix this unless there is a major outcry. They've been ignoring user complaints since "1.0" dropped quite a while ago. They don't even post changelogs anymore. Features are added one day and disappear the next. It took months for them to reintroduce CTRL-F. They don't care. If another platform had the cross-device operability and catalog, I'd switch immediately.

coolgoose 10y ago
Deezer maybe ? Never used spotify but i'm kinda happy with deezer at the moment.
- wlesieutre 10y ago
  Pandora is said to be working on a competing service to launch next year. They bought what was left of rdio, so I'm expecting the client won't be as generally bad as Spotify's.
  - ivraatiems 10y ago
    Pandora's radio is already superior to Spotify's. I'd jump all over that if it happened.
    - wlesieutre 10y ago
      I'm planning to do the same, I have a hard time imagining that it could be worse. http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/13/pandora-to-launch-%E2%80%A810-streaming-service/ http://www.pressherald.com/2016/09/13/pandora-to-launch-%E2%...
eiliant 10y ago
how's tidal?
mrep 10y ago
They probably won't even fix it if there is an outcry. Their software is pretty bad. Back when I had an android phone (galaxy S5), their app would constantly crash on me multiple times per day. Unfortunately their competition is not so great. Apple music has the worst UX I have ever experienced. I tried google music when it first came out but I liked spotify's catalog and ability to share playlists better at the time. And finally, there is Tidal which I haven't tried but I have heard it's not that good. 4 big competing streaming services and they all have glaring issues/missing features and yet seem to not be doing anything about it...
- kikimaru 10y ago
  Windows Phone had Nokia MixRadio, and it was great. And then MS killed it.
  - rasjani 10y ago
    ex-mixradio guy here, MS didnt kill it really - they "sold" is to Line Corporation which eventually killed us ..
roboguy12 10y ago
I've been using Google Play Music since it launched, and I'm very happy with the service. It works very well on web/Android/iOS, and there's rarely anything that I find missing from its catalog. And, for the rare times that I do, Google Play Music comes with YouTube Red, which gives you ad-free playback and offline caching.
smpetrey 10y ago
Apple Music is decent, Google Play is probably more worthwhile

op00to 10y ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headli... No.

corobo 10y ago
Even if that was a hard rule, the headline has been altered. Original headline is "Spotify killing my SSD"

btown 10y ago

Anyone know if this occurs on the Mac client?

dkarp 10y ago
On Mac, 13GB Written by Spotify in the last 4 hours as reported by Activity Monitor. I only listened to 10-20 songs.
- smcguinness 10y ago
  I've been listening for a few hours now, just checked AM and saw 44GB on disk, but oddly for Network, it has only received 176MB. Where is all the data coming from then?
mrep 10y ago
My spotify is showing 168.23 GB written and 1.45GB read. Meanwhile, chrome has only written 51.27 GB and read 6.03 GB. This is also on my home computer where I rarely listen to music (usually I listen on my work computer or phone).

elcct 10y ago

Maybe it is time to charge companies for resources they use to run their apps.

thenewwazoo 10y ago

For funsies, I just started Spotify, and closed the window. Nothing playing, no user interaction, no UI to draw. 25 minutes later, and Activity Monitor reports it's written 1.05 GB to disk.

K0nserv 10y ago

I'm a heavy Spotify user and my Intel 330 SSD just died catastrophically and I am just about to install a brand new Samsung Evo today. This is definitely concerning, especially the lack of communication from Spotify on the matter.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

vini 10y ago

I just checked and it is insane, for a 4 minutes long song the Spotify windows app made 163.165 writes to the mercury.db-wal file. http://imgur.com/a/rDhPS http://imgur.com/a/rDhPS

jamesmcintyre 10y ago

After seeing this post today I made a script to install a Electron wrapper for the Spotify web client so that you can still have the "dedicated desktop app" feel/behavior without the SSD-killing part! https://jamesmcintyre.github.io/spotify-electron-client/ https://jamesmcintyre.github.io/spotify-electron-client/

mciancia 10y ago
How can I enable flash in electron to make it work?

fuzzfactor 10y ago

Who is the CTO and what does he say about it so far? Without a qualified representative making a statement, it simply looks like a case of either poor engineering or pith-poor engineering, difficult to be sure which. Definitely the type of defect that needs to be corrected in soft-wares before they can actually become worth money.

zerd 10y ago

This is probably related to the bittorrent client included in Spotify https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-blessed-by-record-labels-110617/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-a-massive-p2p-network-bless...