[All Platforms] Explicit Filter

[sekuether21]

Add a button that controls whether Explicit songs are played or not.  When it is off and you're listening to an album or playlist, the explicit songs are skipped. That way you can still listen to your favorite album or playlist when more impressionable members of the family (kids / parents) are around.

[Jbontrager]

I will have to go back to Pandora if this feature can't be implemented.

[CatherineO]

Instead of the explicit song being skipped, could we have extra functionality within account page where user can switch between radio version (so that the family can listen to the music together) and Explicite version?

....but this might have already been thought of?

[Texasjack]

Hi there i volunteer on a local hospital radio and i would like to know how to remove all explicit vocals i hope that someone could assist me with this matter  

[salamandermusic]

Nov 2016 is when Spotify last commented.  I guess they are not serious.  I'll go to Apple Music then.  

[Ja1000]

SPOTIFY - Please note I have now logged this with OFCOM (Communications Regulator in the UK)  I suggest that all other UK residents do the same.  I have also seen BBC Watchdog mentioned on here, so again I will do the same.

This is now beyond my personal choice as I can delete / unsubscribe - but there are most likely 100,000's of children who don't listen to the radio and therefore radio edits in todays world but chose to stream and have this piped into their headphones and bedrooms without any control, parents need the ability to have some control over this and SPOTIFY should have the concience to also offer this.

Next stop is my local MP (Member of Parliament for non UK residents) whose boss is the Prime Minister so I would encourage everyone to do this in what ever country your are in. 

Excuse the rant but seriously 5 years 12,000 people who know how to vote on here let alone all the others!!

SORT IT OUT

[user-removed]

I've also contacted Jeremy Vine at BBC Radio 2 to try and get it
featured on the show.

[fuhreeus]

Hey Spotify, been a customer for several years now.  Your lack of movement on this idea saddens me because you just advertise things like a "family plan".

My 8 year old son just learned the "N Word" a few days ago listening to music in his room.  Here are my options...

1) Take away music from him

2) Cancel Spotify for the entire family.

Please do something about this.  An option in a user profile to not allow music tagged with "Explicit" is long overdue.

[mccodeman]

You're lack of movement on this is ridiculous.  Will be moving to another service because of this.

[bluejonny]

Dear Nadhim Zahawi, Jeremy Vine, BBC Watchdog and Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport

CC: NSPCC, Daniel EK, London Evening Standard

For the last 5 years a growing band of customers (in particular over 12,000 parents) have been asking Spotify to provide a filter and parental controls within their app, that they have refused to implement. Currently they allow all forms of music to be played uncensored, and if you search through Spotify you will find songs about the sexual exploitation of women, misogyny, the glorification of guns and gun crime, criminal activity, violence and serious explicit/obscene language.

Just by simply playing "The UK top 40", an innocent request to find a playlist, currently contains 17 songs labelled EXPLICIT, but there is no way to filter these out. My ten year old son was listening on my iPad the other day when all of a sudden he suddenly took his headphones off and asked me about some rude words on a DUA LIPA song. I was absolutely shocked that a mainstream artist was using obscene language, but even more so, horrified that it was an innocent playlist he had accessed - The UK Top 40.

Spotify now offer a family plan and yet they are happy for any family member to be exposed to this type of music without parents being able to do anything about it. Other services now offer the ability to filter explicit songs, but Spotify continues to ignore this, in the knowledge that children are being exposed to profanity, sexual language and violence in lyrics. In light of growing number of cases of crime with teenagers, the London Evening Standard even published a report linking music, especially "Gangsta Rap" to knife crime.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/how-londons-knife-culture-is-being-fueled-by-jargon-social-med...

I wrote to Daniel EK, CEO of Spotify in February 2017  and you can see the email exchange below:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

From: Daniel Ek 
Sent: 15 February 2017 17:57
To: Jon Ashley <*snip*>
Subject: Re: TELL THE TRUTH about EXPLICIT Filtering

Yes, we are adding it.

On Wed, 15 Feb 2017 at 18:48, Jon wrote:

Daniel

 Simple question you should have no trouble answering.

 Are you or are you not going to add Explicit Filtering functionality to Spotify?

 Regards

 Jon Ashley

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

However since that exchange (which was a blatant lie incidentally), Spotify have ignored this request, and have also started to remove posts on their forum about the need for a filter. What is ironic, is that if you use profanity on their forums the words used get replaced by "BLEEP". Double standards obviously.

This is not about the freedom of artists to do what they please and express themselves however they see fit (I myself am a Eminem fan), nor are we asking for Spotify to remove this type of music from its service. What we are asking for very simply is the ability to allow our children to use the service, safe in the knowledge we have control over what we can allow them to listen to, in exactly the same way that we have parental controls for the internet and mobile phones. We are simply asking Spotify to help us as responsible parents without having to resort to the draconian measure of removing access completely.

So far the response from Spotify defies belief. They have deliberately ignored the thousands of requests and treated customers with children with impunity. Speaking with software developers, the implementation of parental controls is actually quite simple and in no way costly to implement. And yes I could leave if I wanted to and vote with my wallet. But Spotify is in my view the best music service available. I would even go so far to suggest I would pay a little more on my subscription for this enhanced service.

I, like tens of thousands or responsible parents would like Spotify investigated and taken to task for this basic failure to protect children.

With Regards

Jon Ashley

[vidarak]

Where is bluejonny's post (can't see it)? Edit: now can. strange delay.