Tech Desk
Sep 13, 2024
Spotify, on September 13, 2024 (Friday), introduced in-app parental controls in the form of “managed accounts” for listeners under the age of 13.
The new features are set to be initially offered as a pilot program for parents or guardians on a family plan in select markets, like Denmark, New Zealand, and Sweden.
Once it is enabled, parents can handle the account of young listeners on their account by preventing them from watching videos, playing content, or even seeing Canvas videos. Moreover, parents are said to be able to use a new control feature to decide if their child can play certain artists or tracks.
This permit the parent or guardian to make more granular decisions about what kind of music is available to their child, without forcing their tween to use the more kid-friendly, but also more restrictive, Spotify Kids app.
Read more: Spotify's daylist playlist now available worldwide
The release follows efforts from other large tech companies including TikTok, Meta, Snap, and YouTube to give parents more control over how their kids use their apps, and what sort of features kids have access to, driven by increasing pressure from regulators to reign in Big Tech.
Other streamers, like Netflix, Max, and Hulu, among others, also provide parental controls to parents.
However, Spotify is not a TV and movie streaming service or a fully featured social app, it does have a wide variety of content on its platform, some of which may not be appropriate for younger listeners.
Access to the new feature is available to parents from the Accounts page in the app, where they’re able to select the option to “Add a listener aged under 13.”
