 Hi Thank you for coming here today, and thank you for giving me an opportunity to speak I'd like to use that opportunity to say a few words about our company and Our product and how we're using Debian So the company is called Spotify, and it's a Luxembourg in Stockholm based startup company that was founded in August 2006 By two guys one of them is Daniel Ech He's a serial entrepreneur who's previously worked at companies like Skype, eBay, Yahoo And he's founded and sold a number of successful Swedish startups previously And the other guy is Martin Lorenzon. He founded the Swedish web advertising company Traderblur That is now listed on the Stockholm Stock Exchange So this talk consists of three parts The first is about the product the second is about the business and the third is about the technology that we're using and how We think about technology That's okay. I can use this one Okay, so the first part about the product So what we're building here is a streaming music service for the internet And since we're streaming there is no downloading you don't need to wait until the file is downloaded You can just start listening to the music immediately There's no need to store the music locally. There's no need to waste gigabytes of storage space just because you want to listen to music there's no need to To bring your gigabytes of music everywhere where you want to listen to music And what we're trying to do here is bring fun back to music I want to make it easy for people to listen to music and we want to make it easy for people to discover new stuff So we want people to be able to just click around and browse through our user interface And if they find if they find some nice stuff, they can just drag the ui to their I am client and send it to a friend and the friend can be listening to the same music just seconds later So in order to support this we built a client application It's available for Windows Mac OS 10 and Linux or at least it will be The Windows executable is a single exe file. That's just 700 kilobytes and actually 200 of those is Windows with the high-resolution icon. So it's a really tight application And this this will make it easy for us to port it to cell phones and embedded systems down the road Now for the second part of the talk, I'd like to say something about our business model and explain what we're doing So this will be a free service Which is supported by advertising meaning that we'll have So we'll have audio spots like on a commercial radio station But we're trying to do the much better targeted than what you can do with traditional radio so we're trying to bring performance-based marketing to the radio and The other reason which makes this possible is that broadband or high-speed consumer internet connections have become cheap ubiquitous Probably most of you in this room have had broadband connections forever, but these days even your grandma has one making streaming possible So the internet is everywhere Which is the way we think that there's no need anymore to have the music yourself. You can just use services like ours There's no need to have all these gigabytes of music yourself So both the music both the music and advertising industry is changing and The music industry is starting to open up to new models Some analysts say that Christmas season 2007 will be the last season for the CD After that everything will be online And they're there finally starting to Try to find new ways to make money of music online for instance just a couple months ago EMI finally started selling DRM free music on iTunes. So those are the kind of opportunities you want to make use of Also the advertising industry Have been spoiled by the success of web advertising So they want the targeting that you can get through web advertising For instance through search engine advertising for traditional media like radio and TV commercials They also want to be able to get immediate feedback And they want the transparency of online campaigns meaning that they want to know why a particular user Responded to their ad and how they how they came to their website for instance So we're trying to connect the dots here between the changes in the technology making broadband available everywhere and The music industry opening up to new ideas and the advertising industry wanting new ways to sell their messages This means that the Spotify model becomes a possibility or we like to think even a necessity Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come. It was Victor Hugo who said that and For us that's Spotify. So if we don't do this someone else will Change this inevitable So this is the third part of my talk Which was about the technology that we're using and how we think about technology So we have a technology strategy, which is based on two ideals The first is that you shouldn't shy away from hard problems And the reason for that is if the problem you're working with is not hard Then why bother if it's if it's easy and no one else has solved it It's probably not that important and if it's really an important problem then It's bound to be hard So the second is that you shouldn't reinvent the wheel And you shouldn't fall for the not invented here syndrome But that doesn't mean that you'd be afraid of doing things differently We're building a lot of technology in-house at Spotify For instance, as I said, we have our own client application And we have our own streaming protocol And we also have our own peer-to-peer network which we use to offload our central servers and keep our bandwidth costs low We also have our own storage system which supports our specific application very well Though of course it's built on off-the-shelf hardware And we're also building our own advertising system to be able to do better targeting so My idea is that the core components are worth doing yourself because if a component is really central to what you're trying to do Even small improvements lead to big results, so it's it's all on the margin But what I think you shouldn't do is build what's basically support infrastructure And that's anything that's not specific to what you're doing. That's anything that everybody else is doing as well That you should get off the shelf or in our case that usually means off the internet Because pretty much all software that using at least on the back end is free and open source software And there are many reasons for that The two most important are The key properties of a free and open source software and the first one is that it's free as in beer Meaning that there is no attached cost. There's no acquisition cost for the software You can just download it and start using it immediately And the second is that it's free as in speech or in freedom Meaning that you have the ability and the right to alter the software and adapt it to your particular needs and redistribute it and these these two properties lead to another thing which is very beneficial for Us and for open source these days and that's because that's that Open source and free software is very well known to a new generation of hackers Anyone who learns or who learned programming the last half decade or went to to college and Learn computer science or programming during the last five years is bound to have come in touch with the free and open source software At least the good ones who are actually interested in what they're doing Because it's it's it's everywhere and it's so easy to just get it off the internet and start trying out That's makes it very accessible However, we're taking the use of free and open source software one step further in the sense That we're using Debiank new Linux as an integral part of our of our deployment infrastructure So these days everybody uses Linux at least startups because they're usually cash strapped and want something cheap that just works So choosing a Linux distribution is part of the fundamental technology choices that any startup company needs to make these days and Usually it works this way that you evaluate their distributions in terms of price support and some measure of quality And then you come to decision. However, in our case Debian is just not just a distribution So the reason for that is we're not using it only as a platform to support our system but The first reason is that there's there's a lot of open source software in Debian and there's a lot of open source software that we use so And all of the software that we use is in Debian I mean, there's over 18,000 packages in the Debian distribution So chances are if there's some new open source library that you want to use it's already the package So you don't need to handle secured updates and an installation everything yourself. It's already done for you And the second reason for using Debian is that the Debian project builds a lot of infrastructure and It turns out that the needs of the Debian project and the needs of a company building a large-scale internet application aren't that different So why not just use it when it's already there So as I said, we have a deployment system which is built entirely on Debian Meaning that all backend components are packages. Thanks to Andreas Schulde So if you want to install for instance a new storage node, this is what you do It's a single command and you have the components installed However, we wanted to automate even that so that's why we started looking at something called fully automated installation See if you want to check it out yourself It's normally called Phi. There's a URL So what Phi does is that when you want to set up a new server We just plug it in and we add a line to the Phi configuration and that's it what happens then is that the server boots off the network and Phi handles bootstrapping of the system and package installation and configuration and then the system announces it availability to the Rest of the system and it starts receiving traffic and it's all automated so When you have this new great idea that you want to That you want to launch and build a company around it's easy to forget about installation and deployment because it's it's usually Boring and you want to focus on what's actually your application. However it's required if you want to scale and Unless it's going to be big why bother doing it at all So sooner or later you need to start thinking about deployment and installation and with WN we get it for free almost There's always some configuration you need to do so The importance of good infrastructure is that it makes mundane tasks easy and hard problems solvable But you shouldn't build it or yourself So you should focus on the hard new and fun stuff Because solving hard problems and building a great product and Having a lot of fun. That's Spotify for us and Of course, we're hiring. So if you think any of this sounds mildly interesting Could go to this URL or you can send an email Thank you for giving me the opportunity to come here and thank you to all the IBM developers Who've made this possible? That's the reason why we're also sponsoring this conference to show our appreciation for the work you do And if you want to try this out Once we actually roll out our beta program outside of Sweden Registered our website and we'll send you an invitation token Now I wanted to give you a quick demonstration of what the application actually looks like So what you're seeing here actually the screen solution is a bit low, but what you're seeing here is The Mac client, which is still an alpha. This is the first time it's actually shown to anyone externally I wanted to show you the Linux client, which is compiled with wine live, but it isn't really that stable yet So this is the Mac version this is What we call the radio mode So here you can select the genre and then time frame and We give you some music You know the cool thing about this although it's all streaming It's so fast so that you have you have you can't tell the difference from having the music locally I'll show you what it looks like when you're browsing through the song So that's the radio mode, but you can also search for the music that you want to play yourself So here you get a number of hits Based on a text search basically So this is like an ordinary search engine, but then you can also start browsing through the system So if I click Madonna over here in artists So you can tell by the looks is still an alpha version It's still the same thing and you can just start creating your playlists and you can just drag the songs you like over there So it's like having All the world's music on your hard disk, but you don't need to care about it. It's all streaming So that's what Spotify looks like. Thank you. How do I switch this on? It's on now. Great. I am Andrea Schulder. I am the resident deviant developer at Spotify and I've been working at Spotify now for like three four months. I think I've been a deviant developer much longer like since 2000 and When I prepared prepared this talk I tried to compare both Spotify and Davian on Different levels and I noticed that it was there was a striking similarity between the two I Wanted to this to split these similar similarities up into two bigger sections And those are the social similarities and the technical ones on the social side, I think both company and Davian have a very strong vision and Compared to visions that you put on put on the wall in a golden frame Those in Davian and Spotify are actually alive and have power to change the way you get up in the morning you actually can draw power or energy from them the Vision of doubt of Davian of course is to have a stable and Reliable and free operating system and build that and make it a great thing on the Spotify side of things we have a The vision of building a high quality great music streaming system and that is And On both sides we have a very strong focus on quality and both the project and At work we draw Much pride from the quality that we are producing then we have fun and Friendly working environment in both the project and at work It's actually I'm very common to get recognition and appreciation from the work you're doing because it's Yeah, well people are actually forthcoming with a praise and stuff that is helpful to keep going Another thing that both the project Davian project at and on Spotify We actually Planned fun we are willing and Open to Give lots of space or not only space but also little money to fun this debut in conference on the the depth camp actually are a planned event to give Debian developers and interested people a place to meet to enjoy each other to Yeah to have fun together and it's Spotify we have some parties sometimes we meet And go out for food. That's not a very common thing or not and not at all given thing to to companies and another Important thing is the To me at least is to have other smart people around me to share stuff with the Final social aspect that I enjoy at Spotify is that people actually are open to friendships And that's the same in Debian People don't guard themselves. They're not afraid of Making mistakes or not Not to be authentic or open to new People they are actually willing to invest themselves and share what they are that what they are about themselves Those were the social aspects that stroke me and then the On the technical side Andreas mentioned several already we do run all the back end but also the Lots of workstations and desktops at work on Debian most developers work on Debian the whole Software that we are using at Debian at Spotify is packaged as Debian Packages and we also use the Debian Workflow of putting it in repositories unstable testing and stable for deployment and testing and the bug fixing we also Used P builder the Automatic build demon that that is in Debian for automatically building our packages Whenever someone checks in software into the repository it it's it's get out it gets automatically build it and Deployed on a test system to see if it still works and At some point in the very very near future. We want to have automatic tests run against this Automatically installed System to see if it still integrates well in the infrastructure if any new bugs or features crept in and That does help us to raise quality and Make our system stable and reliable then we have We use Phi as under as also mentioned earlier. We use it to Make the deployment phase, which is otherwise time-consuming and boring quick and easy and it's Also used to build the test systems. We are running and Xen which is a virtual age with virtualization Project So we can do all the tests in virtual Machines without actually using real hardware and needing to touch our real servers at all The software the support we are getting is excellent partly because Spotify decided to hire a Debian developer. They have very good access to the Debian community to the support channels that Debian itself has There are ISE channels. They are mailing lists There are people that you can just call if you need to and these people actually very helpful and very forthcoming with information. They don't keep stuff back for themselves. They they are willing to to help you solve your problems and With Debian we we don't have any problems at all to find people who can solve Any problem that we might and run into It's actually a very easy going and Very nice Working environment there both in the Debian and in the Spotify environment for me Debian and Spotify are actually the receipt of the recipe of putting together both the social Joy of working together in this way and the technology of a proven and stable Linux distribution is a Recipe for success and it is I really enjoy Being part of this and see this put to use and I would encourage everyone to Consider using Debian in this way not only on this in the tech technology Adopting technology, but also adopting the social background of having fun at work and Enjoying work like this Thank you very much Do you have any questions about? Anyone like Debian or Spotify, please The first question is is P-Builder part of a is is P-Builder in the Debian repositories The second question I have is about Phi this I have a friend who's experimenting with Phi to do automated installation and currently he's using x86 For his architecture is it possible that do you know it? Have you experimented with using a different architecture on the server as opposed to the machines that you're going to install on? Yes, no, well, we use AMD64 servers and we actually also install from an AMD64 server But it's not a problem to install any given kernel or architecture from Another server, that's not a problem. You can specify which kernel you're using and which repository And source is used from the for the client to install from okay. Thank you questions I think you were a little bit faster Just went to ask about the music isn't there a problem with digital rights in terms of the world's music Of course, we're working with the rights holders to get licenses That's reason why we're not launching the better program outside of Sweden for now because we only have licenses for Sweden But of course we're talking to everyone. Is the client free software for Spotify? I'm sorry. Is the client free software? No, unfortunately, not then we wouldn't get any deals at all. I think sure Is there a web interface or is it just a you know? No, it's just a desktop client for now We're contemplating doing a flash-based thing or similar wouldn't wouldn't be the same wouldn't couldn't use the same streaming protocols Wouldn't be the same experience, so I Was wondering how that compares to the other streaming one Pandora Well for one, it's we think a much better user experience is much more immediate And you have the much more choice you can actually make your own playlist and search for the music much more flexibly Okay How do you make it so quick? Because the the latency seems very low when you go to choose the song and it just plays and That's I've not seen that anywhere outside of like Amarok or something. How do you make it so quick over a network? Just works Well, it's still work when everybody else is using it as well when you've got millions of users will it scale We think so it's designed to scale It's designed from the start with millions of users in mind So this all goes over a P2P type network Yeah I mean the the the thing with P2P networks is that they get better the more users you have at least unless they're not Badly designed, but you say that you don't need to have all the gigabytes to store music But if you're part of a P2P network and you need to be sharing music as well Yes, you do need a local cache of at least partial songs Okay, so everybody could have a bit of a song everywhere, and then they just Yeah, what you saw here were just some random songs that I found so they weren't cashed so this was actual streaming The audio client looks really good from what I saw then It obviously reminds me of a lot like the iTunes client, but have you looked at doing video? We're thinking about it. It's much harder, of course I Mean the the Network is designed to be content independent the thing with videos. It's about a hundred times more data. So The question is whether today's consumer internet connections are really up to it if you want high quality Obviously offset to that the advertising opportunities you've got there with video content Obviously, it looks like it could possibly surpass traditional broadcast television, but the revenues are there too. Yeah Okay, thanks And having a client app, how do you get in the field of spyware? I'm sorry and having a client app, which people have to download. How do you get in the field of spyware? I'm sorry. Did you reward that there would be spyware in the client app or how do you convince your oh, I see Well, we have a privacy policy of course. I Mean you're installing our software. You have to trust us. We could do anything. I mean technically So it's this thing you have to handle legally and PR wise. I Mean once you install someone else's software, there's no telling what they're doing Anyone else? We'll both be around for the conference. So if you want to talk or play around with the client or whatever just grab us Okay, thank you