Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

Comment by pmarreck | Hacker News Reader

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The issue I'm taking with this is that Spotify did not try to hide, be cagey or act deceptively about the p2p aspect of their design at all; in fact here is a 2011 article on an academic paper on the design http://pansentient.com/2011/04/spotify-technology-some-stats... and here is a question-and-answer from their support community about it, from 2013: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Desktop-Linux-Windows-Web-P... Hardly a design aspect that everyone who actually cared about such things was intentionally kept in the dark about.

I would feel it is justified to be miffed if they tried to do it in secret and it was determined that they did indeed try to hide or downplay this fact, but this is not in fact what happened. Their stance seemed to be "yeah, this is currently how it works, we know some customers are unhappy with the arrangement, so we'll eventually change it, but you can't currently turn uploads off." Thus, you are basing your indignation off your own ignorance, and not reality.

Full disclosure: Am long-time Spotify fan (hey, gotta be honest!)

So how many journals and forums do you subscribe to in order to find out what the programs installed on your computer are doing?

This is not a counterargument. P2P is not something that most people would understand and thus, including it in marketing materials would turn people off. Thus, not including it in marketing materials is not a sign of intentional deception. I can't go back in time but I bet if you googled "spotify p2p" or "spotify architecture" in 2012 you'd find a wealth of information on it

You, and several other people in this conversation, are trying to tell the person you originally replied to how to feel.

They said nothing but "this is how I felt, this is why I stopped using it". If I had a bad experience with some software, I too would uninstall it, even if I'm told "but you see, you didn't experience it correctly".

They are of course entitled to their feelings, but saying that Spotify was doing something nefarious is unreasonable. Being able to send a receive information is part of how the Internet is supposed to work. That's what's makes it different from other things like cable TV.

It's DRM, data caps and walled gardens that have convinced people otherwise. The next logical step is separating clients and servers altogether. Why should I pay for data if I'm only a consumer? In that case we might as well let youtube and netflix pay to deliver the content. And then it's back to cable TV again.

PS. You also have to remember that Spotify is 10 years old. Internet infrastructure and things like cloud offerings wasn't as good. It wasn't just a move to save bandwidth, but to actually be able to offer a good service (low latency, high throughput, for free). Which still isn't easy.

You know... you're right. You can't rationally argue someone out of a feeling. But (to me) that feeling should at least (to the best extent possible) be based on rational fact.

If I mistakenly believed you killed my mother and shot you in the heat of the moment, would I be entitled to my feeling?

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