What is Spotify?

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Spotify is one of the most popular music apps available across mobile devices (both Apple and Android), PCs, Macs, Chromebooks, tablets, and even gaming consoles such as PlayStation and Xbox.

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Even on a music streaming app, kids can direct message each other, find sexual and graphic content, and even watch YouTube videos. Without effective parental controls, there’s no way around most of this.

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For Younger Kids, we recommend using Spotify Kids, which we highlight later.

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How Does Spotify Work?

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Spotify is available for free with ads and also offers Spotify Premium (click here to see current prices) for a monthly price based on your plan. Be aware, they change their prices all the time! Click the link above to see what they are currently offering.

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Their interface offers a few different menus: Home (where you find suggested content, including Clips – we explain below), Search (where you can find just about anything on Spotify), and Your Library (where you can find your playlists, liked songs, and downloaded content).

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Users can stream music, make playlists, watch Clips, view events, buy merch, and listen to podcasts. Without effective parental controls, sexual content is easily found.

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Artist Pages on Spotify

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Artists have specific pages that look a little different. At the top of an artist’s page, you’ll see three tabs: Music, Events, and Merch. Events show where they are currently touring, and Merch will open up an internet browser and take you to “shop.spotify” which lets users buy apparel, records, and other items the artist offers. The Music tab is one of the places you can watch short-form videos.

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What Do Parents Need to Know About Spotify?

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It’s more than music! Podcasts and shows are everywhere, and Spotify even has its own short-form video format, called “Clips.”

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What are Spotify Clips?

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In the Music tab of an Artist’s page, you can see their most popular songs, albums, and a section titled “Videos from ___” which features videos from the artist, up to 30 seconds long. Here’s an example from Ed Sheeran’s Spotify page:

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The other place where you can watch Clips is by tapping one of the three videos on your Home page, found under the heading titled, “Discover new songs.” When tapping on these videos, you will get a clip from a song along with the video and a few hashtags that relate to the genre. From here – users can click the hashtag and continue viewing more clips from more artists. The content depends on the kind of music they often listen to, the specific hashtag they click on, and whether or not explicit content is enabled.

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In our testing, this didn’t populate much inappropriate content, but it’s tough to tell exactly what could be found by scrolling through video after video and tapping through different hashtags. You can’t search for “clips” yet, which is good! However, searching for inappropriate content is extremely easy on Spotify (see below).

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Just about all the videos found on Spotify are music videos, or maybe a clip from a live performance which could include the artists talking to the audience. However, there is a “hack” that lets users watch YouTube videos.

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Watching YouTube on Spotify

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Apart from inappropriate content, searching for “YouTube Videos” and toggling to show results for podcasts and shows will reveal multiple “podcasts” that are just YouTube videos. Spotify supports video podcasts, so you can watch your favorite podcast show, but this feature has also made home to users upload YouTube videos. While there doesn’t seem to be any explicit videos posted in this format, things always slip through and there are always risks online – especially for an app with so few effective controls.

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Explicit and Sexual Content is Easy to Find on Spotify

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Finding inappropriate and explicit images and audio is so easy to do on Spotify. Even with explicit results turned off. Searching for “sex” and other terms populate some pretty shocking results for a “music streaming” app:

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As you can see, for whatever reason two commas “,” reveal highly inappropriate and borderline pornographic thumbnails (one of which we had to blur out), podcast audio, and playlists with descriptions that can have links and words of all kinds. Searching for “sex” yields much of the same results. Even worse, this was with Explicit Results turned off… And this is not a new problem, we posted about this on Instagram back in December of 2022 – Spotify has a Big Problem.

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Spotify has Direct Messaging

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Spotify seeks to be as social as possible. You can add friends, work on playlists together, and see what others are listening to.

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And recently, they just added direct messaging. To view messages or send a new message, simply select your profile and there will now be a "Messages" section.

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Recent conversations will show first, followed by a spot to send a new message. Spotify will "suggest" users for you to message based on who you have shared Spotify content with, or if you share a Premium plan with that person.

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In testing, we discovered that Spotify's direct messaging is text only. No pictures or videos from your device can be shared. It's just the keyboard, as shown in the image below.

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Links do not populate, so there shouldn't be any backdoor internet access from direct messages on Spotify. However, it did allow us to copy and paste links. On the receiving end, we could copy the link as well. Sneaky kids could still maybe use this feature to copy URLs and paste them somewhere else.

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The only way to share content that isn't just text is by sending a song or playlist on Spotify in a direct message.

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That will populate the image for that content within the direct message. We've heard of stories where users would make custom playlists with explicit thumbnails to share inappropriate content over Spotify. But this method was clunky and often included messaging on another app first. Now, with direct messages on Spotify, it's possible to keep all communication within Spotify itself.

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Kids are sneaky! And predators know the loopholes too.

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Users do have to opt-in for messaging on Spotify, and they must also accept new message requests. We show how to disable messaging below.

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There are a few other helpful settings you might want to toggle off here. If you track their activity this way, there is another feature you need to know about:

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“Private session” allows users to hide all listening activity for up to 6 hours at a time. It’s Spotify’s “incognito mode.” If you rely on their activity to keep up with what they listen to, this feature might ruin that plan. If you suspect your child is private browsing, call this feature out! Seek to solve this issue through an open and honest relational approach.

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How to Make Spotify Safer:

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Regardless of the app, three actions mitigate the risks we’ve shared. We teach these actions in our parent presentations:

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1. Require approval for all app downloads.
2. Follow the 7-Day Rule
3. Enable in-app controls and settings

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We explain each of them briefly below. If you’ve already set up approvals for downloads and have used the app, please skip to the In-App Controls & Settings.

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Require Approval for App Downloads

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You can control app stores by requiring permission for apps to be downloaded. This is ensures your child doesn’t have access to an app without your knowledge. Here are the steps (for Apple and Android users):

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For Apple Devices:

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To require permission to download an app, you’ll need to set up Screen Time and Family Sharing (Apple’s Parental Controls). We explain this process step-by-step in our Complete iOS Guide (click here).  

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Once Screen Time and Family Sharing are established, here’s how to require permission to download apps on an Apple device:

1. Go to your Settings app.
2. Select your Family.
3. Select the person you want to apply this setting to.
4. Scroll down to “Ask to Buy” and enable.

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For Android Devices:

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You’ll have to use Family Link (Android’s parental controls) to ensure you retain control over what apps are downloaded. We explain this process step-by-step in our Android Guide (click here).

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Once Family Link is established, here’s how to require permission to download apps on an Android device:

1. Go to the Family Link App
2. Select the person you want to apply this setting to.
3. Select “Google Play Store”
4. Select “Purchases & download approval” and set it to “All Content.”

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Follow the 7-Day Rule

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This is our tried-and-true method of determining whether a specific app is safe for your specific child.

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Before you let your child use it, download the app and use it for 7 days.

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Create an account with your child’s age and gender and use it for 7 days. Play through a few levels, review the ads, see if anyone can chat with you, and poke around like a curious child.

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After a week, ask yourself, “Do I want my child to experience what I did?”  Even if you decide to allow them to download the app, now you have a basis for curious conversations about the app when you check in.

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Enable In-App Controls & Settings

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Spotify is a little confusing for parents because regular Spotify accounts don’t have parental controls.

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The only real safety tools exist inside Spotify Family Plan, which requires a Spotify Premium Family Plan.

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Because the parent then becomes the Family Manager, and that unlocks content filtering and child accounts.

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Without the Family plan there are essentially no protections and no controls.

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How to enable Spotify Parental Controls:

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1. Go to spotify.com/account/family
2. Click your teen’s account
3. Toggle Explicit content filter → ON

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This blocks songs marked with the “E” label. The filter only works if the teen is part of your Family Plan.

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You can then lock in this setting with a PIN, which is great.

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How to Disable Messaging in Spotify:

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• Go to your account settings
• Select Privacy & Social
• Scroll all the way down to "Social Features" and toggle "Messages" off
• Scroll through the rest of these settings and toggle them off as you see fit

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What about Spotify Kids?

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Similar to YouTube, Spotify has a version of their app that’s made for kids. It has actual parental controls, but it is made for much younger children. Tweens and teens probably won’t enjoy this app very much.

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4+ Apple App Store Rating, E (Everyone) Google Play Store Rating

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Spotify Kids Pricing: it comes with a Premium Family subscription (6 accounts).

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Spotify Kids has custom playlists and two age-based options (ages 0-6 or 5-12) for curated content.

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The app has bedtime stories, top hits, suggested channels, and a searchable library. Account creation includes setting up a 4-digit code to get access to the “Grown Ups” section of the app. Here you will find the Listening History of each child. And if you find a song that you don’t think is appropriate for your child, just tap the block icon.

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There are still a few PG-13+ titles and albums in the age 5-12 category, but it’s much better than what’s accessible on the normal version of Spotify. Still, parents should always be involved when young kids are using tech.

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Again, remember that tweens and teens probably won’t enjoy Spotify Kids. But for those younger ages, this is a great option!

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Bottom Line: Is Spotify Safe for Kids?

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Without supervision, the answer is no.

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The 13+ / teen rating is incorrect. With the amount of inappropriate images that can be found, direct messaging, sexual “podcasts” (ASMR), and lack of effective controls, Spotify poses a lot of risks – even with supervision. If you allow your child to use Spotify, please do the following:

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• Check in frequently with your child. Ask them what they listen to and check their Home, Search, and Library feeds. Not by spying – let your child know that the cost of having Spotify is you being able to check it.
• Disable explicit content. As we showed above, go through and disable this so they can’t listen to “explicit” songs. If your phone allows you to lock the setting with Face ID, please do that. Otherwise, check that toggle often as they can simply turn it off.
• Make their listening activity private. Follow our instructions above to make sure their activity is private. Or – If you wish to use their listening activity to check their Spotify use, just ensure they aren’t using the “Private Session” feature – which hides listening activity for up to 6 hours. Check these toggles often to ensure they are set the way you want.
• Approve all friend requests. Spotify doesn’t have much predatory activity, but it has happened through sharing playlists with friends and using the descriptions as a form of communication. Please approve every friend request yourself.
• Bark is a wonderful tool that can help monitor your child’s Spotify activity. We highly recommend using their services!

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If all of these aspects are met, your kid should be relatively safe. However, one search of the word “sex” or typing in those two commas “,” could still yield borderline pornographic content, audio, and images. Please be careful, and consider if Spotify is worth the potential risk for your child or family.

What if I have more questions? How can I stay up to date?

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Two actions you can take!

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1. Subscribe to our tech trends newsletter, the PYE Download. About every 3 weeks, we’ll share what’s new, what the PYE team is up to, and a message from Chris.
2. Ask your questions in our private parent community called The Table! It’s not another Facebook group. No ads, no algorithms, no asterisks. Just honest, critical conversations and deep learning! For parents who want to “go slow” together. Become a member today!

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