[HN Gopher] Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8 ___________________________________________________________________ Incident report: Spotify outage on March 8 Author : charlieegan3 Score : 50 points Date : 2022-03-11 21:32 UTC (1 hours ago) (HTM) web link (engineering.atspotify.com) (TXT) w3m dump (engineering.atspotify.com) | ipython wrote: | Hey, for once it wasn't DNS! | toastal wrote: | Just a reminder that downloaded audio files work offline, can | have very high or lossless quality not restricted by bandwidth, | have a concept of 'ownership' with no DRM, don't have ads or | tries to sell your data (though voluntarily contributing to | ListenBrainz is admirable), don't require a monthly fee, and if | bought legally gives a bigger slice of the money pie to artists. | Also podcasts are just RSS audio. | myself248 wrote: | Got a favorite source for same? I'm bewildered by too many | options and not enough comparisons. | jmacd wrote: | Just here to share that if you haven't tried Apple Music for its | lossless and Dolby Atmos sound quality then you really, really, | should. | | Apple Music does not have a great UI but it is definitely worth | the trade off. | | Tidal sounds great, but they make you pay extra for lossless and | have a smaller catalogue. | alar44 wrote: | I'd bet my next paycheck you wouldn't be able to tell the | difference in a blind test. | | http://abx.digitalfeed.net | wwweston wrote: | Reminder that Apple pays artists better too (average penny per | stream over Spotify's average 3-4 _tenths_ of a penny per | stream). | | And that Spotify is led by people who think artists who want | that level of compensation are "entitled": | | https://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2021/06/29/spotify-executiv... | mcfedr wrote: | Cause they can manipulate the market and don't have to give | 30% of their income to an unchecked monopoly | mardifoufs wrote: | But its not like Spotify is making billions off the artists. | They barely break even. Their margins are very very tiny in | the first place. | | Obviously Apple can afford to pay a lot lot more. Now | obviously you can say that if they can't afford it they | shouldn't be in business, but you can say the exact same for | the record labels/artists. They can just pull their songs | from Spotify. | dijit wrote: | I think it's unfair to say they barely break even, if they | do then it's because they've decided to spend so much. | | Looking externally at the company they're listed as having | 50,000-100,000 employees. That's a lot of people to employ | for a audio streaming service. | | I also happen to know their cloud commitments (I know a | guy) and they are large enough that it starts to make a lot | of sense to invest into physical hardware. | | I'm talking so much money per year that it rivals the GDP | of some countries. | brayhite wrote: | I'd prefer to use AM but they're lacking an ability like | Spotify's to play to Google Home devices and device groups. We | use that feature daily, and I highly doubt Apple will ever | support broadcasting to Chromecasts. | sorenjan wrote: | I have no interest in paying one of the large American tech | giants for my music. They already control too much, and music | is a side business for them. | Chilinot wrote: | Apple Music is just so increadibly bad UX wise. I have a real | hard time justifying paying for it and have considered many | times to switch back to Spotify. Trying to find new and | interesting music is pretty much impossible outside of the | "here's what people listen to now" playlists. You need to know | what to look for when searching for things. | | Spotify was great for finding indie music bands, and could | really give good recommendations. Apple music is not even in | the same league. | CharlesW wrote: | > _Apple Music is just so increadibly bad UX wise._ | | Is it? When I switched to Apple Music I didn't find it | remarkably better or worse then anything else I've used | (including Spotify). Reviews | (https://www.pcmag.com/reviews/apple-music) don't mention any | UX issues either. If you know of any substantive commentary | on this I'd appreciate a link. | TobyTheDog123 wrote: | It is. In my personal experience: | | - On Mac, Apple Music will just consistently stop playing | audio. Force quitting & restarting fixes it. | | - On iOS, the app is prone to crashing more than any iOS | app I've seen. It's not horrible (I very rarely see | crashing period), but it's far more than 3rd party apps or | even Apple's own set. | | - On iOS and on a weak connection, Music will not play even | if it is downloaded. I suspect it has something to do with | DRM servers, but don't know for sure. | | - I once changed my iCloud password on my account, and it | sent the Apple Music app into an infinite loop of trying to | reload content, instead of just prompting for my password | again. | | - Load times are horrendous for online content, even on | fiber connections. | | - I don't have many complaints about discoverability, but | it's certainly nowhere near Spotify's recommendation | engine. Spotify's weekly-updated new music playlist is way | more relevant to me than Apple Music's version (New Music | Mix). | | But... | | - I think way more people can tell the difference between | Spotify's audio quality and Apple Music's Lossless/Atmos. I | sure could, and it was obvious. | flats wrote: | Apple Music's best feature for me is its real focus on building | up your own library. On top of that, it integrates seamlessly | with iTunes in the Cloud. Using the same app, I can stream | anything from my iTunes library, which includes a decent amount | of music not available on any DSP. | josephh wrote: | Amazon Music Unlimited also has it included in their catalog. | How does Apple's fare against Amazon's? | kruxigt wrote: | ge96 wrote: | > lossless and Dolby Atmos sound quality | | General headphone recommendation? Best I have is an MDR-7506 | but I don't think it's meant for listening rather producing. | lelandfe wrote: | Depends on price range. DT 770 PRO's would be a nice step up | and serve both purposes pretty well. They're over-ear like | your MDR's. You can usually find them on sale for like | $140-160 USD | | Fairly neutral response (dunno if you'd prefer something | bassier for listening) and very comfortable | ge96 wrote: | Yeah I don't really have any specific demands other than it | is meant for music... I bought these ATH-MX-20/40X from | reviews and apparently they're monitoring headphones?... so | yeah. Those are definitely flat. | | Thanks I'll put those on a list. Definitely one of those | things have to try on in person to buy but recommendations | help too. | | Edit: not too bassy actually, neutral would be nice like | works for almost anything. | Simon_O_Rourke wrote: | With some of the banal EDM that's out there now, some retro | 1980s walkman headphones would do. | mkr-hn wrote: | I use these for both without issue. | sitzkrieg wrote: | random sample but i try this every couple of years - both tidal | and apple music do not have 10 songs in today's release radar | list available. | | the tidal client is nearly as bad as spotifys too | lelandfe wrote: | If you can consistently tell the difference between Spotify | Premium's 320kbps and Apple Music's lossless, I am very | impressed. Most folks reading this won't be able to. | | Having used both, I'm now happily paying for Spotify to avoid | using the train wreck that is the Apple Music app. It is a true | shame what Apple has done to iTunes. | ksubedi wrote: | Just depends on how you are driving it. I can tell the | difference on Homepods, Airpod Max, my car (wired) and few | other places, but barely on airpod pros and most other | bluetooth headphones. And to the crowd that has their | keyboards handy to say "but the airpod max and homepods do | not support lossless", you are absolutely right but the | quality of the source does make a difference, even though | those devices will not be playing lossless, they will still | have better quality if the source is better. | | I am not completely sure if its the codec Apple uses that is | making the difference if it is because the source is | lossless, but bass sounds punchier and instrument separation | is much better with Apple Music compared to Spotify's best | quality. | | I was really looking forward to Spotify's lossless that was | announced (I think it's called Spotify HQ?), but I haven't | heard about that in a long time. | | Edit: If you plug in your Airpod Max with a hardwire cable, | the difference is even more noticeable, even with iPhone's | internal DAC. | | Also want to clarify that the differences and not so | pronounced that you will be able to tell right away, but if | you listen to Apple Music for a while and try to listen to | the same song on Spotify, it will not sound the same. It's | one of those cases where you don't know what you don't know | till you know it once. | kactus wrote: | I switched to Apple Music from Spotify just because I don't | like podcasts mixed in with my music, and UI that constantly | advertises their podcasts side. | | The improved sound quality on Apple Music is a major benefit, | and I was able to add all my music that isn't in their library | (and sync across devices). | | I also love that upcoming albums that drip feed new tracks | aren't categorized as EPs like Spotify does it. I can view the | track in the upcoming album on Apple Music, add the album to my | library, and then get notifications as they add more tracks or | release the album. | | Apple Music's macOS app UI is terrible, no way around that. | They're supposedly making some parts of it native in a future | macOS release though. | dotnet00 wrote: | Over the past year I've taken to just buying my music and using | plex/plexamp for the streaming convenience. I'd have a hard time | going back to other streaming services after getting used to the | convenience of having control over the entire chain. Buying music | also serves as a nice way to spend digital credit from Amazon. | | It ends up costing me about as much as streaming. | wizwit999 wrote: | So the bigger news here is GCP had a global outage. How'd that | happen? | | It mentions a pipeline deployment introduced a bug | (https://status.cloud.google.com/incidents/LuGcJVjNTeC5Sb9pSJ...) | but why weren't they doing staged deployments to region(s) at a | time? | politelemon wrote: | This is now 'par for the course' with GCP. | | A recent example, Firefox's Jan 2022 outage was due to an | unannounced change deployed by GCP to their load balancers. | | https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/02/retrospective-and-technica... | | I've read several GCP related stories over the years so my | opinion of them has fallen quite a bit. For some reason GCP | does not get the flak they deserve, and their role in outages | tend to be downplayed, while AWS and Azure are scrutinized and | raked over the coals for smaller incidents. | charcircuit wrote: | >unannounced change deployed by GCP to their load balancers | | Google doesn't need to announce every change they make. It | was Firefox's fault for not supporting the protocol | correctly. | acdha wrote: | Most outages have more than one cause. It's true that | Firefox had a nasty bug but it's also likely that they'd | have resolved the problem faster had a clear notification | that GCP had upgraded their infrastructure right before the | outage started, especially if that had an easy rollback | option. | toomuchtodo wrote: | They don't get flak because most folks are in AWS or Azure. | You notice when AWS or Azure hiccups because of this. GCP, | not so much (besides Spotify and Snap, although I believe | Snap's 5yr $2B GCP commit deal recently ended). | | https://info.flexera.com/CM-REPORT-State-of-the-Cloud | | https://thenewstack.io/long-running-study-finds-uptake-of- | pr... | londons_explore wrote: | Traffic Directors config is global. I assume it was some kind | of config system bug. | dastbe wrote: | Does anyone have more context on why "unable to retrieve their | xDS configurations." led to " Traffic Director-managed clients | deprogrammed as the configuration was removed" ? For example, | Envoy will keep its configuration forever unless 1) the | configuration has a ttl or 2) the server itself sent back empty | results. Was it the case that TD config uses ttls, the server was | actually sending back empty results (frightening), or is this a | behavior specific to grpc? | hericium wrote: | > On March 8, Google Cloud Traffic Director experienced an | outage. This in coordination with a bug in a client (gRPC) | library caused the Spotify outage that affected many of our | users: if you were logged out of a Spotify app, you were unable | to log back in. | superjan wrote: | But they don't explain why I was logged out. I did not log out | myself. Or is this "logged out" in the sense that I did not | have their app active at the time of the disruption? ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-03-11 23:00 UTC)