Hi piracy community,

I’m currently thinking about developing a tool which allows downloading songs from Spotify. Now, I don’t think this is allowed in Spotifys ToS and I wanted to ask, if anybody has any experience with getting their Spotify account banned.

I have 3 main questions:

  1. Can I appeal my ban?
  2. What happens if the account is part of a family? Does the family owner get punished?
  3. Does the payment method get locked?

Any and all help would be appreciated!

Note: I know that tools for this already exist, but I want to write my own.

  • ThetaDev@lemm.eeEnglish
    161·
    7 months ago

    Spotify does not have the power to lock your credit card or paypal account. Account bans might happen and I have seen E-Mail screenshots of people who got banned. I am not sure if they would take down an entire set of family accounts.

    If you care about the content of your Spotify account (playlists, listening history) you should not use it for piracy. Just create a new one. If you are fine with 160kbps OGG files, you dont even need a paid account.

    Do not create Spotify accounts with trash mail addresses, they may work at first and get banned the next day (happened to me after I created some accounts for scraping their API).

    You can also export all your Spotify data as a precaution (GDPR export from the account page, they send you an email with a link to a zip file after a couple of days).

    • sometoruser@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      5·
      7 months ago

      Spotify does not have the power to lock your credit card or paypal account.

      That’s not what I meant. Sorry, I might’ve not been clear there. I was asking, if they would block the creation of new accounts with the same payment method(e.g. same PayPal account).

      I am not sure if they would take down an entire set of family accounts.

      Yeah, this what I worry about. I thought about if I can just add burners to my family account, but I am not sure if they would ban my main or the entire family.

      If you are fine with 160kbps OGG files, you dont even need a paid account.

      A good idea, if you want the higher quality, would probably be to use gift cards, which you can buy at the store. I don’t think that you can trace these back to a real name and the most I could loose would be 10 Bucks or smth.

      Do not create Spotify accounts with trash mail addresses, they may work at first and get banned the next day

      Thanks for the tip! I will keep that in mind.

      You can also export all your Spotify data as a precaution

      This is probably also a very good Idea. Even if I don’t go through with it. It is always a good Idea to have a copy of your data.