Spotify knows you share a family plan with friends

The music service sends emails asking subscribers to share their GPS location or risk losing access to Spotify Premium for Family. In other words, Spotify thinks you can break the rules by sharing a plan with your friends.

Spotify believes that some Premium for Family subscribers are breaking the rules and the service is taking steps to eliminate cheats. But first, you need GPS data.

The Spotify Premium for Family account offers a very simple and economical way to allow a family to broadcast the music they love. It costs $ 14.99 per month and allows one primary account holder and five other accounts to access the service. Each account is considered an individual premium account, which means that they keep each of the music, playlists and recorded recommendations.

One of the basic rules of the family plan is that all users must live at the same address, but Spotify is suspect, this is not always the case. As The Verge reports, Spotify thinks that friends subscribe to a family plan and share it even if they do not live together. Spotify's answer to this problem, and the problem is that it's expensive, is to check the GPS data.

@Spotify Why do you need my GPS position to continue offering me a "Premium discount"? I pay for the family plan and no matter where my family lives. Would you like to cancel my account if my family is too far away? #wtf #fail pic.twitter.com/HauQtHXSUA

– suck (@unaligned) September 18, 2018

E-mails are sent to certain family plan subscribers asking them to confirm their home addresses, which is done by clicking on the "Confirm Now" button and the GPS data is shared. Refusing to confirm may result in loss of access to the plan. However, if you do not live at the same address as the primary account holder, you may also lose access to the plan.

If Spotify is smart, it will react to anyone using a family plan from another address. Rather than cutting them off, give them a healthy discount on an individual Premium plan. They have clear access to the service, so why not encourage them to stay?

The challenge, at least with respect to public relations, for Spotify is that not all family members live together and situations change. For example, if a parent creates a Premium for Family account and a child goes to college, he will naturally continue to access his Spotify account. Does it break the rules? Technically, yes, but it's still a family member who shares the account. Spotify has to be very careful here.