Spotify says 2 million users are hacking its premium service

Spotify has revealed that at least 2 million of its users are gaining access to its ad-free service without paying for it.

These users have been using the free version of the Spotify streaming service but bypassing the advertising using unauthorised apps. These apps are able to block out all of the advertising.

Varietyreports that Spotify’s recent risk assessment exposed some 2 million users, which equates to approximately 1.3% of its total user base.

“On March 21, 2018, we detected instances of approximately two million users as of December 31, 2017, who have been suppressing advertisements without payment,” Spotify said in a report to the US Securities And Exchange Commission.

These fraudulent users bring down Spotify’s reported active monthly user figure from 159 million users to 157 million – with legitmate premium customers making up 71 million of that total.

In comparison, Apple Music recently state it currently has 38 million paid subscribers.

The company has also restate the total number of content-hours for 2017, bringing it down to from 40.3 billion hours to 39.8 billion hours to account for the unauthoriseds users.

Spotify made the announcement ahead of its forthcoming April 3 IPO listing.