How to Use Spotify Parental Controls

Spotify is a great service for streaming music from any device from your PC to your smartphone or tablet. Thanks to the Spotify Family Account, you can easily share that service with up to 6 people at once so the whole family can enjoy. However, if you have younger children, you may want to limit their exposure to explicit content and lyrics. 

Here's how to use Spotify Parental Controls.

What You Need to Know About Spotify Family Accounts 

A Spotify Family account is a great deal for many, but it's worth knowing a little about what you can and cannot do with it. 

• You need to live together. Spotify Family only works if you all live at the same address. You can't share it with users who live elsewhere as you need to confirm your place of residence during sign-up. 
• It caters to large families. If you've got a family of 6, you can all still use Spotify Family. Not all services cater to so many people using it at once. 
• Everyone has their own account. Each family member still has their own individual Premium account with their own playlists and recommendations. 
• You have a Family playlist. Family Mix offers your family a personalized playlist made up of music that Spotify thinks you'll all enjoy. It's a fun way of discovering new music within your family. 
• You can't block specific artists or tracks. You can only turn the explicit filter on or off so that music tagged as explicit isn't allowed, rather than block more extensively. 
• You can't limit usage times. You can't restrict how long your family member can use Spotify each day.

How to Add Family Members to Spotify Family

Spotify has fairly simple parental controls but you need to make sure your family is all part of your Family Account, here's how to add your loved ones to your plan. 

1. Go to https://www.spotify.com

2. Click Profile.

   You may need to log in first.

3. Click Account.

4. Scroll down and click Premium Family.

5. Click Add to Family Plan.

6. Click Invite to Premium.

7. Copy the link and send it to your family member.

8. Once they've accepted, they become part of the Spotify Premium Family plan and you can tweak their explicit content settings. 

How to Set up Spotify Parental Controls

Once your family member is part of your Premium Family account, you can easily adjust the Spotify explicit filter and ensure they only hear clean versions of songs. Here's how.

1. Go to https://www.spotify.com

2. Click Profile.

   You may need to log in first.

3. Click Account.

4. Scroll down and click Premium Family.

5. Click the name of your family member.

6. Click the Remove Explicit Content toggle.

7. The user can now only hear music that hasn't been tagged as explicit. Explicit song titles will be grayed out otherwise.

What Is Spotify Kids? 

Spotify Kids is a new standalone app that's slowly being released across the world. It's not available in the US just yet but it is available in countries including Ireland and the UK. 

Exclusively for Spotify Premium Family subscribers, it's a form of Spotify for Kids with hand-picked content that's ideal for young minds. The app has simpler navigation than regular Spotify with scaled-back text so young children can understand it. 

Numerous curated playlists are available for favorite movies and TV shows from brands like Disney and Nickelodeon, as well as songs suitable for children.