Family and Connect

[matyhaty]

Hi spotify Community

We are thinking of moving to a spotify family (5 users)

We have several devices in our house which we use for connect.....

How does that work, obviously the connect devices are logged in as 'a user' - Say User A

Can user B - who is part of the family subscription still connect and play to one of these connect devices?  Otherwise it will be mythem!!

Thanks in advance.

[DasPeter]

Hello there @matyhaty!

Every member will be able to use Connect on the compatible devices.

Only one account can be using the speakers.

I'm not completely sure if there will be issues if you try to play at the same time with Connect on the same speakers.

I understand (but I'm not completely sure) that when someone is using a speaker with Connect, the other accounts will see the speakers on a blocked state.

Hope this helps! ♫

[feher]

Hi there,

As of September 2015 - the two of Spotify features - Connect and Family, do not work together.

Once your Spotify Connect device is connected as one account, only devices using the same account get to control it...

This is a bit of a bummer - it keeps Family members separate, not member of one group that wold have shared privileges - like controlling Spotify Connect-ed devices at home, but with separate personal playlists and usage history. In my case, after extending my spotify account into a Family account, we had to roll back, as speakers at home could only be controlled with one account.

I would hope, that this is a temporary snag that will be eventually ironed out. There are various ways of solving that connectivity problem, and Spotify has already created a simple stub of a control panel for Spotify Family.

Just extend it to Spotify Connect-ed devices allowing all Family users to control all Spotify Connect-ed devices. It would work for majority of households out of the box, and for those that would *really* need to block some Spotify Connect-ed devices to some users (say kids playing pranks on parent's bedroom for the 5th time) - it would allow that as well. Make it the easiest possible for the largest set of users.

This must eventually be solved - just does not work at this moment (September 2015).

[erssn]

We really need all members of the spotify family to be able to use spotify connect on a device which one of the family members is logged in at!

Spotify, solve this!

[jpokornyh]

Hi Spotify,
We've just joined you family service, which is very cool, but we have to disconnect the service again because we only use steaming speakers at home. If we can't use Spotify connect we can't use our multiroom system. Hope you will "connect" our family soon! Else only kudos for Spotify 😉

Thanks in advance..

[SIMONTURNER]

+1 this is a major drawback for me, too. It works OK for family members connecting to a Chromecast, because that's just a dumb proxy for the controlling device, so why a Spotify app can't similarly act that way is beyond me. Of course there's no desktop support for connecting to Chromecast, so that's a broken solution anyway. 

[DasPeter]

Hey @SIMONTURNER, @jpokornyh, @erssn & @feher!

I believe this is an intended characteristic for the Spotify client.

As you may already know, you can only play music on one device at a time (with 1 account).

If you open the same account with another device while playing music, you'll receive a prompt that the Connect feature is available for use.

If the Connect feature was a multi-account feature, it would cause a lot of trouble when not trying to use it.

e.g. When someone is playing music on their own account, all the other accounts would be prompted to use Connect, making all members of the family plan unable to play their own music without activating offline mode.

Hopefully this explanation will solve your doubts! ♫

[EdONeill6986]

My wife signed us up for a family plan and just asked me how she can play music on the desktop connected to our outdoor speakers. "I don't know, but I'm sure you can!" D'oh! Pretty lame. Pretty lame.

[FoxStorytelling]

What's the dam(n) point of a family account if only one person can use it at a time? This might be the most colossaly stupid conflict I've ever run across in a piece of software. Please, pay $14.99 a month to get the same options as $9.99 plan. IDIOTIC. This should have been an obvious issue BEFORE rollout. You need to fix this as a matter of principle. You wans subscribers, but you don't consider them. I'm blown away by this.

[dnaUpgrade]

This is not an acceptable explanation at all. Spotify connect obviously can only play one account to a connect device at a time. With individual accounts when you try connect to a set of speakers you are prompted to take over the "connect" device. With the family plan all other members of your plan cannot even see the "connect" device used by another member while other with people with individual accounts can share the speakers.

[dnaUpgrade]

This whole thing feels like an intentional bait and switch by Spotify. When I realized family members could not share "connect" devices I considered paying for more seperate account since my wife and kids already made their profiles and dont want to give them up. This issue is now over one year old and still not addressed.

I DECLARE SHENANIGANS!!!!!!

SHAME ON YOU SPOTIFY

DONT BE EVIL...  YOUR BETTER THAN THIS...    or you used to be...  shame

[Aponhcet]

Hey Spotify, is there any intention of solving this issue?

I have the main account so I can play music on my speakers but not my wife...

Pretty annoying

[Smilax]

I recently switched to family. While the four separate accounts and playlists are nice and worth the extra 50 SEK, I am absolutely BOGGLED that my wife and kids accounts no longer can use spotify connect to play music through our mac mini connected to the high-end-stereo, and that there seems to be no good solution to it, or any sign that it will be adressed.

This is a bigger downside than the whole upside of separate accounts!

(Options? Bluetooth is not good enough for me. I like connect over airplay since it frees the phone, I can move around more, and it is more reliable than traffic going three legs, to the phone, then airplay back to router then to my device.)

[jonalport]

This is related:

https://community.spotify.com/t5/Live-Ideas/Spotify-Connect-Same-Network-Multiple-Accounts/idi-p/967...

[SwanKiller]

In our family, on the family account, we have 4 people currently using it. However, if one of my daughters is connected, then the other one cannot be on at the same time. I truly dont understand this "family" account thing - I was under the assumption that the entire household could be logged on from different devices at the same time, creating and listeing to their own individual playlists, and so on. It seems it it not the case, or correct me if I am wrong, before I cancel account and tell the kids that they can just go get a free account each instead.

[dnaUpgrade]

your'e not wrong. the system is WRONG.. a bait and switch designed to get your kids hooked so when you cancel the family account…. they will need their own accounts. diabolical

[dnaUpgrade]

they got me on this too..  my wife got hooked... now we have 2 premium accounts

[SwanKiller]

Aha! So the name "family premium" is just a name, not a real thing, and useless. Interesting. 

Guess Ill be cancelling, and checking with TIDAL how that works instead then 🙂

[frieli_deluxe]

Smilax is absolutely right!

I would also like to use Spotify-Connect with multiple accounts.

Spotify-Connect is in principle great because the "slave-device" loads and plays the music itself. I understand that there is a logic problem in the current solution since then all family members would have to listen to the same music. But if there is a will on the side of spotify then there is also a way! This issue is definitively solvable!

How about this: the Spotify-Connerct server device is not logged in as premium user at all but accepts all premium user accounts on the same LAN as clients. The server checks the Premium account credentials of the client and is then allowed to play its music. The server checks the credentials each time there is a new request from the client to play music. The rest of the time it streams and plays music itself. In addition it will also accept requests from all Spotify clients on the same LAN.

Either way - this issue needs to be solved! At the moment only Bluetooth/AirPlay is an alternative, but this will always lead to some wireless streaming issues.

[jaccohupkens]

This is a pretty annoying problem. My wife can't use Connect, I can. On the same network, using the same devices. Hope it gets fixed soon.