Through Spotify's meteoric rise to dominant music streaming service, it opted to overlook users who were bypassing its restrictions and stealing its Premium service. In gaining popularity, its easier to let users become enamored with your service than to alienate them right away. It's the same approach Netflix takes with users who steal its service. But the time of nicety has come to and end.

Spotify is done with the grace period and is cracking down on these users pirating its service.

Contrary to what you may believe, pirating a service like Spotify isn't that difficult. All it takes is signing up for a free Spotify account and then download a modified installation file. This is easier to do on Android devices, as its much easier to download non-sanctioned third-party apps. Once downloaded, users can use the Premium-tiered Spotify service free of charge.

Spotify was aware of the ongoing pirating issue, but it didn't bother itself too much about it. That was until now when it started kicking these users off.

According to TorrentFreak, Spotify is sending these users a message saying it has detected they are using a modified or unauthorized version of its service. Their accounts are still safe and sound, but they'll have to download an official app from Google's Play Store to resume their normal service – that is if they are paying for the proper tiered service. 

TorrentFreak reports it reached out to users taking advantage of the modified Spotify apps and some have confirmed that their apps have stopped working.

It was fun while it lasted for these intrepid Spotify users, but now they have join the rest of us in paying a monthly subscription fee.