While Google shunned kids from using its music streaming service when it sunset Play Music, Spotify only recently launched a dedicated app for children, Spotify Kids. The application only consists of hand-picked, child-friendly audio content and comes with a more playful UI. Now Spotify has announced that it's adding support for shared playlists, allowing parents to share their favorite music with their kids.
Spotify writes that "We know that parents often have their own views on which content is and is not appropriate for their kids," so it wants to make it easier for guardians to take an active role in curating their kids' music library. Thanks to the feature, parents can hand-pick which audio content they'd like to let their children listen to in addition to the 300,000 track and 1,300 playlists currently available to all children on Spotify Kids. That's a much more sensible approach than YouTube Music, which just isn't available to children under 13 at all, and really, it's better than anything Google does when it comes to its Family Link child accounts.
The setup is a little convoluted and involves accessing your kids' Spotify app, but once you've got everything in place, you can easily share additional playlists with more tracks.
- Create a playlist of your family’s favorite tunes on the Spotify app (or choose one you made in the past). Make sure to review the lyrics, album cover artwork, and any possible explicit tracks (which will be marked with an ‘E’).
- If there are individual songs within the playlist you don’t want to share with your kid, remove them from your playlist in the Spotify app.
- Next, head to the parental settings section of the Spotify Kids app and enter your four-digit pin.
- Tap the “Shared Playlists” section in your kids’ profile. Then, you’ll be able to see your Spotify playlists and select the ones you want to share with each child.
- The first time you do this, a pop-up screen will appear to confirm that you want to share the playlist. After, the child can access the playlist on their homepage from a new “Shared with You” section
Spotify says that shared playlists are "now" available, but as always, it's possible that it takes some time until it actually rolls out to your and your children's devices. Be sure to update the applications to the latest version on the Play Store.
Source: Spotify