It isn’t a big surprise that friends and other financially motivated parties get together and split the cost of a family plan streaming subscription to “get a deal” on said subscription. Spotify’s new terms & conditions may put a stop to that.
As reported by CNET, Spotify is attempting to put an end to sharing of family subscriptions by parties not living under the same roof. The service is now requiring family plan users occasionally provide access to their location data.
The Spotify Premium Family plan is $15 per month and allows up to six users to access the service using a single account. By gaining access to users’ location data, Spotify hopes to stop non-family sharing among users. The new policy has been in effect in the United States since September 5th.
Spotify issued a statement defending the new Family Plan requirement:
“This data is encrypted and can be edited by the plan owner as needed,” the company said in a 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 location information accessing by Spotify is sure to aggravate Spotify users and privacy advocates, as companies like Apple are putting an increasing emphasis on user privacy and sensitive information like user location data.
