Virgin Media flushes pipes clogged by piles of Spotify fans Virgin Media has been forced to reconfigure routing of its network traffic after some of the telco's customers complained that Spotify kept jamming, The Register has learned. The music-streaming service inked an "exclusive" deal in July last year with Virgin Media to dish up Spotify bundled with various broadband packages to …
Instead of hundreds of thousands of people downloading files from TPB, what's to stop hundreds of people getting the files off Virgin and selling copies to thousands of people in their local pubs?
(Not counting Virgin's evident disabilities, of course.)
That's what my generation used to do back in the good old days.
Most likely (pure speculation follows), Spotify has only a 5 second buffer for the copyright holder's protection, to keep the pirates from coping out the buffer's contents to another file. So basically in order to stop a pirate that can get their music from various other places anyway, their service is basically useless. If their buffer settings allowed for bytes instead of time, I don't think the sporadic bandwidth would be an issue, I mean what are these streams anyway 5mb a piece? 5mb is about 5 seconds on a modern connection.
I'm in my 5th month of the 6 month premium free trial (via Virgin Media).
I've not had any of the problems described here but I have had the same problem as EddieD - alot of music I normally listen to isn't there, and the stuff that was there 3 months ago is now removed. It seems like if you're into older and new pop music then you're okay - but if you want something other than pop it's pretty hit or miss.
It's a shame really, because of the library holes (and random withdraws) I don't think I'll convert to a paying customer. Will just go back to downloading via Amazon MP3 or whatever, and syncing between devices again.
Jeebus is right. File sharing of unencrypted content makes for much more efficient use of bandwidth. DRM distribution policies by their nature have to compromise integrity of content delivery against security of protection measures . For example, having a 10 second buffer allowing for streamed content to be delivered earlier than consumed and at a potentially higher feed rate would enable uninterrupted listening or viewing despite 5 or 10 second network outages (which I get on VM occasionally). But this kind of sensible response to imperfect network behaviour opens up the possibility of buffer copying, which makes the whole DRM scheme less secure than any scheme involving supplying the content with the keys needed to decrypt it is going to be anyway.
I'm sure Virgin use customer complaints as their network monitoring.
Ringing them up to be told that the local network is over capacity but that I am the first person to report it and this they haven't done anything about it is just a joke (it had been going on for months). I guess waiting for complaints is cheaper than proactively monitoring and upgrading stuff.
I'm going to the expense of getting a BT line installed so I can move to FTTC with an ISP who I like. The main driver ? Service a bit dogy (the POS super-duper-hub locking up) but mainly putting the throttling up on the 50Mb service (or what ever they've 'upgraded' me to this week).
"...with an ISP who I like."
As a BT customer more than once over the years, it won't last, trust me. BT have an entire department (possibly their largest) dedicated solely to ensuring that the company is as dislikable as possible. From racking prices up in increasingly sneaky ways while claiming they're actually cutting prices, to hiring staff on the basis of how efficient they are at being rude to customers, BT won't be happy until you despise them. And you will.
VM customers usually have to put up with broken music/video streams for many many months before VM admit that they dont have enough bandwidth on the UBR or at Peering points. So 2 weeks to get a problem fixed is actually good for them!
If they genuinely do not monitor bandwidth, congestion and their network, then someone needs sacking for not being proactive. It is more likely VM were hoping no one would notice so they could save a few pennies...
... we have a whole generation of content providers who think selling gaming and video streaming services "in the cloud" is a good idea? The only way video and audio streaming works at all today is because it buffers N seconds or so; you can't do that for interactive streams.
/me holds on to his round bits of plastic tightly!
If you're going to offer something for nothing as part of a subscription, surely they would of calculated a rough estimate of how extra bandwidth they'd need or which lines to bulk up before promoting the god damn thing?
Although I've never had any problems with VM + Spotify Premium, I normally save offline copies of music and go from there.
Again, VM should have a proxy that's serving these sorts of requests where the most frequently accesses music is cached and served directly from the local hubs.
>As a BT customer more than once over the years, it won't last, trust me.<
Ok, BT customer for six years, out in the sticks where there is no virgin cable, perfectly happy with BT, just last year got upgraded broadband, rocking about 15Mbs DL (started off with less than a Mb), yet my cost has reduced year on year (just threaten to leave when your contract is close to renewal - works wonders).
Yes, bad BT for Phorm etc but they did back off eventually, and it's not like other companies wouldn't try the same thing if they thought they could get away with it .
As another data point, I have the Virgin top end cable service (XXL or whatever it's currently called) and I pay Spotify a tenner a month for their premium service. I'm now seeing drop outs on my Spotify streaming where the music stops, buffers and restarts. If it isn't sorted out soon I'll be cancelling Spotify and writing them a letter to tell them why.
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