9 ms·

Spotify’s Beta Used ‘Pirate’ MP3 Files, Some from Pirate Bay

123 points by djvdorp 9y ago

lettergram 9y ago
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). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
- dublinben 9y ago
  This peer-to-peer streaming architecture was definitely a part of Spotify in the early days. It has been removed as of 2014.[0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
- npongratz 9y ago
  Spotify apparently stopped their P2P distribution a few years ago: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- drakenot 9y ago
  They removed P2P streaming around 2014[0]. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
  - oblio 9y ago
    The good old Skype strategy, with super nodes. For those who didn't use Skype at the time, they had an algorithm which would promote some nodes to "super node" status. Those nodes would then be used for processing power, uploads, etc. I guess Microsoft didn't like the possible legal implications and this "feature" went on the chopping block quite early after the acquisition (unless my memory's failing me and Skype dumped it even before the acquisition).
    - eli 9y ago
      I thought it was more about punching through firewalls than borrowing processing power
      - oblio 9y ago
        Could be. http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supernodes-for-scalability-not-surveillance/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe... > ...the Skype peer-to-peer network architecture elected certain nodes to be "supernodes", to help maintain the index of peers as well as handle parts of the NAT [network address translation]/firewall traversal for other peers. This election algorithm chose only machines with open Internet connectivity, substantial uptime, and which were running the latest version of our peer-to-peer code. I probably misunderstood the first part of his comment to mean that they also wanted to distribute some of their processing to clients.
    - awinder 9y ago
      It's probably fair to attribute this to Skype since it's the same people, but didn't that design originate out of the Kazaa file sharing network way back in the day? As I understood it there was some degree of protocol / code-sharing between Kazaa and Skype at least early-on.
- awake 9y ago
  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. https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
- simias 9y ago
  They used to use peer-to-peer to speed up music download (and reduce the load on their servers, presumably) but I believe that it is no longer the case: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma... 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.
- pmarreck 9y ago
  > hence I'll never go back. 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-and-how-spotify-works/ 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/netflix-researching-large-scale-peer-to-peer-technology-for-streaming/ 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.
  - lettergram 9y ago
    I'm not telling you not to use their service, my wife (for example) continues to use Spotify. However, I personally will never use their service again. When they thought it was alright to use my network (that I pay for) to make money, then I have a right to turn my back on them. Questionable legality is one thing, I personally could care less about laws. I break probably 5 or 6 laws an hour. Laws have nothing to do about morality. It's "illegal" to go 1 mph over the speed limit, it's "illegal" to cross the street without a sign, etc. As a society the vast majority of the laws we don't care about or follow. What most people do is try to be moral and civil with one another. In the case of distributing music, most people seem willing to pay (hence Spotify has become popular). However, that didn't give them a right to use my network without my consent. That is immoral, and that will get a visceral reaction from people. In this case, it didn't surprise me they were using torrented content in their service. I shared what I found interesting, and why it didn't surprise me, and also my opinion about how they were shady. > even though they've since entirely removed that functionality? If a company is shady, I'm not going to trust them with my money / data unless I have to (i.e. Comcast / Verizon / AT&T). If I have a choice, I'd use someone else. This is my "vote" of dissatisfaction. I vote with my wallet, and I share my insights / knowledge such that others will vote (informed) as well.
- mcculley 9y ago
  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.
- arprocter 9y ago
  Skype used to do that too, although according to them they also moved away from it[0] [0]https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud
- kakarot 9y ago
  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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
  - charlesdm 9y ago
    "Of course, Spotify sucks now". Spotify is awesome and convenient. In comparison to other services, for me as a user, it's a clear winner.
    - kakarot 9y ago
      In comparison to the other garbage, yeah it might be the winner. But it's still garbage. I was one of the first users of the beta program. At the time, Ludvig's philosophy of simplicity + hidden functionality via interactive views shone through the UI and it was very pleasant to use. The 5 star rating system was the icing on the cake. A step down in functionality from Amarok's playlist creation system, and lacking the fine search and organization capabilities of foobar2000, but it did the job. However, the UX of Spotify has hideously morphed over time. Now the UI mostly uses Chromium Embedded Framework which brings huge overhead and causes lots of rendering latency. The font size and padding has grown, then shrunk, then grown again, each time showing less tracks on a page at once. Views that were once interactive with left and right clicks became static. Star ratings turned into Like/Unlike. Their user behavior tracking has naturally been cranked up to 11, though it is better than a lot of similar products, I still have no desire for a music service to track anything other than the music I search and play. Even tracking the song titles in my personal library is an unacceptable breach of privacy. The slow and steady social creep and tracking through Facebook is also unacceptable. It doesn't utilize P2P anymore, which I considered a plus because I love supporting and legitimizing P2P tech. It has become less of an engineer-led company and more of a traditional company with shareholder interests I could really go on. The downsides of Spotify as a music player are much greater than they were at product launch. The most infuriating thing about it is that Spotify never fielded these changes with users before committing to them, and each and every time when a simple addition to the settings panel could make the changes optional, they were instead forced upon us. I don't like a music player that frequently changes its UI without my approval. I like a music player that puts me in charge of the UI. I no longer pay for Spotify and have returned to getting my music through other means. On my Linux and Windows machines, I mostly use foobar2000 and VLC, and Amarok when I need powerful playlisting tools. If Radionomy ever gets their shit straight with Winamp (They bought it from AOL in '14 and have to clean out all proprietary code) then I will definitely consider going back. Give me a streaming service that doesn't spy on me unnecessarily and has an API so that I can implement a plugin to my favorite existing media player or otherwise an absolutely beautiful and immutable interface, and of course a large library and doesn't shaft its artists, and I will pay for it. Anything less than that, in 2017, sucks.
- MikeKusold 9y ago
  > It's not at all surprising that their initial "success" is tied to torrenting as well. Two founders of Spotify came from uTorrent after the sale.[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
  - bogomipz 9y ago
    [2] is not a co-founder, according to [1] the co founder is Martin Lorentzon.
- oceanghost 9y ago
  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.
  - bitexploder 9y ago
    That is probably a little out there. Skype was heavily reverse engineered back in the day. It is possible folks missed it, but Skype got a lot of RE attention. Plus, simpler reversing techniques like strace / Sysmon would have caught this sort of thing.
    - oceanghost 9y ago
      Oh god im an idiot. I meant Spotify. :)
      - bitexploder 9y ago
        Ha, now that I would not doubt nearly so much :-)
Kiro 9y ago
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".
- crucialfelix 9y ago
  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.
  - throw52191375 9y ago
    You can stream torrents [0], how long until someone makes a Spotify clone using torrents with a curated home page and integrated torrent search? Like Popcorntime and Netflix? You could re-sell a one click VPN for revenue.
    - ravishi 9y ago
      It's been on my backlog for quite a while at this time.
    - throw52191375 9y ago
      I forgot to add links http://butterproject.org http://butterproject.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
- thrownhwn 9y ago
  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.
rhaps0dy 9y ago
What does the author mean by this? "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 9y ago
  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.
  - thirdsun 9y ago
    > 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 be fair those haven't been issues with digital music purchases for a long time. Buying music couldn't be more convenient these days.
    - aphexbr 9y ago
      DRM might not be an issue any more (at least for purchases), but regional releases, platform exclusivity, etc. sure as hell are.
      - thirdsun 9y ago
        I thought we were talking about purchases, not streaming. How would DRM-free streaming work? I haven't seen regional releases in ages. Platform exclusivity? Again, for streaming maybe, but we were talking about purchases, right? I buy my weekly releases in a digital, lossless format from a range of stores. The files I receive are mine. Non of the issues you mentioned apply these days. Streaming, however, while convenient can have disadvantages like the ones you mentioned. More importantly, you don't own your collection, you just rent the music and albums may disappear at any point. However none of this justifies piracy since there's a flawless alternative: Buying music.
atemerev 9y ago
I don't see any problem with that as long as they have had the license. It's not like the bits are tainted.
6stringmerc 9y ago
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.

123 points by djvdorp 9y ago

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). [1] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...

dublinben 9y ago
This peer-to-peer streaming architecture was definitely a part of Spotify in the early days. It has been removed as of 2014.[0] [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
npongratz 9y ago
Spotify apparently stopped their P2P distribution a few years ago: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma...
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
drakenot 9y ago
They removed P2P streaming around 2014[0]. [0] https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
- oblio 9y ago
  The good old Skype strategy, with super nodes. For those who didn't use Skype at the time, they had an algorithm which would promote some nodes to "super node" status. Those nodes would then be used for processing power, uploads, etc. I guess Microsoft didn't like the possible legal implications and this "feature" went on the chopping block quite early after the acquisition (unless my memory's failing me and Skype dumped it even before the acquisition).
  - eli 9y ago
    I thought it was more about punching through firewalls than borrowing processing power
    - oblio 9y ago
      Could be. http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supernodes-for-scalability-not-surveillance/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/skype-ditched-peer-to-peer-supe... > ...the Skype peer-to-peer network architecture elected certain nodes to be "supernodes", to help maintain the index of peers as well as handle parts of the NAT [network address translation]/firewall traversal for other peers. This election algorithm chose only machines with open Internet connectivity, substantial uptime, and which were running the latest version of our peer-to-peer code. I probably misunderstood the first part of his comment to mean that they also wanted to distribute some of their processing to clients.
  - awinder 9y ago
    It's probably fair to attribute this to Skype since it's the same people, but didn't that design originate out of the Kazaa file sharing network way back in the day? As I understood it there was some degree of protocol / code-sharing between Kazaa and Skype at least early-on.
awake 9y ago
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. https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-peer-technology-from-its-desktop-client/ https://techcrunch.com/2014/04/17/spotify-removes-peer-to-pe...
simias 9y ago
They used to use peer-to-peer to speed up music download (and reduce the load on their servers, presumably) but I believe that it is no longer the case: https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-massive-p2p-network-140416/ https://torrentfreak.com/spotify-starts-shutting-down-its-ma... 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.
pmarreck 9y ago
> hence I'll never go back. 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-and-how-spotify-works/ 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/netflix-researching-large-scale-peer-to-peer-technology-for-streaming/ 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.
- lettergram 9y ago
  I'm not telling you not to use their service, my wife (for example) continues to use Spotify. However, I personally will never use their service again. When they thought it was alright to use my network (that I pay for) to make money, then I have a right to turn my back on them. Questionable legality is one thing, I personally could care less about laws. I break probably 5 or 6 laws an hour. Laws have nothing to do about morality. It's "illegal" to go 1 mph over the speed limit, it's "illegal" to cross the street without a sign, etc. As a society the vast majority of the laws we don't care about or follow. What most people do is try to be moral and civil with one another. In the case of distributing music, most people seem willing to pay (hence Spotify has become popular). However, that didn't give them a right to use my network without my consent. That is immoral, and that will get a visceral reaction from people. In this case, it didn't surprise me they were using torrented content in their service. I shared what I found interesting, and why it didn't surprise me, and also my opinion about how they were shady. > even though they've since entirely removed that functionality? If a company is shady, I'm not going to trust them with my money / data unless I have to (i.e. Comcast / Verizon / AT&T). If I have a choice, I'd use someone else. This is my "vote" of dissatisfaction. I vote with my wallet, and I share my insights / knowledge such that others will vote (informed) as well.
mcculley 9y ago
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.
arprocter 9y ago
Skype used to do that too, although according to them they also moved away from it[0] [0]https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud https://support.skype.com/en/faq/FA12381/what-is-the-cloud
kakarot 9y ago
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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
- charlesdm 9y ago
  "Of course, Spotify sucks now". Spotify is awesome and convenient. In comparison to other services, for me as a user, it's a clear winner.
  - kakarot 9y ago
    In comparison to the other garbage, yeah it might be the winner. But it's still garbage. I was one of the first users of the beta program. At the time, Ludvig's philosophy of simplicity + hidden functionality via interactive views shone through the UI and it was very pleasant to use. The 5 star rating system was the icing on the cake. A step down in functionality from Amarok's playlist creation system, and lacking the fine search and organization capabilities of foobar2000, but it did the job. However, the UX of Spotify has hideously morphed over time. Now the UI mostly uses Chromium Embedded Framework which brings huge overhead and causes lots of rendering latency. The font size and padding has grown, then shrunk, then grown again, each time showing less tracks on a page at once. Views that were once interactive with left and right clicks became static. Star ratings turned into Like/Unlike. Their user behavior tracking has naturally been cranked up to 11, though it is better than a lot of similar products, I still have no desire for a music service to track anything other than the music I search and play. Even tracking the song titles in my personal library is an unacceptable breach of privacy. The slow and steady social creep and tracking through Facebook is also unacceptable. It doesn't utilize P2P anymore, which I considered a plus because I love supporting and legitimizing P2P tech. It has become less of an engineer-led company and more of a traditional company with shareholder interests I could really go on. The downsides of Spotify as a music player are much greater than they were at product launch. The most infuriating thing about it is that Spotify never fielded these changes with users before committing to them, and each and every time when a simple addition to the settings panel could make the changes optional, they were instead forced upon us. I don't like a music player that frequently changes its UI without my approval. I like a music player that puts me in charge of the UI. I no longer pay for Spotify and have returned to getting my music through other means. On my Linux and Windows machines, I mostly use foobar2000 and VLC, and Amarok when I need powerful playlisting tools. If Radionomy ever gets their shit straight with Winamp (They bought it from AOL in '14 and have to clean out all proprietary code) then I will definitely consider going back. Give me a streaming service that doesn't spy on me unnecessarily and has an API so that I can implement a plugin to my favorite existing media player or otherwise an absolutely beautiful and immutable interface, and of course a large library and doesn't shaft its artists, and I will pay for it. Anything less than that, in 2017, sucks.
MikeKusold 9y ago
> It's not at all surprising that their initial "success" is tied to torrenting as well. Two founders of Spotify came from uTorrent after the sale.[1][2] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ek [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludvig_Strigeus
- bogomipz 9y ago
  [2] is not a co-founder, according to [1] the co founder is Martin Lorentzon.
oceanghost 9y ago
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.
- bitexploder 9y ago
  That is probably a little out there. Skype was heavily reverse engineered back in the day. It is possible folks missed it, but Skype got a lot of RE attention. Plus, simpler reversing techniques like strace / Sysmon would have caught this sort of thing.
  - oceanghost 9y ago
    Oh god im an idiot. I meant Spotify. :)
    - bitexploder 9y ago
      Ha, now that I would not doubt nearly so much :-)

Kiro 9y ago

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".

crucialfelix 9y ago
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.
- throw52191375 9y ago
  You can stream torrents [0], how long until someone makes a Spotify clone using torrents with a curated home page and integrated torrent search? Like Popcorntime and Netflix? You could re-sell a one click VPN for revenue.
  - ravishi 9y ago
    It's been on my backlog for quite a while at this time.
  - throw52191375 9y ago
    I forgot to add links http://butterproject.org http://butterproject.org https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Popcorn_Time https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitTorrent
thrownhwn 9y ago
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.

rhaps0dy 9y ago

What does the author mean by this? "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 9y ago
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.
- thirdsun 9y ago
  > 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 be fair those haven't been issues with digital music purchases for a long time. Buying music couldn't be more convenient these days.
  - aphexbr 9y ago
    DRM might not be an issue any more (at least for purchases), but regional releases, platform exclusivity, etc. sure as hell are.
    - thirdsun 9y ago
      I thought we were talking about purchases, not streaming. How would DRM-free streaming work? I haven't seen regional releases in ages. Platform exclusivity? Again, for streaming maybe, but we were talking about purchases, right? I buy my weekly releases in a digital, lossless format from a range of stores. The files I receive are mine. Non of the issues you mentioned apply these days. Streaming, however, while convenient can have disadvantages like the ones you mentioned. More importantly, you don't own your collection, you just rent the music and albums may disappear at any point. However none of this justifies piracy since there's a flawless alternative: Buying music.

atemerev 9y ago

I don't see any problem with that as long as they have had the license. It's not like the bits are tainted.

6stringmerc 9y ago

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.