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Spotify Is Cracking Down On Users Pirating Premium-Like Service (torrentfreak.com)
People who access Spotify using hacked apps that remove some of the restrictions placed on free accounts are receiving warning emails from the company. Noting that "abnormal activity" has been observed from the user's software, Spotify warns that future breaches could result in suspension or even termination of a user's account. TorrentFreak reports: "We detected abnormal activity on the app you are using so we have disabled it. Don't worry -- your Spotify account is safe," the email from Spotify reads. "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. If you need more help, please see our support article on Reinstalling Spotify." While the email signs off with a note thanking the recipient for being a Spotify user, there is also a warning. "If we detect repeated use of unauthorized apps in violation of our terms, we reserve all rights, including suspending or terminating your account," Spotify writes.
Read this. It was written almost 20 years ago. There have been no technological developments since that alter the main thesis of the essay, nor will there be. Further, this has been known to every ethical software engineer for at least as long ("ethical" in this case meaning, "Will not lie to your face about what is technically feasible").
Anyone on your engineering staff claiming not to be aware of these truths should be dismissed immediately.
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
"The problem is that Jane controls her computer."
Here is where the war is currently. Add in phones and tablets and other walled off closed ecosystems and you can see this is a bad road where freedom doesn't exist.
Yeah, I'd certainly expect the client cert to only be required for paid accounts...
Their root problem is free and paid are served by the same servers are you're expecting the client to differentiate, which as someone posted below, is a fool's errand.
why would anybody care if you ban it?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I like it, but I couldn't find where to put in my credit card number?
Spotify has managed to make a deal with the music industry, but there are caveats on that deal that restrict how music is downloaded. If the music industry gets wind that Spotify has become a conduit for pirating music, it could see them lose those deals and the rights to stream music and basically kill their business entirely.
Who knows why but the value of streaming music isn't considered as valuable as a service which allows download and ownership. Spotify allows download of offline copies of music but it is limited to 3,333 songs which is a pretty artificial and completely arbitrary limit.
Anyhow, I can see the day coming when this notion of streamed vs downloaded music/video is considered quite antiquated. What difference does it make to the listening/viewing experience if content is streamed vs played off local storage?
If you have a connection to the internet answer is absolutely none!
Except of course when you're paying internet fees for the data downloaded. The days of that being a concern for most people out there are fast drawing to a close, with the cost of internet access gong down and data limits going way up.
Personally, I don't actually have any desire to "own" music when it is available to me on demand. I spend 95% of my time listening to new music, off spotify, soundcloud etc.. Music has to be pretty exceptional for me to listen to it multiple times. So I have no interest in Spotify hacks to download and stockpile music that I'll probably never listen to again.
Not trusting the client side is old news in web development. Why would a web service binary client be any different? No need for more authentication, just less trust.
Hence their right to suspend the accounts.
You invite someone over for dinner and they steal your cutlery and napkins.... what do you do? Stop having people over for dinner?
As with any service, there are always going to be people who abuse it. And it's not just Spotify that suffers, its the artists that suffer the consequence of their material being pirated.
Despite having payouts to artists as low as 0.006c per play Spotify is still running big losses. At the other end of the line artists complain about Spotify's pay out rate. It's strange how many people can be fans of a band, love their music, love the band, and then take actions that scr3w them over.
Spotify has a vast amount of music to listen to from all sorts of genres from all round the world, and they give people access to this amazing service for free at the cost of listening to an ad or two. But that's not free enough for some people!
We don't live in the world where we have to download mp3s anymore, it's much easier to stream legitimately from spotify than it is to pirate. Now, if only we could get rid of the DRM completely.
If you are legitimately using Spotify for streaming music, or even offline use, why does it matter if the service has DRM or not? Other than general principles of opposing DRM in the first place. I've used Spotify for years and never been inconvenienced by the DRM.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.