Ondrej Holzman We've noticed users in our community asking about the amount of data that the Spotify desktop app writes. We've checked everything, and any potential issues will be addressed in version 1.0.42, which is currently rolling out to all users.
Apparently, for months now, the Spotify app for Mac, Windows, and Linux has contained a major bug that can cause hundreds of gigabytes of unnecessary data to be written to computer drives every day. This is a problem primarily because such behavior can significantly reduce the life of the disks.
Users report that in extreme cases the Spotify application can easily write hundreds of gigabytes of data in a single hour. In addition, you don't even have to actively use the application, it's enough if it runs in the background, and it doesn't even matter if the songs are saved for offline listening or just streamed.
Such data writing is a negative burden especially for SSDs, which have a limited amount of data they can write. If they were written at a rate like Spotify over a long period of time (months to years), it could reduce the lifespan of the SSD. Meanwhile, the Swedish music streaming service has problems with the application reported from users since at least mid-July.
Don't use Spotify app on desktop, it's a disk killer, especially SSD. It constantly writes data, even tens of GB during the day.
— Hynek Hampl (@hynecheck) November 6, 2016
You can find out how much data applications write in the application Activity monitor, where you select in the top tab Disk and search for Spotify. Even during our observation, Spotify on Mac was able to write hundreds of megabytes in a few minutes, up to several gigabytes in an hour.
Spotify, the leader in the field of music streaming services, has not yet responded to the unpleasant situation. However, an update to the desktop app came out in the last few days and some users report that data logging has calmed down. However, not all users have the latest version available yet and it is not even officially certain if the problem is really fixed.
Similar problems are not unique to applications, but it is disturbing for Spotify that it has not reacted to the situation yet, even though the error has been pointed out for several months. Google's Chrome browser, for example, used to write a large amount of data to disks, but the developers have already fixed it. So if Spotify is also writing an enormous amount of data to you, it is a good idea not to use the desktop application at all in order to preserve the life of the SSD. The solution is the web version of Spotify.
Updated 11/11/2016 15.45/XNUMX Spotify finally commented on the whole situation, releasing the following statement to ArsTechnica:
A possible solution (temporary) is described here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12914378
or use the web interface - it seems to me that, paradoxically, it works better than the native application (I compare with the versions for OSX and Linux)
It's just that he wants Flash...
and that's a problem why?
For me and others who have been going without Flash for a long time, it's quite a rush =) Especially when most big services have completely abandoned Flash... and Flash has its own performance and security problems, so it's like hell.
well, it's, well…
So if it needs Flash, it's completely unusable.
Well, that's another thing...
And as always, Spotify is silent. As well as the error when the cache is insufficiently deleted on iOS...
They are not silent…
link?
So if it took them half a year to fix it, that's not just silence for me, but total ignorance.
Any problem I wanted to solve with Spotify support over the past three months, the result was always the same. They very kindly referred me to their forum so that I could mention the problem there or they directed me directly to the thread where others are also complaining.
Specifically:
Why did they release an iOS app update with DailyMix and not release it on the desktop as well, even though they've released at least three versions for Mac since then. It wasn't until people started writing in the thread that they would lose their subscription if they communicated like this that someone responded after about three weeks.
Why is the cache deleted incorrectly on iOS? Even if you delete all offline downloaded music in the application, the data of the application is in the order of hundreds of megabytes, for me it was even 2,5 GB. No official statement anywhere, the problem has been going on for more than two years, the solution marked by the admins of their support forum: Delete the application and reinstall it... vsjo. Indeed…
Nonsensical writing to disk… same process
That they can't download offline songs in Extreme quality? also a thread that has been there for months and no one responds. A few songs are downloaded and then the download stops, you switch to normal and all, for example, 150 songs are downloaded. Btw, if you do this, you will achieve exactly that you can have an application cache in the order of GB and offline in the application you have nothing...or. the song appears as downloaded and accessible for offline listening, but it does not play.
So that's all about how things are going with spotify...
Nobody asks, nobody reacts, they don't want more input from users... at least that's how it happens with the problems I wrote above and with people who go there to write: "same for me"
What you describe sounds terrible. Anyway, I don't have many problems with Spotify and I'm more satisfied with it than with Apple music (because of the music, clarity and notification of new music) and also because of the price. Then I'm willing to pay CZK 60 a month for something like that, no joke, because otherwise I can buy the music straight away with the added advantage of being able to download it offline. Alternatively, in our regions, just download, when I already pay senseless fees for that when buying everything that can be subscribed to.
I'm happy with Spotify too. I switched from Apple Music, which is confusing for me, we have a family subscription and it's great. It just rubs in places...
Well, last week I paid a Copyright Fee of CZK 665 for a 5TB external drive... so I guess :-) Somarina, incredible.
Well, personally, I'm quite sorry that people don't see it much in those respects, it's just hidden in the general part and bye. A lot of people don't know that at all. If I then find out that I paid 1000 in fees for a flash drive with a price of 300, it's a shame!
And as you say, for 665 I have spotify for the whole year ;-). Possibly 2-3 purchased albums.
Then I'm not at all surprised that people download when they pay for it!
I tried to communicate with OSA during the week and the gentleman just wrote me a bunch of nonsense... we're a bit late here, but I'm glad that CZC.cz puts it on the invoice as a separate item, so it's really great to see how much was spent. spotify costs me about 44 CZK per group member or something like that..
Spotify bug reporting is a tragedy. I myself pointed out a lot of errors on the forum, some six months old (I don't have FB and yet I can't set an avatar, both in the app and on the forum. The application on the desktop keeps asking if I want to share the activity on FB and that keep going round and round.), or the basic malfunction of the application (it is not possible to sort albums by release date, if I go to an album in the list of albums, I go back, I don't find myself back in the right place in the list, but it throws me back to the beginning - really annoying. )
spotifak's official answer? Usually something like this: 'Dear robin, great that you like spotify and thanks for reporting the bug! You know what? Fuck you, if a billion other people with the same problem show up, there's a certain chance that they'll put you on the forum -kudos- and then we might think about fixing/implementing it.
In short, total shit on people. There are x topics that are ix years old with requests from people about the implementation of basic functionality or with attempts to fix x years with tons of errors. This is something that really gets on my nerves.
This kind of behavior is quite common with most companies Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, ...
See. example with Microsoft. Google will notify them of any errors, give them 90 days to fix. MS starts to complain that they won't have time to fix it, but we all know that if they didn't have the ultimatum, they would ignore the error or fix it in a long time. And so it goes round and round :).
Companies usually respond to the reported problem with a report. quickly and promise an early fix or play dead bug and fix it quietly. It depends on the severity of the problem.
So keep your head up! The only way is to constantly poke at support, discuss on forums, social media. networks and when necessary contact the CEO :)
I don't like this at all.
The big companies complain that they don't have time to fix it, although in some cases I understand, because maintaining backward compatibility is sometimes really difficult.
By no means is this a case of writing to disk by mistake. In addition, it can damage the HW and I risk getting angry. In addition, if they are no longer able to repair it, it would be a good idea to alert everyone and advise what they should do (write to another disk, etc...).
The new version 1.0.42+ already behaves quite disciplined
Before the update, I let spotify run for about two hours, downloaded 154MB from the net and wrote it to a 10,5GB disk. After the update it fits, so they probably managed to fix it.
I personally set the temp address book to another drive, which I also have connected because of iTunes ;-).