Spotify Kids – A Guide for Parents & Carers

Spotify Kids – A Guide for Parents & Carers

We all love a bit of music every now and then. In fact, it’s very difficult not to hear what’s in the charts on a regular basis. It’s fair to say that music can be available for the whole family, starting from a very young age. As young children develop though, it can be a challenge to keep track of what they’re listening to.

Unfortunately, music can be difficult to monitor, especially when it comes to explicit language and adult themed lyrics. Spotify have created the Spotify Kids App to try and help young people experience child-friendly songs whilst giving more control to the parents and carers over what they feel is appropriate for them to listen to.

What Does Spotify Kids Do?

Spotify Kids is a paid for service that allows families to create child accounts on premium family plans (a subscription package from Spotify). This allows young people to have their own accounts whilst providing them with child friendly songs.

Parents and carers can actively monitor the account settings whilst young people can create their own avatars and colour schemes to get creative with and make them stand out.

To help monitor the content they listen to, parents and carers are also able to share playlists from their own accounts. This would be music and cover art that they deem appropriate for their children to experience which they can edit to add or remove songs at any time.

Please note: If explicit content is on a shared playlist then it is available to listen to. Podcasts will not be available to share.  

Find out how to setup Spotify Kids

Spotify Kids may be used by parents and carers who may already have a Spotify account for the family but are concerned about explicit music and would prefer a gentler way to introduce young family members to music, particularly in the early stages of their development. Many young people have access to their own devices from a young age and implementing filters such as these can offer some boundaries when it comes to the type of content they listen to. 

It also gives parents and carers the chance to allow certain types of music to be shared when they feel they are mature enough to listen to it responsibly. This can allow them to feel they are maturing as more content is made available. It is important though to have open discussions with the family around harmful content such as explicit lyrics so that if material is heard, they can feel confident to come forward and say if something upsets them.  

To learn more about Spotify’s privacy around child accounts you can access their terms and conditions here.

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