Spotify does not only play "randomly", though. This confused me a bit when reading the introduction here. I only play specific songs in spotify, or albums, or artists.Yes, some say thats a meaningless way to use a streaming service, but its not: I get to use it from any PC, I get to be legal, and I get (mostly anyway...) correct metadata.
On Thu, Dec 3, 2009 at 09:50, David Barrett <dbarr...@quinthar.com> wrote: > The uptake of Pandora and Spotify show that listeners really like a > "just hit play" experience: start with some songs you like, hit play, > and Good Stuff comes out the speakers. Sometimes music you know, > sometimes music you don't. Sometimes it plays the same track multiple > times in an hour, other times you hear a track once and never again. > It's like a radio with infinite stations. You get the picture. > > Now, the primary reason they made their service this way was for cost > savings: the license to do that is way cheaper (though still cripplingly > expensive). It wasn't a technical reason that drove their design, it > was a financial reason. > > However, recognizing that the result is acceptable and popular with > users, why not exploit this fact to address P2P's #1 shortcoming: > download start times? > > P2P can and should be faster and more reliable than HTTP streams. > However, its complexity causes it to "start" downloading slower (because > connection setup often involves finding peers, doing NAT penetration, > onionskin routing, etc). Furthermore, even though P2P can sustain very > high throughputs, because it's coming from multiple sources the actual > stream is "jittery". This means if you want to do true streaming, you > need large buffers -- again, delaying startup time. For these reasons, > P2P has typically ceded the entire "on demand" streaming experience to > webservers, instead focusing on downloading (where out-of-order delivery > can be employed to maximize throughput and swarm health). > > But by using a Pandora/Spotify-like "dynamic playlist" experience, the > application would alleviate the requirement for instantly playing any > specific song and just instead focus on instantly playing whatever's > available -- while going out and getting more in the background. > > I see (at least) two layers: > > 1) Player layer. All it does is look at the songs on your hard drive > and decide: > - What song should I play next? > - What songs would I like to play, but don't have? > It could do this by calling central services, or by checking a DHT, or > whatever. Its recommendation engine would likely be populated > explicitly by users clicking "thumbs up/down" on given songs, and > implicitly by recording which songs uses skip versus allow to pay to > completion. > > 2) Transport layer. All it does is look at the "what would I like to > play?" file output by layer 1, go download it, and dump it onto the hard > drive in a place layer 1 can find it. > > Layer 1 is completely legal. All it does is assemble a dynamic playlist > of the songs you own, on your hard drive. It works perfectly well with > MP3s ripped from your CDs, purchased from Amazon or iTunes, etc. > > Layer 2 is less clearly legal. It just automatically downloads whatever > is suggested by Layer 1 as "boy, I wish I could play these songs..." > There'd need to be some way to convert song titles into magnet links, > which could then be pulled off the standard uTorrent/Azereus DHTs. > > The result is a totally free equivalent to Pandora or Spotify. > > Why doesn't someone build this? > > -david > > > _______________________________________________ > p2p-hackers mailing list > p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com > http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers > -- John Bäckstrand
_______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers@lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers
