Not only are those users essentially depriving the company of ad revenue but they would also have little incentive to pay for Spotify's $9.99/month premium subscription which removes ads entirely. Two million illegitimate users may not seem like much compared to the company's other 157 million legitimate users but their actions could still be taking a sizable bite out of Spotify's revenue. In a recently amended SEC IPO filing, Spotify disclosed they detected 'instances of approximately two million users' using hacked apps to dodge ads on their platform as of December 31, 2017. That said, the number of users taking advantage of these hacked apps was never made clear until now.

As these hacked app versions allowed free users to suppress ads, Spotify's decision was understandable.

A couple weeks ago, the company sent out a slew of email warnings to users who were caught using hacked versions of the popular music streaming app to get around ordinary free account restrictions. Spotify has been looking for ways to recoup some of their 2017 losses following their recent IPO filing.

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