Spotify: Premium Family subscribers can manage children's accounts
Spotify introduces a new feature in Germany that allows parents to manage their children's accounts. But this only works with the Premium Family subscription.
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Spotify is giving parents more control over what their children listen to on the music platform. With "managed accounts," parents can create their own accounts for their children and configure them according to their own preferences. For example, a filter for adult content can be activated, and certain artists can be restricted or completely disabled. Video elements can also be switched off in managed accounts.
For parents, this has the advantage that they can continue to use Spotify themselves without restriction. They therefore do not have to share their own account with their children in order to maintain control over youth protection settings. However, managed accounts are only available in the Premium Family subscription tier, which costs 22 Euros per month.
Dangers for children on Spotify
The fact that important youth protection features are only available in expensive subscription tiers is one of the criticisms in the jugendschutz.net-Reports (pdf) published in August on the safety of children and adolescents on Spotify. Jugendschutz.net criticizes, for example, that Spotify also features music by right-wing extremist artists and anti-democratic content. Children can also be confronted with violence and sexuality – not only in music and podcasts themselves, but also, for example, in playlist images or short video clips. In addition, jugendschutz.net found audiobooks with erotic content.
Videos by heise
Spotify has been offering managed accounts in various countries for some time, but according to the streaming service's announcement, the function is now new in Germany. Parents with a Premium Family subscription can create managed accounts for their children under "Settings and Privacy" create managed accounts for their children or switch already created accounts to managed.
As an alternative to the full app experience, Spotify offers an app called Spotify Kids, specifically tailored for young children, in which only selected content is available. Managed accounts, on the other hand, are intended for slightly older children – Spotify recommends them up to the age of 13.
In September, Spotify presented measures to limit spam from AI songs on the platform. Among other things, musicians will have to disclose in the future whether and in what form Artificial Intelligence (AI) is used in production. New filters will meanwhile ensure that AI music does not take away annual income from real artists.
(dahe)
