Over the past few days, the online world has been rife with reports that Spotify is down – but it appears it’s only “down” for those listeners who were using pirate apps to access the streaming service’s Premium tier for free.
MBW understands that Spotify has carried out changes to enforce its Terms and Conditions better, and as a result, some “cracked” versions of its Premium service have stopped working.
This is apparently what’s behind a spike in reports at sites like DownDetector, where a number of commenters have admitted they were using cracks to access Premium features like ad-free listening.
Listeners using these unauthorized cracks still have access to their free (ad-supported) Spotify accounts, and still have the option to upgrade to a Premium tier.
The reality that Spotify is a target for piracy is somewhat ironic, given that the initial idea behind the service was to combat music piracy by giving listeners a single online hub where they have unlimited access to virtually all of the world’s music.
This is apparently not the first time that Spotify has taken steps to prevent pirated access to Premium. In November, Android device users in India reported that some unauthorized APK (Android Package Kit) files had stopped giving them access to Spotify.
Spotify also recently made changes to its third-party developer ecosystem, halting access for developers to data such as recommendations, related artists, features playlists, category playlists, and 30-second preview URLs. Access to audio features and audio analysis was also blocked.
While Spotify said the changes were made “with the aim of creating a more secure platform,” some third-party app developers speculated the changes were meant to prevent AI developers from scraping music data from Spotify’s platform.
Some of those third-party developers working with Spotify’s API were put out by a lack of advance notice about the changes, as they had been working on Spotify apps that relied on access to the data that the streaming service blocked.
More than a decade ago, Spotify phased out third-party apps for the desktop version of its streaming platform.Music Business Worldwide
