Using Spotify at work - bandwidth issues?

Alright guys,

I'm going to assume a lot of you use Spotify, probably at work as well as home.

Apparently Spotify has been too much of a drain on bandwidth at my company so they want to stop us from using it. I'm just wondering how much bandwidth Spotify actually drains.

They claim that the sharing of playlists is the biggest offender...not sure why.


Please correct me if I am wrong:

If spotify streams at 256kbit downstream, that's the equilavent of 32kb/s download. Multiply by 60 (roughly the amount of people in the company) and that equates to 1.9meg/second.

Let's say that spotify is then used for the whole day, that's about 47gig of bandwidth - is that a massive amount for a corporate connection?

BTW, only about 15 people use spotify at work, so you can really quarter that amount (12gig) - 24gig if you assume upstream = downstream.


My maths could be completely wrong...

What kind of connection do you have, DSL, Cable, dedicated?

I'm not sure - but it's almost definitely dedicated (we're part of a large organisation)

Work networks are designed for use with work-related tasks. Often, occasional and incidental personal use is allowed. Unless you're in the music industry, Spotify is certainly not work-related, and it's unlikely to be incidental. Whether it is occasional is up to you.

If you want to listen to music at work, and your employer is fine with that, get an MP3 player. It's what I do.

How much bandwidth you use is irrelevant. It's what you use it for that counts, and you've obviously been using it enough to get noticed.

The whole thing about spotify as I understand it is that it is uploading music to other users, which is more likely to cause a strain on any network due to much slower upload connection speed.

Work networks are designed for use with work-related tasks. Often, occasional and incidental personal use is allowed. Unless you're in the music industry, Spotify is certainly not work-related, and it's unlikely to be incidental. Whether it is occasional is up to you.

If you want to listen to music at work, and your employer is fine with that, get an MP3 player. It's what I do.

Click to expand...

Thanks for the lecture...let me guess, you work as an IT technician?

Anyway, the question is, does Spotify really drain significant bandwidth? How much is significant?

I've started using Spotify at work recently just to drown out the boredom of sitting in a office on my own...... just waiting till management find out to have a moan

ArmyofHarmony said:

Thanks for the lecture...let me guess, you work as an IT technician?

Anyway, the question is, does Spotify really drain significant bandwidth? How much is significant?

Click to expand...

Be a funny old world if every company had the same connection

And it isn't really a lecture to be fair. Surely you'd be the first to have a moan if an application you were using for work was running slowly?

Yep, I probably would

I'm just curious as I have one of those "unlimited" hosting deals... that I pay 40 quid a year for, and regularly use of 100gig a month of bandwidth with! Those hosting providers must have some heavy duty equipment, to deal with thousands of people draining brandwidth

Spotify uses p2p for playlists. Wasn't so much a bandwidth issue for me but I found when gaming it was just like having a bittorrent client in the background and would cause my pings to spike 500+ (average of 200 usually when bittorrenting, ~20 when not)

ArmyofHarmony said:

Thanks for the lecture...let me guess, you work as an IT technician?

Anyway, the question is, does Spotify really drain significant bandwidth? How much is significant?

Click to expand...

Yes it would... Especially if it's more than just you using it.
"Hmm, that looks a bit of alright, I'll have some of that"
I really dislike peoples moaning when they find out they can't use Spotify at work. It's bloody work, if you don't like it, **** off and quit.

If your workplace doesn't want you using Spotify due to bandwidth issues, don't go out to prove them wrong. Just take the above advice and get an mp3 player...

ArmyofHarmony said:

Yep, I probably would

I'm just curious as I have one of those "unlimited" hosting deals... that I pay 40 quid a year for, and regularly use of 100gig a month of bandwidth with! Those hosting providers must have some heavy duty equipment, to deal with thousands of people draining brandwidth

Click to expand...

It's not the bandwidth usage per se, it's the drain it places on the current throughput. If other applications are having to contend with numerous people using what is essentially a peer to peer application then unless that is managed correctly through good qos then it's going to have a negative effect on other network functions ! And why should they spend time ammending current qos policies to allow something like Spotify? If you could prove it increased your work efficiency then i'm sure management would sort it out for ya

Don't confuse bandwidth with download limits. 1.9mbps could have quite an impact depending on the speed of your line, we only have 2mbps dedicated in my office

I don't really see how anyone can justify streaming 256kbit (plus upload?) for personal use on a work connection. If these playlists are operating on p2p then that's even more of a concern (potential flooding of routers or whatever, I'm not going to profess to be an expert on the subject).

If I was in charge of a corporate network and started getting people trying to justify the use of such a thing I'd be thinking, well, things need to be locked down a lot more!

Count yourself lucky, at work all we get is an HTTP proxy with websense (hence plenty of stuff blocked, with 60min quota time for anything remotely interesting like BBC sport website).

Depending how you use it - spotify caches songs you listen to often - so if you've made a playlist and listened to it once through then repeated listening won't be using much bandwidth from that aspect...

However it also has several P2P features which can use unpredictable amounts of bandwidth - saw it chugging through 240KB/s down and 90KB/s up the other day for about 20minutes out the blue then hardly anything for the next hour.

ArmyofHarmony said:

Thanks for the lecture...let me guess, you work as an IT technician?

Anyway, the question is, does Spotify really drain significant bandwidth? How much is significant?

Click to expand...

Well actually, you'd be wrong, though close (IT code monkey).

Problem is, you're using bandwidth that might need to be used for business critical applications, and depending on the internal network design you may even be impacting internal network traffic.

If you're using software capable of P2P traffic (like Spotify) there's always the risk of an exploitable bug that turns your PC into a backdoor into the company network. We've just been handed a ban on all P2P traffic at work (and on work-related systems at home) for that very reason.

likwid said:

The whole thing about spotify as I understand it is that it is uploading music to other users, which is more likely to cause a strain on any network due to much slower upload connection speed.

Click to expand...

Are you sure?

ArmyofHarmony said:

too much of a drain on bandwidth at my company so they want to stop us from using it.

Click to expand...

You are lucky you even got some kind of a 'reason', in my sites it would be flat out blocked, and if for some reason it was not blocked from the start it would be, you would not get any warnings.

Corporate networks are not for downloading/uploading of music, certainly not a p2p network either. Unless this is your businesses business (which it seems not to be) then doing this under 'personal use' is taking the wee.

I just think you were given a nice "Its using too much bandwidth" reasoning when in reality its "Your not supposed to be using this, period".

Personal use of corporate networks is a pain in the damn ass, found 15gbs of downloaded avi movies on a corporate network last week, Ctrl-A / Shift+Del

You shouldn't be using any P2P or streaming services for activities not directly work related.
Not only is it a waste of resources but it's a security liability.

However, it's upto your IT administrator in the end not us internet heroes. It's his arse on the line, not ours.
He may be fine with it, you should get confirmation from him in written form.

On the flipside...

Being able to listen to music at work can have the potential to significantly boost productivity... depending on the person and the job.

Personally I find when I'm working it keeps a part of my mind occupied that would otherwise be figgiting for want of a better way to explain it - allowing me to stay fully focused on the task at hand.