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Offline ExFreeper

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Spotify goes down leaving users unable to stream music
« on: June 22, 2016, 05:02:00 pm »


Spotify goes down leaving users unable to stream music


Telegraph

Music streaming service Spotify has gone offline for many users in Europe, the US and elsewhere.

The Spotify app was able to play songs that had been saved offline, but would not connect to the service and was not able to stream tracks over the internet on Wednesday afternoon.

Users loading the iPhone app reported a black bar along the bottom of the screen saying "Connecting..." but the search function and other online features of the app were disabled.

Outages were reported in several different countries, particularly the US, UK and continental Europe, according to Down Detector, which tracks network outages.

It is unclear why the service is down or when it will resume. Spotify has occasional outages, often due to a change when an engineer changes code in the service.

The Spotify status Twitter account acknowledged the issue, saying it was "investigating some issues and finding out more".

The company has been contacted for comment.

Spotify recently announced it had 100 million users.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2016/06/22/spotify-goes-down-leaving-users-unable-to-stream-music/


Spotify is a Swedish commercial music streaming, podcast, and video service that provides digital rights management–protected content from record labels and media companies. It is available in most of the Americas, Western Europe, and Oceania. Music can be browsed or searched by artist, album, genre, playlist, or record label.

Spotify operates under a freemium business model, with two music streaming tiers: Spotify Free and Spotify Premium. Benefits of the Premium subscription include the removal of advertisements, improved audio quality, and optional downloading of music to devices for offline listening.

Spotify was launched in September 2008 by Swedish startup Spotify AB. As of June 2015 Spotify had more than 75 million active users. The number of paid subscribers reached 30 million in March 2016. Spotify Ltd. operates as the parent company, headquartered in London, while Spotify AB handles research and development in Stockholm.

Spotify, together with the music streaming industry in general, faces some criticism from artists claiming they are being unfairly compensated for their work as downloaded music sales decline and music streaming increases. Unlike physical or download sales, which pay a fixed price per song or album, Spotify pays artists based on their "market share" (the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service).

They distribute approximately 70% to rights-holders, who will then pay artists based on their individual agreements. The unpredictable, and some say inadequate, nature of this compensation, which has been calculated to be as low as US$0.0011 per stream, has led to artist criticism.

Most notably, Thom Yorke and Taylor Swift's discography have been pulled from Spotify, with Swift claiming "I’m not willing to contribute my life’s work to an experiment that I don’t feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music." In response, Spotify claims that they are benefiting the music business by migrating "them away from piracy and less monetised platforms and allowing them to generate far greater royalties than before" by encouraging users to use their paid service.

Utilization

As of December 2012, Spotify provided access to approximately 20 million songs. Users could search for artists, albums, titles, labels and genres, and access tracks from many major and independent labels. Some artists opted out of Spotify. Additionally, some artists withdrew from specific regions because of licensing restrictions. The Spotify desktop client allowed music to be imported from iTunes, with the option of syncing with a mobile device.

Users can create and share playlists, or edit them together with other users. While Spotify does not automatically create preference-based playlists, it does integrate with Last.fm Spotify includes a Radio feature for Spotify Free and Premium accounts. Radio creates a random playlist of songs chosen based on specified genres and decades.

Websites, blogs, and 3rd-party applications and tools support Spotify. Community resources include Facebook and Last.fm groups, Twitter bots and user forums, and tools to display lyrics and services to list and notify users about new releases. In 2010, Spotify's blog, The Pansentient League, held the first Spotify Community Site Awards, with categories such as Best Playlist Sharing Site, Best News & Music Finder Site, and Best Playlist Generator.

Spotify allows users to integrate their account with existing Facebook and Twitter accounts. Thereafter they are able to access their friends'/follower's favourite music and playlists.

Business model

Spotify operates under the freemium model (basic services are free, while additional features are offered via paid subscriptions). Spotify makes its revenues by selling streaming subscriptions to premium users and advertising placements to third parties.

In December 2013, the company launched a new website, "Spotify for Artists", that revealed its business model and revenue data. Spotify pays copyright holders royalties for streamed music. The company pays 70% of its total revenue to rights holders. Spotify for Artists states that the company does not have a fixed per-play rate, considers factors such as the user's home country and the individual artist's royalty rate. Rights holders received an average per-play payout between $.006 and .0084. The company has allegedly lost $200 million since it was founded, although the company has not confirmed or denied this.

A 2012 report stated that Spotify posted a net loss of US$59 million in 2011, attributed to increased staffing costs and licensing fees and royalties to record companies. A November 2012 report predicted that Spotify would reach revenues of US$500 million over the course of 2012, up from US$244 million in 2011.

As of 2013, Spotify offered an unlimited subscription package, close to the Open Music Model (OMM)—estimated economic equilibrium—for the recording industry. However, the incorporation of DRM diverges from the OMM and competitors such as iTunes and Amazon MP3 that have dropped DRM. Another income source was music purchases from within the app, but this was removed in January 2013.



Technical availability

As of May 2015, Spotify is available for Windows Phone, Android, BlackBerry, Boxee, iOS, Linux (Now unsupported), MeeGo, Microsoft Windows desktop, Openpandora, OS X, Roku, S60 (Symbian), Samsung Smart TV, Sonos, HEOS by Denon, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Squeezebox, Telia Digital-tv, TiVo, WD TV, webOS; It is not available as a Windows Store app for Windows 8 but rather as a full Windows desktop application. A third-party client, Spotlite, used to exist.

Technical information

Spotify is proprietary and uses digital rights management (DRM). Users that agree to Spotify's Terms and conditions agree to not reverse-engineer the application. Streams are in the Vorbis format at q5 (ca. 160 kbit/s) for the Spotify free service, or q9 (ca. 320 kbit/s) for Spotify Premium subscribers. Spotify has a median playback latency of 265 ms or 390 ms without local cache. Spotify does not offer CD quality (16/44.1 kHz) nor high-resolution audio (Hi-res, 24/96 or 24/192 or similar) services. As of version 0.4.3, it is possible to play locally stored MP3 and AAC files in addition to streaming.

Spotify used to run Debian GNU/Linux on their servers, as they mentioned when they endorsed systemd in the Debian init/systemd debate,[54] but decided to switch to Ubuntu in July 2014, due to its more predictable release cycle.

Cache size and location are configurable. 1 GB or more disk space is recommended. On OS X, a G4 processor or higher is required and users require an account to use the software. The same account can be used on several devices simultaneously with Spotify Premium, or one at a time, with Spotify Free, using Spotify Connect.

Desktop

Client software is available for Microsoft Windows (XP, Vista, 7, 8 and 10) and Mac OS X 10.5 or newer. On Linux, either the Windows version can be used, using Wine, or an unsupported preview of a native Linux version packaged for Debian 6.0 'Squeeze' and Ubuntu and limited to AMD64 and i386 architectures.

Version 0.8.8 received poor feedback. Some features, such as playlist filtering, were removed while sorting was broken. The interface changed from native C++ to web-based. 0.8.8 and newer versions have slower performance and greater memory use. As of July 2013 most complaints had not been resolved.[60] Spotify offers no option to turn off automatic updates; however, workarounds allow the use of pre-0.8.8 versions.

In December 2013, Spotify released a Premium client called "Spotiamp", which used an interface that resembles version 2 of the popular music player Winamp (AOL, the owners of Winamp, were planning to discontinue the player). The client contained an equaliser and support for Advanced Visualization System.

Mobile versions

Mobile apps for Android, iOS, Symbian, BlackBerry OS, Windows Phone 7/8, Windows Mobile 6.0,[75] and WebOS are available.

As of 20 June 2012, Spotify radio streaming was free on the iPad and iPhone in the US.

The applications allow Premium subscribers to access the full music catalogue, stream music and listen to music when disconnected. As of May 2014, "extreme quality" mobile streaming (~320kbit/s) is available on the iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 versions of the Spotify app.

As of December 2013, Spotify made its mobile app free for Android and iOS devices with ads enabled, not just premium subscribers.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotify




"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." - Milton Friedman

Offline ExFreeper

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Re: Spotify goes down leaving users unable to stream music
« Reply #1 on: June 22, 2016, 05:04:13 pm »
Seems to be working.  I'm a premium member and use everyday.  I'm connected via my iphone to my Pioneer receiver and can control all zones through the house and outside.  Highly recommended if you enjoy music.
"A major source of objection to a free economy is precisely that it gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself." - Milton Friedman