Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services, offering over 100 million songs and 7 million podcasts. The company has managed to attract around 300 million paying subscribers, who come in part to access its catalog, but also its popular AI-based recommendation systems. For example, Spotify can suggest new songs and playlists, just in case you get tired of listening to your favorite tracks. But there was a problem: If you shared access to your subscription to one of the company’s various plans with the rest of your family, your kids’ songs would start showing up in your recommendations list. Spotify says it has found a solution.
Spotify has added a new feature to its app settings that offers a toggle that removes kids and family music from recommendations. By toggling this toggle, your non-stop sing-alongs to “Golden” from “KPop Demon Hunters” no longer have an impact on the tracks Spotify will recommend next. This feature will apply to services such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix and Wrapped, Spotify said.
Unlike perks like reviewed magazine articles, this option isn’t exclusive to Spotify Premium members; Free and premium users can use the new toggle at any time. Initially, the option will allow the music tastes of the rest of your family to color your song suggestions, but once reversed, child- and family-friendly songs will no longer affect your taste profile. Although Spotify recently released information about this feature, the company plans to roll it out gradually, so keep an eye out for app updates. The program’s patch will also include new managed account options that will allow kids to grow their own music libraries, with parental controls overseeing everything, of course.
Spot the differences
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According to the press release, Spotify’s new toggle is the latest tool in the company’s attempts to give families more control over how everyone listens to music. However, Spotify isn’t the only music streaming service out there, but this new feature makes it stand out from the crowd.
Let’s say you don’t have a Spotify subscription but you share your music account with your kids and family. How can you prevent tracks similar to their favorite songs from appearing in your feed? For most services, you have to shell out extra money for a family plan with multiple accounts, but some platforms have additional tools. For example, with Deezer you can browse all artists or track your kids who are listening to them and exclude them from recommendations. (To do this, click the unhappy emoji button, then select “Do not recommend this song” or “Do not recommend this artist.”) Meanwhile, Amazon Music Unlimited lets you set up multiple Alexa profiles, and each is personalized to the user, so none receive the same music and podcast recommendations. However, Alexa needs to learn about each user before the feature will work, so it may take some time.
Spotify claims that this new toggle will be easy to use, which is a crucial difference from its competitors, especially because Spotify doesn’t offer the best audio quality compared to other services. The toggle hasn’t been rolled out to all customers, so we don’t know how effectively it delivers on the company’s promises. Fingers crossed this works as advertised and other music services follow suit.
