It’s kind of silly, but I still really dig the idea behind torrenting and peer to peer sharing of data. It’s cool to think about any old computer helping pass along some odd bits & bytes of data, whether a goofy drawing or strange story.
It’s kind of silly, but I still really dig the idea behind torrenting and peer to peer sharing of data. It’s cool to think about any old computer helping pass along some odd bits & bytes of data, whether a goofy drawing or strange story.
Its a really interesting question. I wonder what the underlying economics and ideologies are at play with its decline. Economies of scale for large server farms? Desire for control of the content/copyright? Structure and shape of the network?
I guess it has some implications for stream versus download approaches to content?
If I recall, Spotify moved away from it just because the client/server model got way cheaper and the P2P model had some limitations for their future business plans. I remember them mentioning that offering a family plan was a challenge with their P2P architecture when people on the same network/account were using it at the same time.
It was probably also part of the move to smartphones. Spotify was just a desktop program for a long time and, while I’m not an expert, I would guess the P2P model made a lot more sense on desktop with a good connection than early smartphones on flaky 2G/3G connections. They might have had to run a client/server model for iOS and/or Android anyway.