Vodafone music pass? Im finding it useless

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richms

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#225651 28-Nov-2017 19:06

So it seemed ok initially, but the last few days I have had constant stuttering playback on both tidal hifi and spotify. Now in the past on data I paid for have streamed spotify for hours and hours when driving around and the only issues were occasional and not more than one or 2 glitches per song. Now even spotify which is lossy is having huge issues, tidal which is hifi so they claim lossless is working better, but still not perfect.

Not sure if this is also to do with recent issues I have had with showing good H+ signal but things not loading etc.

How have others found the music pass working for them? Ive dusted off the 3.5mm cable to give that another try incase the stutters are bluetooth related, but I dont think they are since I can play downloaded songs and other things just fine.

Are they throttling musicpass users to the point it doesnt work properly or something?

Richard rich.ms

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#1909189 28-Nov-2017 20:30

Ive been using it to stream national radio via Iheart radio with no issues but have set the connection to 3G .... i wonder if vodafone are still having some network issues (see the thread regards a possible newtown network issue)

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#1909202 28-Nov-2017 20:53

No way throttling will be happening

Linux

tdgeek

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#1909205 28-Nov-2017 20:59

Linux:

No way throttling will be happening

Linux

Id agree, so it therefore appears congestion?

chevrolux

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#1909206 28-Nov-2017 21:01

I wonder how they identify the correct traffic. Realise there is some probably bad ass proxy cluster somewhere that can inspect traffic, but wouldn't spotify come from a CDN?

...quick look at DNS cache suggests Akamai. So do they just zero rate everything going to Akamai? That would be a butt ton of other traffic too. Honestly though, I have no idea how an ISP might go about doing it at the scale Vodafone would need to.

I guess my point, maybe that part of it is a bit broken which is why you see the issue?

alasta

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#1909207 28-Nov-2017 21:02

keepexploringnz:

Ive been using it to stream national radio via Iheart radio with no issues but have set the connection to 3G .... i wonder if vodafone are still having some network issues (see the thread regards a possible newtown network issue)

That's what I was thinking. The thread about the Newtown site ultimately revealed widespread issues in at least Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch.

So, I would say this problem is likely to be related to issues on the network rather than the Vodafone Pass which really shouldn't affect anything beyond how the data is billed.

stinger

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#1909231 28-Nov-2017 22:17

Linux:

No way throttling will be happening

Linux

Their terms and conditions say that video in the Video Pass and Social Pass is throttled to 480p ("If you have a Video Pass, your video content will be optimised to a maximum resolution of 480p."), but no mention on throttling anything in the Music Pass.

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richms

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#1909274 28-Nov-2017 22:57

stinger:

Linux:

No way throttling will be happening

Linux

Their terms and conditions say that video in the Video Pass and Social Pass is throttled to 480p ("If you have a Video Pass, your video content will be optimised to a maximum resolution of 480p."), but no mention on throttling anything in the Music Pass.

Thats what I am afraid of, if they throttle it to limit it to the aweful quality options if you have the auto stream speed on.

The thing is, I have put many gigs thru on spotify in the past without skips, and only now have them so am immediatly assuming they are doing something dodgey. I will flick a day long data thing on the crappy phone tomorrow and see how that handles spotify and tidal on the drive to and from work and compare.

Richard rich.ms

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#1909329 29-Nov-2017 09:24

chevrolux:

I wonder how they identify the correct traffic. Realise there is some probably bad ass proxy cluster somewhere that can inspect traffic, but wouldn't spotify come from a CDN?

...quick look at DNS cache suggests Akamai. So do they just zero rate everything going to Akamai? That would be a butt ton of other traffic too. Honestly though, I have no idea how an ISP might go about doing it at the scale Vodafone would need to.

I guess my point, maybe that part of it is a bit broken which is why you see the issue?

They probably have a Sandvine box or similar that can identify traffic type from something more sophisticated than just by looking at the traffic source.

Rudster

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#1909575 29-Nov-2017 14:26

I did some tests the other day due to these new addons to test the effects on the network and my device.

Been with vodafone for about 6 months, Was with them for a number of years before switching due to lack of affordable data plans. But they provided Flexi plan so I went back. Regretting that decision.

From what I can gather, there is heavy throttling on apps that are not part of these passes. Youtube is limited to 360p. used to be able to get FullHD easily, Lightbox stutters, Netflix is ok but limited to SD so throttled, Neon and Vodafone TV are flawless because of course they provide good service for their or their partners apps. Plex suddenly is completely unusable.

Testing actual throughput on the network, I have gone from easily managing 70mbit in this location on LTE to 1mbit. But with 1mbit I shouldn't be seeing flawless video from Neon and Vodafone TV. It makes sense for lightbox to be crapping out but Neon working like it's on 10mbit at least?

There is some serious anti consumer behaviour going on here.

richms

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#1910675 29-Nov-2017 18:08

Saw that my crappy phone that I only use to check work emails had accumulated 0.98 gig of rollover so didn't need to buy any more. Before I left work, logged into tidal on it, played a song. Saw it wasnt doing hifi, changed the setting to hifi and played a couple of car's songs before deciding on american idiot, put that over bluetooth, drove home.

Total skips, stutters, dropouts etc:

Zero.

As before, worked perfectly 551 megs left when I got home. So either the networks being fixed since yesterday, my slow as anything redmi note 2 is better on the network or else VF are throtting the hell out of music pass users without disclosing it. I will add a musicpass to my other phone and go for a drive to get dinner soon and see how it performs.

Richard rich.ms

gaddman

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#1912670 4-Dec-2017 14:12

There's no throttling of audio streams, so interested to hear more about issues with Tidal, Spotify, and any other streaming services. If you've got some more details you can share, or happy to PM a phone number and time when it happened, please do. As a first check, prepay or account, and do you have credit/data?

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richms

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#1912863 4-Dec-2017 18:37

Been meaning to droip in and update this thread.

Last few days it has been fine on both phones, just a few failures where I know the network is terrible. Still seems absurd to be falling back to H+ in the middle of a city but even on that the hifi tidal streams seem mostly fine, as it seems that the 3g network has massive problems in some areas when the 4g is working fine.

Richard rich.ms