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Comment by MrGilbert | Hacker News Reader

I‘m kind of amazed that this is still working. I would have thought that Spotify is rather strict with their eco system.

I was always interested in their techstack, and how everything works on their end, but unfortunately I'm not into Java, which is the reason I never applied for a job there.

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> I‘m kind of amazed that this is still working.

this is why:

> Spotifyd requires a Spotify Premium account

which is actually not true. you can change some code in the source, to allow playback on free accounts. Spotify hunts down anyone who posts code like that though

I had no idea that was possible. Will be Googling for this later today. Thanks Google!

Isn't there a better way to do this? Rate limiting, splicing ads into the audio signal for non-paying users, providing a stable API for paying users only, etc. Beats siccing your lawyers on hapless geeks.

Sure there is - peer to peer. Spotify, and music streaming in general, is useless from technical point of view, thanks to cheap storage.

Spotify has a stable api for free users too (as can be seen by devices sold with that capability, it just isn't public). Splicing and rate limiting would clash with caching I would imagine

People following instructions to dodge paying by commenting out the payment check code are hardly “hapless geeks”. Nobody does this by accident.

applying a patch to make something work - that seems super normal to me but I guess I'm a geek. Applying patch to a thing to use a service that advertises it supports free accounts? Why wouldn't it support a different client? Thatt seems kind of weird. Is it actually intentional or did they just screw up the library so you've got to work around the breakage like literally everythig in software?

So if you listen to a spotify free account that's fine unless you do it the wrong way and then it isn't. But nobody could ever make a mistake there. They're dodging paying by flagrantly using the wrong client?

I see that pretty differently but I haven't ever used a free spotify account and don't care to use spotify beyond supporting it on our hifi for others in my family so my view on it is far from complete and infallible.

It literally says, all over the documentation, requires Spotify premium. Spotify’s docs say that things like this require Spotify premium. They also very clearly enumerate features that are only included with the premium tier, which this provides. Without saying too much, the modification is very clearly to remove a “did you play us, if not die” check which is quite intentional.

You should be aware that this thing where you pretend to be confused because you don’t like the answer is a pretty weak defense. You might be impressed with your mental gymnastics, but I assure you that the court will not be.

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