Spotify Kids launches to the relief of parents everywhere

Your kids now have their own Spotify accounts to play the music they like on repeat 
Spotify
Amelia Heathman11 February 2020

First, they came for your dogs and now your children: music streaming service Spotify is officially launching a standalone kids app.

Called SpotifyKids, this is the first time the Swedish company has launched a specific app alongside its original. The idea is to create a child-friendly audio space online featuring songs and stories handpicked by Spotify editors to deliver age-appropriate content to kids aged three and upwards.

“Spotify is committed to giving billions of fans the opportunity to enjoy and be inspired by music and stories and we’re proud that this commitment now includes the next generation of audio listeners. We are excited to be expanding the Spotify Premium Family experience with a dedicated app just for our youngest fans.

"Spotify Kids is a personalised world bursting with sound, shape and colour, where our young listeners can begin a lifelong love of music and stories,” said the company’s chief premium business officer Alex Norström.

To access the new app, you need to have Spotify's Premium Family account. For £14.99 a month, account holders can have unlimited access to music for six separate accounts so if your child really enjoys listening to Let it Go from Frozen or the current kid-viral hit Dinosaurs in Love, they can listen on repeat on their profile and it won’t ruin your algorithmic Discovery playlist.

With the freedom to roam wild on their own Spotify accounts, kids will be serviced with music specific to their age group. For younger children, this includes lullabies and nursery rhymes. For older children, this will include playlists focused on pop music – UK specific artists include Little Mix, George Ezra and Spice Girls – as well as songs from Disney and Nickelodeon. Parents will be able to choose which category their child fits into, whilst the child will be able to customise the colours of the app and their own avatar.

Kids can choose the colours of their account as well as their own avatar
Spotify

At the start, there will be around 8,000 carefully selected tracks available through Spotify Kids, though this will increase as the editors approve more music and content. There won’t be podcasts available, though there will be audiobooks available to stream or download to listen to offline which is available for both the iOS and Android versions of the app.

If you want to listen to the music as a family, the tracks will be able to stream through Bluetooth speakers via the Spotify app. No partnership has been worked out with Google or Amazon to offer the Kids service through their smart speakers. It’s worth noting that the app is still in beta so there may be some issues or bugs but Spotify says it is going to continue to improve it and add new features over time.

As of last December, Spotify had a cool 124 million paying subscribers, as well as 271 million monthly active users. Its dominance in the audio streaming market shows no sign of slowing down and the addition of a new Kids app will only help that. ​