Spotify says about two million users hacked app to dodge ads

Chad Lawson's Re Piano is available now

Chad Lawson's Re Piano is available now

The two million people listening to Spotify ad-free without paying the monthly subscription fee that most users have to pay marks a serious issue for the streaming music platform as it readies to become a publicly traded company on April 3.

When filing for the IPO last month, Spotify announced it had 159 million users in total and around 88 million of those use Spotify Free.

Spotify - which this week filed to offer its shares to the public through a direct listing - is one of streaming music's biggest players, but a new regulatory filing suggests that the company still has work to do to reassure advertisers on its platform that they are reaching its full userbase.

The disclosure notes, "Unauthorized access to our Service may cause us to misstate key performance indicators, which once discovered, corrected, and disclosed, could undermine investor confidence in the integrity of our key performance indicators and could cause our stock price to drop significantly".

The publication says that Spotify had 157 million subscribers as of the end of 2017, with 71 million subscribers paying for the service. That includes disabling ads between tracks and accessing on-demand playback on mobile devices - features available in Spotify Premium, which costs $9.99 per month.

View Slideshow Chad Lawson's Re Piano is available now. Josh Goleman Courtesy of the artist View Slideshow
View Slideshow Chad Lawson's Re Piano is available now. Josh Goleman Courtesy of the artist View Slideshow

Spotify has been criticized in the past for what seemed, to many, as turning a blind eye to the use of hacked software, which allowed users to access subscription perks without paying.

But, at the beginning of this month, it appeared the firm was tightening its grip.

As reported by TorrentFreak, some Spotify users have begun to receive emails from the company warning them about "abnormal activity" linked to their accounts. Don't worry - your Spotify account is safe.

The firm warned: "If we detect repeated use of unauthorised apps in violation of our terms, we reserve all rights including suspending or terminating your account".

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