I'm mostly shocked at how I simply was uninformed that spotify was using my connection so. I know over the past few months I've had occasional and even sometimes frequent spikes of latency while gaming.

I'm often left confuddled at these spikes as I won't have anything open I would consider requires much bandwith. Also, even though I would have high latency, opening a browser and navigating through sites would work as smoothly as ever.

Now I know to look at spotify specifically and I would not be very surprised if my spikes of bad internet activity are a result of spotify leeching my upload.

While I think it makes sense for spotify to use p2p in their system, I would have thought there would have been an indication of it in the options with an option to disable such services.

I agree. I've been promoting spotify in word of mouth to my Friends. My co-workers all use it, which means a good chunk of our upstream bandwidth is swallowed by spotify? In any case they're being completely shady about it. I.e. not making any effort to define Spotify as a P2P service. Understandable in a marketing sense. Ethically questionable and actually upset since well. I pay a monthly fee and all..

I am purely annoyed that I didn't know that it did this, I can't say whether this is my fault for being ignorant or theirs for not informing me but it worries me that I may have been putting unneeded load on networks that aren't mine, like my universities network.

Yeah. And on top of connection quality issues, some companies with bandwidth caps count uploads as well. I haven't really seen what kind of bandwidth would be used but it's something I'm going to check out and possibly warn some people I've recommended it to in the past.

Or use Rdio? I've never been impressed with Spotify. The experience on Rdio has been great for me.

I haven't used Spotify in a long time, but I've known it was p2p since the last time I used it in 2010, this is nothing new.

But, I almost exclusively use http://www.grooveshark.com and http://www.songza.com

Both are web based, the latter has a mobile app, both absolutely brilliant and FREE! I'll have to check out Rdio, that looks real interesting.

I switched from Spotify to Rdio recently. As someone that likes to hack on music projects, I'm really impressed with the Rdio API. I especially like their integration with Echonest, which gives you a deep "beat-by-beat" analysis of every track on Rdio.

I'll be honest, I tried Rdio and didn't get where the "music discovery" part comes in. In the month I used it I was only suggested completely unrelated, but obviously 'featured' albums (on their "frontpage" so it wasn't even on my face.)

All in all, I just didn't find the service that interesting unless you consider the technological angle.

Music discovery does suck on Rdio, granted. I find myself using other services for that. But for daily listening, the experience is much cleaner than Spotify's is, IMO.

I like the Stations on Rdio, actually. I've found some cool artists through the Echo Nest-powered discovery stuff they have.

Yep, that's true. I had a bunch of issues with their 'native' OS X app though. Every now and then the embedded browser (I think that's what they do anyway) would go nuts and eat my whole CPU. Also, the streaming quality didn't sound that great. I regularly use Grooveshark, and the quality of the songs over there was much better.

All in all, I guess it might work for some people. It just didn't make the cut for me. For that matter, neither did Spotify or Pandora. I guess I'm just not the target audience for that kind of service in general.

Just wanted to point out that the web player is not US only. I'm from Europe and got it working by following this guide: http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2012/11/how-to-test-spotifys-new-...

Indeed, the web player isn't U.S. only, just that the beta testing currently concentrates on new users from the U.S. It is however possible to gain access - there are many guides online on how to do so.

How about setting up a firewall rule so that Spotify can only talk to Spotify's servers? Here's a post from Reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/spotify/comments/jdhj6/is_there_a_wa...

Admittedly, higher effort and probably not for the non-tech but...android emulator + mobile app would probably work too. Granted I have other qualms with their mobile app.

For the premium users, I do wonder if any of the open source spotify clients would alleviate this?

http://despotify.sourceforge.net/

Right. I was just about to say. This is hackers do it. Sniff out the traffic and block really selectively.

My concern woud be: Am I violating TOS when i don't share bandwidth?

> My concern woud be: Am I violating TOS when i don't share bandwidth?

I wouldn't worry about it. If it bothers you, adjust your firewall to allow a few bytes through an hour and still be able to sleep at night.

Good point. You can go to jail for that; it makes you a felon.

@falling, i think this was a joke. or maybe not, you'll have to check - http://uscode.house.gov/download/title_18.shtml

Violating terms of service is not a felony. In fact, it's not even a crime; it's a civil matter.

Tell that to Aaron Swartz.

Aaron Swartz was charged with fraud and unathorized. Not breaking TOS. The idea that breaking TOS could constitute a crime has been shot down by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. http://thefire.org/article/14389.html

The prosecution was claiming that his breach of the ToS implied Unauthorized Access, which is a felony.

unauthorized access

Funny, but I was serious about getting my subscription cancelled without refund.

Is that a joke or serious statement? Can't tell thanks to Poe's law.

Kind of a joke, kind of serious. It's what's at issue in Aaron Schwartz' case. The prosecutions argument is that his actions were felonious on the grounds that his violation of the ToS implied Unauthorized Access, which is a felony.

I imagine something like Little Snitch for the mac would work very well.