A declaration of intentions? What the closure of the APK tells about Spotify its sudden restrictive turn

Spotify was founded in 2006 and it has not been until 2024 that has managed to be profitable. He has had gusts with green -green quarter and others in red, but this year has been the year, in capital and bold. This is a great news for the company, undoubtedly, and a tremendous chance that is right now, in full bonanza, when you have decided to stop that … Countless call Spotify modified APK. And that is right now, in this context, it is a small Leave vu of something we have already lived.

Spotify what? It is no secret that looking for the right words on the Internet, any user could reach a modified Spotify application. An fully functional and illegitimate app that, in a nutshell, eliminated one of the great restrictions of the Spotify free plan: choose what song to listen.

As every free service user will know, non -subscribers can only listen to music in random. They cannot choose which song reproduce, but choose a list and let the random mode do their own. In addition, only the songs can jump a few times and, of course, they are forced to listen to advertising. The modified APK eliminated advertising, allowed to choose songs and jump the songs as many times as we would like.

The end. And if we talk in the past it is because Spotify, abruptly, without prior notice and from one day to another, has decided to take action on the matter. From a stroke, it has made these modified applications stop working. That has caused the users who used them and look for alternatives, thus creating An excellent culture broth for cybercriminals.

Spoiler: Download a modified Spotify application is synonymous with potential problems.

Leave vu. Obviating that the use of this application breaches the terms and conditions of the service and the user agreement, it is still striking that this decision has been applied overnight. Spotify is in his entire right, there is plenty of saying, but it is the accumulation of situations and the precedents that attracts attention.

Streaming platforms, starting with Netflix and then all the others, decided overnight end the shared accounts. The difference is that Netflix did it when it went through a pothole, while Spotify has decided to stop the modified APKs while on the wave crest. Spotify has 675 million users of which 263 million are paying. Surely the impact of the modified APK is minimal, but its blocking is 1) normal and 2) a possible declaration of intentions.

What if Spotify is getting serious? Now that Spotify has managed to be profitable, perhaps he is thinking of putting the points on the ís to all those users who violate their service. Using a modified APK is a clear violation of the terms and conditions of use, so it was evident that this was going to happen sooner or later, but there is something else that is a common practice in the service and through which Spotify has only passed on tiptoe.

The shared accounts. The melon of shared family accounts has been opened several times, but it has never finished solving. Spotify Let it clear that the family plan is for up to six family members who live in the same direction, but the reality is that the verification system It is easily drawable. Spotify only verifies the introduced address, but does not seem to follow up like the one that does, for example, Netflix.

Spotify can surely know without much problem that your “family” of “six members” is distributed between Madrid, Barcelona, ​​Seville and a colleague who is from Erasmus in Brussels although all, for practical purposes, live in the same direction as the administrator. He simply lets him be, and that will be so until Spotify decide to stop being. And maybe that moment is now a little closer being, in any case, a risky movement.

Spotify is alone. Especially since Spotify is a service that depends entirely on subscriptions and advertising. Apple Music, Amazon Music or YouTube Music have behind companies that sell and/or offer other more lucrative products or services than the musical product itself. Spotify, however, does not have that support and play with the number of subscribers is more movie.

Although Netflix has been afraid. Although users put themselves on a war on social networks and ink rivers were written about it, The reality is that Netflix has been great His crusade against shared accounts and the free plan with advertising. 55% of the new highs bet on the cheap plan with ads and the end of shared accounts have made the platform reach 300 million subscribers.

Perhaps the end of the modified APK is the beginning of a new stage in Spotify. One in which shared accounts are with relatives, and with no one; one with high definition sound (plan that does not finish arriving) and one in which, finally, streaming music is profitable. Or maybe not, but the background is what they are.

Cover image | Cottonbro Studio

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