QoE Analysis of Spotify Audio Streaming and App Browsing
Anika Schwind, Lorenz Haberzettl, Florian Wamser, Tobias Hoßfeld · 2019
Spotify is the most-listened audio streaming provider in 2019 with 217 million active users per month. Providers are therefore interested in the quality and functionality of Spotify in order to provide their users with the best possible streaming quality. While video streaming services such as Netflix and their streaming approach have been extensively explored in previous research, audio streaming services like Spotify and their corresponding behavior at certain network conditions have not been considered in detail yet. In this paper, we perform a QoE analysis under various network conditions and examine the app browsing performance of the audio streaming platform Spotify using its native Android mobile application. We have developed a measurement tool that emulates a user listening to audio through Spotify. While streaming, application and network layer parameters are captured that have a high correlation to the user's QoE. The paper shows a baseline scenario including the streaming of a single song as well as playlist streaming behavior. Next, the effect of interruptions on the streaming behavior is evaluated and finally, the influence of network impairments on QoE key performance indicators such as initial delay is shown.