Spotify Cracking Down on Pirates Using Premium Service For Free, ,II Spotify Cracking Down on Users of Hacked Apps Designed to Steal Premium Features

 

Spotify, as it gears up to go public in an IPO expected later this month, is disabling access from unauthorized Android apps that let users circumvent advertising and usage restrictions from free accounts.
Spotify’s free accounts serve up ads between tracks and disallow on-demand playback on mobile devices (and mobile users also are limited to skipping a song six times per hour). The illicit apps hack the Spotify service to bypass those limits, to provide features available in Spotify Premium, which costs $9.99 per month.
Over the past several days, Spotify has been alerting users that their access from such hacked apps is being disabled — and it’s warning them that their accounts may be shut down if they continue to use such third-party apps, as first reported Monday by piracy-news site TorrentFreak. A Spotify rep confirmed that the company has sent the notices to applicable users but was unable to provide info about how many users were sent the warnings.

The notifications read: “Dear user: We detected abnormal activity on the app you are using so we have disabled it. Don’t worry — your Spotify account is safe. To access your Spotify account, simply uninstall any unauthorized or modified version of Spotify and download and install the Spotify app from the official Google Play Store.”
The message concludes, “If we detect repeated use of unauthorized apps in violation of our terms, we reserve all rights, including suspending or terminating your account.”
As of the end of 2017, Spotify reported 159 million monthly active users total, and 71 million paying premium subscribers.
The company generated nearly $5 billion in revenue in 2017 (4.1 billion euros), versus $3.6 billion in 2016. Its operating loss for 2017 was $461 million, compared with around $425 million in 2016. Spotify started in Stockholm, Sweden, but its official corporate headquarters is in Luxembourg.
Streaming music service Spotify is starting to crack down on users who are running modified versions of the streaming platform to gain the benefits of premium membership without paying, according to Torrent Freak, a website that reports on copyright and piracy news.
Spotify users who have been making use of the illegal versions of the company’s software have started to receive emails from the company claiming there is “abnormal activity” coming from their app. Affected users have had their accounts disabled but not deleted.
Spotify is cracking down on illegal versions of its streaming service. Photo: StockSnap/Pixabay
“We detected abnormal activity on the app you are using so we have disabled it. Don’t worry – your Spotify account is safe,” the Spotify email reads.
The message advises users to “uninstall any unauthorized or modified version of Spotify and download and install the Spotify app” from an official, verified marketplace like the Google Play Store or Apple App Store.
The crackdown from Spotify appears to specifically target users who are using a modified version of the Spotify app that has been made available online and provides users with the features of the service’s Premium membership, which normally costs $10 per month.
Using the hacked version of the Spotify app, a user with a free account would be able to listen to music without advertisements as well as skip as many songs as they would like. A standard free account is subjected to ads after every couple songs and can only skip six songs per hour.
The hacked versions of Spotify are available in all different corners of the web for users who know where to look. Given the recent scrutiny applied by Spotify, it appears many of those options are getting pushed back into the shadows.
Android Police recently reported one of the most popular cracked Spotify applications—an app called Spotify Dogfood—was hit with a Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claim that forced the developers to take the service offline.
Earlier this year, International Business Times reported on the discovery of a cracking tool found online that allowed hackers to hijack existing Spotify accounts. Those hijacked accounts were then often sold online via the dark web to users who pay a fraction of the monthly fee for Spotify’s premium service.
It’s difficult to gauge the scope of Spotify pirating. The company recently reported that it has a total of 159 million monthly active users—71 million of which pay for the company’s premium service. It is likely a very small portion of those 159 million users have taken advantage of the workaround.
No matter how small the percentage, Spotify likely intends to clean up the issue before it officially goes public. Last week, Spotify finally filed for its long-rumored initial public offering (IPO) that valued the company at $1 billion. The streaming platform has thus far struggled to make a profit despite reporting $4.09 billion in revenue in 2017.

Illustration: Gizmodo / Spotify

Spotify is cracking down on subscribers who are using “unauthorized” apps to enjoy paid features at freemium prices.
First reported by TorrentFreak, Spotify is sending users the following email about “abnormal activity.”

It’s not clear which apps are being targeted, but TorrentFreak points out that there are numerous versions of Spotify that enable non-paying users to bypass certain annoyances, like shuffle-only play and limits on the number of tracks you’re allowed to skip. The day after Spotify announced it was going public, it sent GitHub a takedown notice for a modded version of the Spotify app called “Dogfood.” The notice also requested the removal of several projects that forked Dogfood’s code.
Some users who received the email from Spotify told TorrentFreak they were still able to use their account to listen through a modified app, while others said the email was accurate and they were locked out of the app. Spotify’s email may seem friendly, but if you’re one of its recipients and your app still works, you might want to think twice about continuing to use it or you might find yourself with a terminated account.

 

Gizmodo has reached out to Spotify to clarify whether its email meant that subscribers’ accounts have been disabled until they log in to the authentic app, or if Spotify is claiming to have disabled a modified app itself. A spokesperson replied that “the users in question were accessing Spotify through an unauthorized app, so we have disabled access through such apps.”
Spotify’s public filing with the SEC last week gave us a deeper look at the company’s numbers than we’ve ever had before. It listed 71 million paying subscribers and 159 million monthly active listeners as of December 2017. Despite Spotify’s claim that it still believes the “Ad-Supported Service is a strong and viable stand-alone product with considerable long-term opportunity for growth,” Spotify has acknowledged that it sees its free streaming business “as a funnel” that drives “more than 60% of our total gross added Premium Subscribers.”
As someone who put up with the ad-supported service for years, I can testify that the irritating restrictions Spotify put on its mobile app were enough to push me into paying. If you’ve been using these workaround apps and you don’t want to lose your carefully curated catalog and playlists, you might want to consider coughing up the cash.