Spotify has had enough of you sharing your Family Plan outside of your home. Spotify Family Plan is having its Terms and Conditions updated to require users of family accounts to all be living at the same address. The company will go as far as asking you to verify your address every now and then.
The Spotify Family Plan costs £14.99 a month for six users – a great offer if everyone is using it. The normal Premium account costs £9.99 for an individual user.
Related: Best Bluetooth speakers
Some crafty users have been using the Family Plan to save money along with their friends and family who may not live at the same address. Spotify has clearly worked out this is costing them a chunk of money and this is its way of taking action.
Spotify explains on its support pages how the verification will work:
“We use Google Maps address search to help the plan owner find their address. Then, we ask the members invited to confirm they live at the same location (by either enabling their device location services or by manually finding and confirming their address with Google Maps address search).”
Spotify’s description of its verification method is a bit murky but it sounds like you can either let Spotify directly access your location or allow Spotify to get the information through location tracking on Google Maps. We’ll update this article if there’s more clarity on the subject.
Spotify says it won’t track your location – instead, it will only check the data when you are asked to confirm your address. Your location data won’t be stored after the fact, either.
Other changes include Spotify changing the name of the plan – from ‘Spotify Premium for Family’ to ‘Spotify Premium Family’. There’s a new Family Mix made up of music from all the users on the plan and some new parental controls.
Related: Best multi-room speakers
You’ll receive an email over the next few weeks detailing when the changes have been made. Once it rolls out, you’ll have 30 days to cancel if you can’t meet the new terms.
Earlier this year, Spotify tested using exact GPS coordinates but this plan was ditched after the company received complaints from customers.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
