Spotify Wants Family Plan Members to Share Their Location Data 'From Time to Time'

Friday September 13, 2019 4:17 AM PDT by Tim Hardwick
Spotify will require family plan members to provide their location data "from time to time" to prove they're all living under the same roof, in an effort to curb subscribers who abuse the offer.

The Spotify Premium Family Plan has been hugely popular among users of the music streaming service, since it offers families up to six accounts under one plan for a single price of $14.99 a month, as does Apple Music's equivalent.

It's no secret that friends sometimes gang up together to share the spoils of subscribing to Spotify's cheaper family plan, even though they don't live together. If six people share a plan then the cost of Spotify Premium works out at $2.50 per person.

The streaming service officially requires that fellow family plan members live in the same household, but Spotify has historically been fairly lax about checking up on where people live, so it's easy to see the appeal.

However, according to the streaming service's terms and conditions, updated in August, family plan users will be expected to share location data "from time to time" in order to prove that everyone on the plan is in fact living in the same residence.

First spotted by CNET, the new requirement does raise privacy concerns, but Spotify has moved to allay those fears by issuing the following statement:
"The location data that is collected during Premium Family account creation is only used by Spotify for that purpose.... once verification of a family member's home address is completed, we do not store their location data or track their location at any time. This data is encrypted and can be edited by the plan owner as needed."
It's not clear how aggressive Spotify will be in checking user's locations, but it has tested the policy before – though it ended shortly afterward after complaints of privacy violations.


Regardless, existing family plan subscribers who don't like the change have up to 30 days to cancel their subscription after the new terms come into effect. Depending where they are though, subscribers may not have as much time as they think. The updated family plan terms rolled out first in Ireland on August 19 and in the U.S. on September 5.

Tag: Spotify
71 comments


Top Rated Comments

(View all)
Avatar
4jasontv
1 week ago
Great, but they need to be more transparent than “time to time”.

Are students not part of the family? When I was in high school I went over a year without going home.
What about dads that want to offer their kids Spotify but they live with their mom?
What about people with multiple home?

I have friends who drive trucks for a living. They literally live in their two trucks and use different family addresses to get mail.

I get what they want to do but they need to be more specific about what this means to the experience. Do you get a pop up shutting off music until you go “home” or does it warn you that you have X days to go home? Does it use GPS, cause that can suck in some cities.

Does anyone know if it uses your mailing address or physical address? Cause my mailing address is the USPS downtown.
Rating: 21 Votes
Avatar
jimothyGator
1 week ago

The location data that is collected during Premium Family account creation is only used by Spotify for that purpose.... once verification of a family member's home address is completed, we do not store their location data or track their location at any time. This data is encrypted and can be edited by the plan owner as needed.


This is unacceptable. An absolute outrage. How could they let such a thing stand?

These data are encrypted.
Rating: 11 Votes
Avatar
macaddict06
1 week ago
Stupid for a number if scenarios:

College kids away at school.

Parents who use Spotify at their offices.

Families on VACATION.

The list goes on.

Also, what about a bunch of unrelated roommates who live together? This would seem to violate their terms yet the system they designed isn’t effective against them. Totally stupid.
Rating: 8 Votes
Avatar
GrumpyMom
1 week ago

It’s in their t and cs, you have to live under one roof which makes perfect sense.

It doesn’t make sense to divorced parents who share custody of their children and have the kids stay at one home and then the other on alternating schedules. Or families who have a family member who works and lives on the road a lot or is deployed. But if that’s what the T&C specifies then Spotify is within their rights. And the customer is within their rights to give them the boot.
Rating: 7 Votes
Avatar
tomjleeds
1 week ago
How anyone can legitimately get wound up about this is beyond me. It's very clear what the terms are when you sign up.
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
Sna.ke
1 week ago

Reading the thread of people being mad they are targeted because of abusing the package.


I don’t abuse the family plan, and everyone on my family plan lives in the same household. I sure as **** am not sharing location data with Spotify though.

The moment they require information they do not need for my subscription to function, I will cancel the subscription and move to Apple Music.

A company that cannot respect a users privacy is a company I don’t want to deal with.
Rating: 5 Votes
Avatar
rikscha
1 week ago

Great, but they need to be more transparent than “time to time”.

Are students not part of the family? When I was in high school I went over a year without going home.
What about dads that want to offer their kids Spotify but they live with their mom?
What about people with multiple home?

I have friends who drive trucks for a living. They literally live in their two trucks and use different family addresses to get mail.

I get what they want to do but they need to be more specific about what this means to the experience. Do you get a pop up shutting off music until you go “home” or does it warn you that you have X days to go home? Does it use GPS, cause that can suck in some cities.

Does anyone know if it uses your mailing address or physical address? Cause my mailing address is the USPS downtown.

It’s in their t and cs, you have to live under one roof which makes perfect sense.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
Porco
1 week ago
The principle is offensive and the practice seems pretty ineffective.
Rating: 4 Votes
Avatar
Remy149
1 week ago

Great, but they need to be more transparent than “time to time”.

Are students not part of the family? When I was in high school I went over a year without going home.
What about dads that want to offer their kids Spotify but they live with their mom?
What about people with multiple home?

I have friends who drive trucks for a living. They literally live in their two trucks and use different family addresses to get mail.

I get what they want to do but they need to be more specific about what this means to the experience. Do you get a pop up shutting off music until you go “home” or does it warn you that you have X days to go home? Does it use GPS, cause that can suck in some cities.

Does anyone know if it uses your mailing address or physical address? Cause my mailing address is the USPS downtown.

They say students who don’t live at home are required to get the discounted student subscription
Rating: 3 Votes
Avatar
Alan Wynn
1 week ago

Written terms by a company don't make them legal and/or ethical just because they are written...


They are offering a discount specifically to families who live together. While you are correct that not all terms and conditions are legally enforceable or ethical, it seems hard to argue that this offering not both. There maybe some families that do not qualify for all sorts of reasons and this deal is not for them. Families who do not live together, jnuclear families with more than six people, families with students who live at school or on their own.

This plan is not promoted as “The Spotify Group Discount Plan” and will not work for all possible family situations.

Not a Spotify customer, but I think it is perfectly reasonable for them to make it clear that this plan is only for nuclear families of six or fewer people living at the same address.

Apple takes a different approach to ensuring the connection among family members. It only allows a credit card on the organizer’s account, meaning that the organizer needs to be willing to accept charges from anyone he or she adds to the family plan. It also fails in some cases, but no one is required to be on a family plan.
Rating: 3 Votes
[ Read All Comments ]