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Explicit content in Spotify playlists for kids

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Explicit content in Spotify playlists for kids

Not sure if I'm putting this in the right place so apologies in advance.

My 9 year old daughter had the Spotify playlist Tween Hangs on over the weekend and I was disappointed to find that Spotify have included tracks on a playlist aimed at such a young age group with explicit lyrics.
Whilst I appreciate this might not be such a concern for all parents, is there any way I can filter out these tracks so that my kids (ages 6 and 9) can enjoy their music?
Thanks
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Hey folks!

 

We have some more info on this here. We'd recommend adding your +VOTE if you haven't already, and to keep an eye on the thread for the latest update 🙂


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34 Replies

@Tonip_nz

 

Hello:

 

If you go to your Spotify account page here: https://www.spotify.com/account/overview/ there should be a feature to adjust the birth date and age of the users on the accounts, this goes a ways in limiting what kinds of content the users get access to. But there is always a chance something inappropriate could pop up on a Spotify curated playlist, due to different regions and the ages of users accessing the Spotify service. The Spotify service I believe is set for 13 and above currently, so you might get a few tracks that are parental advisory type tracks from time to time. But the age limit is also dependent upon which listening region one is in with using the Spotify service. 

 

The end user age limits from different listening regions on the Spotify service:

https://www.spotify.com/legal/end-user-agreement/#s1

 

In order to use the Spotify Service and access the Content, you need to (1) be 18 or older, or be 13 or older and have your parent or guardian's consent to the Agreements (except as set forth in the chart below), (2) have the power to enter a binding contract with us and not be barred from doing so under any applicable laws, and (3) be resident in a country where the Service is available. You also promise that any registration information that you submit to Spotify is true, accurate, and complete, and you agree to keep it that way at all times.

Country Age Requirements
Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru Must be 18 or older, or be 15 or older and have parent or guardian consent.
Brazil Must be 18 or older, or be 16 or older and have parent or guardian consent.
Nicaragua, Taiwan Must be 20 or older, or be 13 or older and have parent or guardian consent.
Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany Must be 18 or older, or be 14 or older and have parent or guardian consent.
Italy Must be 13 or older to use Free Service. To register for a Paid Subscription, you must be 18 or older, or be 13 or older and have parent or guardian consent (your parents/guardians will enter into contract on behalf of you).
Malaysia Must be 18 or older, or if 13 to 18, parent or guardian consent is required, and guardian enters into agreement.
Lithuania Must be 13 or older to use Service. For Paid Subscriptions, you must be 18 or older, or be 14 or older with parent or guardian consent. If you are 13 to 18, guardian enters into agreement.
Canada Must be 13 or older to use Service. For Paid Subscriptions, you must be age of majority in your province or territory of residence, or 13 or older with parent or guardian consent.
Spain Must be 14 or older to use Free Service. To register for a Paid Subscription, you must be 18 or older, or be 14 or older and have parent or guardian consent (your parents/guardians will enter into contract on behalf of you).

 

So users under the age of 13, your going to get some questionable content from time to time, just like one would when buying a legal CD release from like Best Buy, Target, so and so forth if one lapses a bit, and does not notice the parental advisory labels and/or other parental warnings from other markets about adult content in music.

 

The best thing to do would be to create special playlists on your own account that are age appropriate, and screen the content carefully before letting your young ones play music on the service. The Spotify service is for individual users only of appropriate age to have access to the Spotify service. Right now there is not an age filter for music content on the Spotify service. Spotify leaves this kind of thing up to the end user on content access, with the warning that users are limited by age and access to the Spotify service, and the warning that giving false account information can result in a terminated account if found out.

 

Most of the content on the Spotify service is flagged with explicit tags on the songs with adult content, but with so many labels and providers uploading content to the Spotify service a few releases do tend to slip through without the proper tagging. Those releases not meta tagged correctly can be reported with this information below:

 

If you've seen either

- a track, album, or artist in our catalogue with incorrect information (i.e. wrong release year, misspelling, etc.)

- different artists in the same Artist Page

- incorrect cover arts

- incorrect artists biography

or

- a track or album that isn't playing correctly (i.e. a song only playing one second of music)

Then you can report the error using the Contact Form. Once there, perform the following steps:

Step 1: Click on "I want to report a broken song or wrong song information".
Step 2: Click on the Green Button that reads "I STILL NEED HELP".
Step 3: Copy and Paste the track URI links to the songs into the field that reads "Song URI".
Step 4: Type up a description of the track issues in the "Tell us more" field.
Step 5: Click on the green button "SEND QUESTION".
Be sure to include all Spotify URI's in the body of the message!

After contacting Customer Support, you should receive an automated response from Spotify. The tracks will then be aggregated and reported to the content provider. Customer Support will update their database with the correct information as soon as the label or aggregator has sent them an update with the correct data.

Thank you for your reply, I've only just now received a notification.

Due to my daughter only being 10, she doesn't have her own Spotify account. I try to monitor what my children are exposed to and would have thought a Spotify curated playlist named 'Tween Hangs' would have no explicit content as they would understand that a Tween is between the ages of 8 to 12.
I appreciate that you do not represent Spotify, but feel it should be brought to their attention that they have a social responsibility to ensure that their playlists are named, and curated appropriately.

Thanks again for your reply.

They have no social responsibilities as far as I can see. All I ask for is a button to turn explicit content off and replace that track on playlists with radio edits. I was a premium subscriber in a house with young girls & couldn't listen to any Spotify playlists at home, at work or when driving with others. I cancelled and moved elsewhere.

Simillar issue.
Mine however, was "suggestions" for a self-created playlist.

How in the world does spotify think that a song called "Hitler Was A Sensitive Man" performed by "**bleep** **bleep**" might be something that's simillar to "Elmo", "Baby Baluga" and such...
HA! Just noticed that apparantly the artist's name was too explicit to show in thisreplye, and was replaced with "*bleep*", but it's totaly cool to show it along Elmo and Big Bird!spotify.jpg

That's awesome that their forum's filter works better than their product's filter...

for Gods sake just put in the **bleep**ing filter there must be about thirty different forums relating to it which are all being treated with spotify official contempt. Makes us parents feel like we are of little worth, so how would we expect spotify to treat our children - or are they preening them to fit into the Spotify vision of the future. Send all votes to the main "explicit filter" page and crack 10000 before Christmas

Well spotted! Spotify is either blind, stupid, mercenary, a pack of self seeking arseholes or all of the above if they dont hang their collective heads in deep shame and admit that is just WRONG

Wait... I have to adjust the overall age of users to filter out explicit songs for my 6 year old?  I read this as everyone in the family account will now be barred from explicit tracks. If my understanding is accurate, then that's a pretty woeful solution. 

 

Please allow us to set each user in the family account (separately, not overall) as either allowed or disallowed to play tracks labelled as explicit.

 

 

Thanks

Age-setting is not an adequate solution.

Even if it takes time to implement in all Spotify clients, please allow a per-user setting to block explicit content.

Pandora loves to tout this as a feature that you don't have...maybe a commercial competitor will prompt some action if thousands of customers can't.

Frankly guys, I doubt things will change anytime soon, competition or no competition. The response to the explicit content filter/parental control is huge - and only thing we are getting is the same copy pasted "assurance" they "haven't forgot about it", once every year or so. Ugh, seriously?

Anything you send to the CS these days is being replied with pre-templated pile of nonsense. I reached out to them recently in a slightly different case, and was responded to in a vague, dismissive manner (problem still not resolved), which then turned to an eternal silence on their end.

I love the app - when it's working fine, it's excellent; but when the problem appears, you may as well go through all nine circles of **bleep** - and it would still be an easier task than making Spotify treat you properly - at least in my experience.

I've been working in customer care for a few years and I find myself cringing over the support's replies people post here. It's as if Spotify didn't realise they can't exist without customers - that they make their living by embracing full responsibility for their own product (i.e. not only accepting praise, but also allowing criticism and constantly setting new benchmarks). Despite working with various people for many years I still managed to treat each one in respectful, kind and humane way, without passing the blame and watering down the responsibility when things went south. Simple conclusion - if I can do that on my day-to-day basis, they can too; but for whatever reason they doesn't seem to be very keen on doing it. They seem to believe that low standard is satisfying enough - so they keep feeding us bread crumbs (vague promises, generic responses) just so that we don't go somewhere else - and in the meantime things remain exactly the same they were few years (!) ago.

I doubt there is any other way to get results other than forcing Spotify's employees to be good people - reaching out to Ombudsman/BBB/Watchdog, posting stories on Twitter, sharing them on Facebook, going to the media. Otherwise, they may as well continue to treat us as they please - and that's not the kind of treatment anyone deserves.

Kudos if you've read through this wall of text - it turned out to be much more than I originally intended to write!

Totally agree with all the posts on this thread.  Spotify is deliberately ignoring the concerns of parents on this issue.  They have no intention of fixing this.

 

Apple Music has a setting to filter Explicit content.

 

Time for all parents to dump Spotify and move to Apple I think!

Seriously Spotify you need to let us disable explicit content for a session or permanently per account.  Some of us have children, and like to listen to music when they're around (wow, go figure).

 

On a recent road trip found ourselves skipping every 3rd song as it had "**bleep**" (edit: SERIOUSLY? Your forum filters better than your service. I meant Foxtrot Uniform Charlie Kilo).

Honestly, in 2018 there is AI and speech recognition software that is very high level out there. There should be an option to muffle swearwords in songs so that kids are still able to listen to the music without having to hear explicit content. This should be implemented via algos that scan songs automatically. This should be well within the ability of any company with decent dev capacity and I am shocked that this option is not available (and tbh even more shocked that there is no blanket option to filter out explicit content - **bleep**? So basic...).

I guess contracts would have to be renegotiated as the music content would be altered but Spotify/other streaming operators would have moral high ground to force artists hand on this. Such rudimentary functionality lacking is pretty poor...

I was planning to switch to a family account from the free service...but I won't until they have a explicet content filter.  Looks like Pandora has this abitlity.  I think I'll look more seriously at the Pandoria permium service.  http://pdora.co/1VefM8d

Just going to join in this because it's a simple fix that hasn't been implemented. 

 

I have a music-mad 8 year old and I have signed up for a Premium Family account so he can have his own account for a couple of reasons - 

 

1. I don't want kids tracks messing with any algorithms that will impact any recommendations etc on my own profile.

2. I don't want him to be able to listen to inappropriate music/lyrics.

 

Spotify has tagged music as Parental Guidance already, so should let the owner of the Family Account decide if they want to remove these tracks for people in their family.

 

How this will impact Spotify if not implemented

 

1. Kids will grow up listening to another music platform and have an affinity for it. Maybe never moving to Spotify

2. There's no point having a 'Family' Account as it doesn't cater for a family

 

Apple Music allow filtering by explicit lyrics so I'm going to try them out now after many years of being a Spotify customer. I've changed during that time (kids!) but Spotify hasn't.

 

I've just seen this where you can vote for this to be actioned

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Explicit-button/idi-p/3869

What service did you use instead of Spotify.  I have the same concern as you.

~thanks

Been too busy to deal with this right now.Pandora seems to be a better
option: https://help.pandora.com/customer/portal/articles/24645-enable
-explicit-filter id="-x-evo-selection-start-marker">

Google Play Music for the win!  They have a filter.  Will not consider spotify until they have a filter.

So, finally, it looks like Spotify have taken notice as I happened to stumble across an Explicit Content option in Spotify's settings today. It must have been added in a recent update. It's a step towards fixing the issue, but not enough for most families as (1) it is device specific - so you'd have to switch it off on all the devices in your family; and (2) it's open access - so if you have older/tech savvy children they will quickly find it and switch it back on again! For this option to be actually of any use, it needs to be password controlled at the account or device level. Come on Spotify, a good first step, but let's have something a little more child proofed!

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