For parents, there seems to be a never-ending amount of things to monitor for your child. Music has been a difficult one for many. Now, Spotify Kids is making it a little easier for parents to keep track of what their little ones are listening to.
The Spotify Kids app, which first launched last October, is rolling out new features that allow parents to access their kids’ listening histories. Parents can not only see what their kids have been listening to, but can also block content that they feel is inappropriate for them.
By going to the “Grown Ups” section of the app’s account settings, parents can access histories for multiple children. From there, they can block inappropriate tracks with the push of a button.
These aren’t the first tools the digital music, podcast, and video streaming service has rolled out to help families. Last August, Spotify introduced a special family plan to help wrangle tunes, moderate and share music.
The family plan costs $15/month and allows for six individual user accounts (on their own devices) living in the same house. Yes, that means even if your loved ones are traveling they’ll be able to use Spotify (provided the country they’re in offers it), so long as those in the shared plan all reside under one roof.
Curious about what the family as a whole gravitates towards musically? In addition to the normal playlists, you can add songs to a personalized Family Mix. Don’t worry, you can control who’s in each session so you don’t get flooded with Baby Shark. Parents also have full control over explicit content with a filter that manages all accounts under one main account control.
In addition to explicit content control, Spotify has its own policy around hate and conduct that notes kinds of content being granted to users, regardless of parental controls.
“Spotify does not permit content whose principal purpose is to incite hatred or violence against people because of their race, religion, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation,” Spotify’s website states. “As we’ve done before, we will remove content that violates that standard. We’re not talking about offensive, explicit, or vulgar content – we’re talking about hate speech.”
Spotify has taken a stance to collectively help moderate content that meets those criteria and that… well, haven’t aged as well. Some of these songs are now moderated without even having to add child control. Spotify has made a point to be mindful that kids may be using phones to listen to content and are censoring select parts of explicit content with this in mind. For example, the song Teenage Dirtbag by the band Wheatus (made the year before Columbine) has a line about bringing a gun to school that’s completely inaudible on mobile devices.
All in all, there are quite a few reasons why getting a Spotify family plan might be a good thing to consider. Baby Shark notwithstanding. Now get down and boogie!