Spotify Mods, also known as tweaked Spotify apps that have been hacked, provide free premium features to customers by circumventing the pay subscription process. A report presented by security firm Androazard 2023 showed that nearly 15 percent of Android customers have installed third-party tweaked applications, 32 percent being streaming music, and spotify mods get downloaded more than 2 million times a month from the Google Play external distribution system. For instance, Indonesia’s APK mirror website statistics indicate that in the fourth quarter of 2022, the installation package size for spotify mod averaged 85MB, 12% smaller than that of the official app, yet the code injection rate hit 27%, generating around 18% of user devices activated through malicious scripts.
Technically, the spotify mod reverse-engineered APKs, disabled AD modules (saving users 5-8 minutes of AD time on average per day) and activated “extremely high sound quality” (320kbps) and limitless cutting of songs. However, tests conducted by the Fraunhofer SIT research institute showed that 78 percent of the compromised versions contained bypass vulnerabilities in their SSL certificates, increasing the likelihood of interception of the user’s payment information to 14.3 percent. In 2021, the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sued a distribution platform and claimed that the latter was charging copyright holders over $270 million every year by utilizing spotify mod, or 6.5% of Spotify Premium subscription revenue.
Financially, an individual subscription to the official Premium service costs $9.99 a month, while owners of the cracked version “save” about $120 a year but with the cost of 22% increased malware infection on the device (source: Kaspersky Lab 2022). According to Spotify’s financial report, paid user conversion in 2023 is only 37%, and merely 9% of the free users who used spotify mod later turned into paying customers, resulting in a decline in yearly revenue per user (ARPU) by $1.80. Besides, India’s Delhi High Court in 2022 directed ISPs to block 32 websites giving spotify moDs, with more than 4.5 million pirated content, and levied a combined fine of $12 million.
While spotify mod reduces users’ costs short-term, its illegal risks and technological exposures have significant long-term costs. For example, according to the European Union Cyber Security Agency (ENISA), music streaming accounted for 41% of personal data breaches due to the use of hacked apps in 2020-2023, with an average repair cost per person of 386 euros. For comparison, Spotify officially increased its paid subscribers to 210 million with efforts such as family Plan (six people at $15.99 per month) and student discount (50% discount), up 14% year over year, verifying the legitimacy of the legal subscription model. The global paid streaming penetration rate will reach 48% by 2025, as stated by Statista, and spotify mod’s market share can fall below 4% due to technical countermeasures and policy of law.