- ‘Managed’ accounts allow parents to create a Spotify experience for their children
- Once reserved for Premium Family accounts, it is now rolling out to everyone
- Managed accounts are music only with no messages, but they are wrapped
Sick of waiting for your Wrapped recap only to find out that KPop Demon Hunters is claiming the top spot again And surely it won’t depend on you?
Good news: Spotify is expanding its managed account service (which the big green streaming machine launched about two years ago, within its paid family subscriptions) to the free, ad-supported service.
This gives young listeners the opportunity to have their own personalized Spotify experience (including their own Wrapped digest), but within what Spotify calls a “solely music-focused experience.”
With managed accounts (which must be set up by an adult ‘account manager’, usually a parent or guardian), young listeners can create their own playlists and receive personalized recommendations for new music. Yes, our favorite daily list feature, plus a detailed summary at the end of each year, are built in.
The company tells me that while 90% of parents who use Spotify agree that listening to music on the platform is a good use of their children’s time (compared to just a third of parents when asked the same question about gaming), parents really don’t want their Wrapped playlists to be influenced by their nine-year-old.
Spotify also reports that more than 70% of kids now listen to music every week, but that kids asking their parents to play their favorite song (often many) can cause family friction, especially when kids may be fighting for airtime with a sibling, or just completely ignoring what mom might want to listen to in the car.
Managed accounts on Spotify: what you need to know (and why they’re Golden)
As the image above shows, the process to create a managed account is simple using the “Add Account” tab. As any parent in the UK knows, there are plans afoot to ban social media for under-16s, so this can only be seen as a wise and welcome move by Spotify.
The basics are: In addition to Spotify filters for lyrics or explicit content, parents and guardians can manually filter content and manage playback for specific artists or tracks.
Looping video and canvas images are also always disabled by default for managed accounts. During its initial launch, Spotify says 60% of parents opted to keep video content turned off, which is why in this broader launch (it’s currently reaching 17 markets worldwide) it’s turned off by default.
Additionally, the default features of managed accounts mean they are automatically set to private and unsearchable, no profile photos (avatars only), and young listeners will not have access to messages.
Spotify tells me that managed accounts are typically for kids ages 7 to 12, who aren’t ready for a full account yet but want to establish their identity and explore a love of music themselves, through their own managed account.
Again, managed accounts are music only at this time, meaning no podcasts, videos, or audiobooks. But Spotify says the experience will evolve as the company continues to work closely with parents, as well as Spotify’s team of six third-party partners, including the Spotify Safety Advisory Board.
Does your child need their own phone? No, there is a device switching option, which locks the account holder’s content with a PIN, so that the managed account holder can start streaming with the default and added controls and filters in place.
And when your kids grow up (it happens very quickly!), what then? Once a child reaches the minimum age for their respective market, they can submit a “request” to the primary account holder to be upgraded to a full account. Once the owner of a managed account turns 18, that young person can change their own account to a regular one, so no playlist is left behind.
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