Martin Ellis, Stephen Strowes, and Colin Perkins
Proceedings of the 36th IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks,
Bonn, Germany,
October 2011.
DOI:10.1109/LCN.2011.6115205
Spotify is a popular music-streaming service which has seen widespread
use across Europe. While Spotify’s server-side behaviour has previously
been studied, little is known about the client-side behaviour. In this
paper, we describe an experimental study where we collect packet
headers for Spotify traffic over multiple 24-hour time frames at a
client host. Two distinct types of behaviour are observed, when tracks
are being downloaded, and when the client is only serving requests from
other peers. We also note wide variation in connection lifetimes, as
seen in other studies of peer-to-peer systems. These findings are
relevant for improving Spotify itself, and for the designers of other
hybrid peer-to-peer and server-based distribution architectures.
Download: ieee-lcn-2011-spotify.pdf