- ‘Managed’ accounts allow parents to create a Spotify experience for their child
- Once reserved for Premium Family accounts, it’s now rolling out to everyone
- Managed accounts are music only with no messages but will be wrapped
Tired of waiting for your Wrapped roundup only to find out that KPop Demon Hunters claim the top spot again – and it certainly wouldn’t be up to 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 a chance to have their own personalized Spotify experience (including their own Wrapped summary), but within what Spotify calls a “focused, music-only 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 tailored recommendations for new music. Yes, our favorite Daylist feature plus a wrapped summary at the end of each year are both on board.
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 only a third of parents when asked the same question about games), parents don’t really want their packaged playlists influenced by their nine-year-old.
Spotify also reports that more than 70% of kids now listen to music every week, but kids asking their parents to play a favorite track (often a lot) can cause family friction — especially when kids might 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 straightforward using the ‘Add Account’ tab. As any parent in the UK knows, plans are well underway for a ban on social media for under 16s, so this can only be seen as a wise and welcome move by Spotify.
The basics are this: In addition to Spotify’s filters for explicit lyrics or content, parents and guardians can manually filter out content and manage playback for specific artists or tracks.
Video and Canvas looping visualization are also always disabled by default for managed accounts. During its initial rollout, Spotify says 60% of parents chose to keep video content off, which is why in this wider rollout — it’s coming to 17 markets globally today — it’s turned off by default.
Additionally, the default features for managed accounts mean they are automatically set to private and unsearchable, with no profile pictures (avatars only) and young listeners will not have access to messages.
Spotify tells me that Managed Accounts are typically for kids ages 7-12 who aren’t ready for a full account yet, but want to establish their identity and explore a love of music for themselves through their own Managed Account.
Again, Managed accounts are music only right now ie. no podcasts, video 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 external partners, including the Spotify Safety Advisory Council.
Does your child need their own phone? No, there is a device toggle option which locks the account holder’s content with a PIN so the managed account holder can start streaming away with both standard and added controls and filters.
And when your children grow up (it happens so quickly!), what then? When a child reaches the minimum age for their respective market, they can send a ‘request’ to the main account holder to be upgraded to a full account. When the owner of a managed account turns 18, the young person can change their own account to a regular account – so no playlist is left behind.
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