As spotted by CNET, Spotify updated its terms and conditions for Premium Family subscribers, where it now says, that users have to provide location data “from time to time” to ensure that plan members are actually living at the same address.
What is interesting, Spotify tried to do the same thing one year ago, but was met with such a backlash that it had to stop, until now, when they just added this to the terms and conditions.
Although in the description of the Family plan it specifies that plan members should be ‘members of the same household’, people take the name of the plan quite literally and point out that it is not a prerequisite for being a family to live under the same roof.
This is one of those things, where legitimate users have to suffer because of the abusers. In the reports about the news it is mentioned that friends use the feature to pay less ($15 per month divided by six users is just $2.50), but groups all over the internet and social networks are full of messages where people are looking for “family members” to share the plan with. Most of them don’t even know each other.
Still, even if I understand what Spotify tries to prevent, this is the reason to leave the service. Today location data is a king and providing it to the music service is just stupid. Sure they say that they will delete location data right away, but who believes them anymore? The price of not deleting and apologizing later is much lower than what they can get selling or using the data.
I’ve been thinking recently about switching as everyone is so positive about recommendation engine (didn’t work for me previously), but after that I’m definitely staying on Apple Music with my Family Plan.