Parents Have Been Waiting Years For This New Spotify Setting

Spotify is one of the most popular music streaming services, offering more than 100 million songs and 7 million podcasts. The company's been able to attract about 300 million paid subscribers, who come in part to access its catalog, but also its well-regarded AI-powered recommendation systems. For instance, Spotify can suggest new songs and playlists, just in case you get tired of listening to your favorite tracks. But it had one hiccup: If you shared access for your subscription to one of the company's various plans with the rest of your family, your kids' song histories would start bleeding into your recommendation list. Spotify says it's found a fix.

Spotify added a new feature under its app settings that offers a toggle that removes kids and family music from recommendations. Flipping that toggle means your nonstop sing-alongs to "Golden" from "KPop Demon Hunters" no longer impacts the tracks Spotify will recommend next. This feature will apply to services such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix, and Wrapped, Spotify said.

Unlike perks such as narrated magazine articles, this toggle isn't exclusive to Spotify Premium members; free and premium users can use the new toggle any time they like. Initially, the option will let the rest of your family's taste in music color your song suggestions, but once flipped, child and family-friendly songs will no longer affect your Taste Profile. While Spotify recently released information about this feature, the company plans to roll it out gradually, so keep an eye peeled for app updates. The program patch will also include new managed account options that lets children grow their own music libraries—with parental controls overseeing everything, of course.

According to the press release, Spotify's new toggle is the latest tool in the company's attempts to give families more control over how everyone listens to music. However, Spotify isn't the only music streaming service on the block, but this new feature helps it stand out from the crowd.

Let's say you don't have a Spotify subscription but share your music account with your kids and family. How do you keep tracks akin to their favorite songs from showing up in your feed? For most services, you need to shell out extra cash for a Family plan with multiple accounts, but some platforms have additional tools. For example, with Deezer, you can go through every artist or track your children listen to and exclude them from recommendations. (To do so, click the unhappy emoji button and then select "Don't recommend this track" or "Don't recommend this artist.") Meanwhile, Amazon Music Unlimited lets you set up multiple Alexa profiles, and each one is personalized to the user, so no two receive the same music and podcast recommendations. However, Alexa needs to learn about each user before the feature works, so it might take some time.

Spotify says this new toggle will be easy to use, which is a crucial difference from competitors, particularly because Spotify doesn't have the best audio quality compared to other services. The toggle hasn't rolled out to all customers, so we don't know how effectively it delivers on the company's promises. Fingers crossed it works as advertised and other music services follow suit.