The Bandwidth Blues
So, it has come to my attention that people really like my Song of the Week. I’m flattered when this takes the form of a few downloads. However, when I start getting people downloading songs over and over again, I quickly run into my ISP’s 25GB/month bandwidth limit.
And then I go over.
The indescriminant use of my bandwidth has taken many forms. One looks like this:
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:38 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 6942555 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:39 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6942555 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:40 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:55 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6938638 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:55 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6938638 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:13:56 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:30 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6934724 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:30 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6934724 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:31 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:38 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6930810 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:38 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6930810 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:15:38 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:17:48 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6926897 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:17:48 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6926897 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:17:48 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:33:53 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 6942555 "-" "contype"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:33:54 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 206 6942555 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)"
access_log.resolved:66.8.142.248 - - [16/Jun/2004:01:33:54 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/Air%20-%20Alone%20in%20Kyoto.mp3 HTTP/1.0" 200 6942555 "-" "RMA/1.0 (compatible; RealMedia)"
WHY DON’T YOU JUST DOWNLOAD THE FUCKING SONG???
Now, this is not strictly the user’s fault. What should happen is that the plugin (I presume it’s a plugin) should cache the song and then not re-request it when it receives an HTTP 304 status code. (Learn more about HTTP status codes.) Even so, the user is not without blame. People need to understand that listening to a song over and over and over and over again off a website is not free.
And then there’s this:
access_log.resolved:68.32.3.83 - - [27/Jun/2004:18:55:16 -0700] "GET /nick/music/tunes/The%20Notwist%20-%20Consequence.mp3 HTTP/1.1" 200 6278390 "http://www.xanga.com/item.aspx?user=WordsUnsp0ken&tab=weblogs&uid=103117508" "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7) Gecko/20040614 Firefox/0.9"
If you take a look at that web page you’ll find this in the source:
<embed src="http://www.kocharhook.com/nick/music/tunes/The%20Notwist%20-%20Consequence.mp3" autostart="true" hidden="true">
EVERY TIME THIS PAGE LOADS, IT HITS MY SERVER!!
There’s no excuse for this. It’s blatent bandwidth leeching. I’d even go so far as to call it stealing. Read this rant for more.
So I’m through. Because my parents pay the bill to begin with and they have taken several months before letting me know that this was an issue, this is going to end up costing me several hundred dollars. That’s several hundred dollars I won’t be able to put towards a new G5, which makes me mad.
Does anyone have a solution that will guarantee this won’t happen again? Why are people this stupid? Your comments/donations are welcome.
felipe Said,
June 30, 2004 @ 17:13
I writting from chile. Sorry nick. Every week i look for new songs. I dont understand the problem, but i cant believe that kind of people exist.
I hope that your page start running again very soon.
I dont know what im going to do to find new songs.
Good bye
mr dennis Said,
July 1, 2004 @ 12:40
Hey Nick! Two things for ya:
1. I heard a Modest Mouse song on the radio. It was quite good. I’m glad you introduced it to me first; otherwise I might have just dismissed it as more stuff that radio stations try to push.
2. To solve your bandwidth problem: try having limited access (only certain IPs or perhaps a login -- quite a pain, but something to save you $$) to your download page. People can email you (so you can create a login for them or add their IP address to a list of acceptable IPs) if they’re serious about downloading the song. Would that solve the problem?
I read that netiquette stuff. Quite interesting. Good ish to know.
Kim Said,
July 3, 2004 @ 23:30
Sorry about posting on here; you don’t know me but recently I found your site and (thanks to you)a bunch of really great music that I’m now listening to (downloaded to my computer in my music file, of course) over and over.
That being said, I was wondering if you were still going to even post the band and title of the song (minus the file) or if you were just quitting altogether. It’d be a huge loss if you just stopped altogether =\
Thanks alot!
-Kim
Jaclyn Said,
July 4, 2004 @ 00:06
I agree with “mr dennis.” Restricting exactly who can download your songs could help. I am a big fan of your music selections, and they have broadened my tastes so much. I would be sad to see the site go down.
Orb Said,
July 5, 2004 @ 15:03
hey NICK!
this is Orb. I am sitting up in Washington State University this summer and have been looking through your posting finally...you really had a good thing going...sorry that it didn’t work out. You got me into Notwist! I hope the job is going well and such. Later on man,
Orb
henry Said,
July 5, 2004 @ 22:29
i’ve been trawling the ‘net for the postal service’s ‘the district sleeps alone’ and the only site that still has it (or DID have it) was YOURS!
if you could please link me up with it, i’d be eternally grateful!
many thanks in advance,
- Henry
Ola Tillberg Said,
July 15, 2004 @ 11:43
Hi Nick.
Just found your page for the first time and I think I understand your problem. I found “you” while searching for the Fleetwood Mac song “Rattlesnake Shake” wich led me to you. Since I´m here I might as well humbly ask if you could mail it to me, not for me to download (that if you have it as an mp3 file of course) at the address above.
Please...
//Ola Tillberg-Stockholm-Sweden
tadow Said,
July 16, 2004 @ 07:53
Did you ever stop to think that you are costing these artists money every time one of their songs is downloaded from your site? I wonder how much you owe in royalties? I’m sure it’s more than the cost of your new G5.
John Said,
November 30, 2004 @ 09:31
You can disable left click and force people to download the file by right clicking and saving it to their HD. Also you could provide it in a different format such as streaming flash which will/should generate 304s.