What is the Spotify Premium Family plan?

Just as it offers a student discount, Spotify also offers a subscription package targeted at families, making it more affordable than buying several individual Spotify Premium plans. Let’s go over what Spotify Premium Family offers and how you can get started.

What is Spotify Premium Family?

The standard version of Spotify Premium unlocks ad-free, on-demand listening without shuffling, as well as some other important perks, like unlimited skips and caching playlists for offline listening.

Typically, one Premium subscription costs $10.99 per month. This is known as the Individual tier. Beyond that and the Student and Family plans, there’s also a Duo option aimed at couples.

Family bundles up to six separate Premium accounts for people living together. That means that no one has to share a password, and everyone gets separate playlists, histories, and recommendations. Perhaps even more importantly, listening on device will no longer hijack another unless it’s signed into the same profile. You won’t suddenly hear Baby Shark when you normally listen to Behemoth and A Winged Victory for the Sullen, in other words.

Unique to Family is a separate app, Spotify Kids. Its content is specifically curated for young children, and as you might expect, that omits any “explicit” music on the service. Indeed the user controlling a Family plan can block explicit content outright for specific users.

The person who first signs up Family acts as the plan’s manager. Once it’s active, secondary Premium accounts are added from there.

How much does Spotify Premium Family cost?

On their own, six Spotify Premium subscriptions would cost over $65 per month. Family cuts that down to just $16.99.

This is Spotify’s best deal if it applies to you, but it’s not unrivaled. Apple Music, Deezer, TIDAL, and Pandora offer similar discounts, and a YouTube Premium family plan is just $22.99 per month, bundling both ad-free YouTube videos and YouTube Music. Spotify is more popular and widely supported than YouTube Music, mind — you can’t for instance ask Amazon Alexa speakers to play songs from YouTube.

How to add new members to Spotify Premium Family

Adding new members to your Family plan is simple. It does however require you to be the “plan manager,” meaning the person who started the subscription and (presumably) paid for it.

On your Account Overview, there should be a box marked Spotify Family. You can select View Details or Premium for Family from the list of tabs on the left to continue.

If you haven’t added any secondary Premium accounts yet, there’ll be a list of empty slots next to blank avatars. If you click on any of these slots, you can add new users to your plan in one of two ways:

• Copying a link that you can send to whoever you’d like to add
• An email invitation

Once you’ve chosen who you want to add and sent them links or invitations, you’ll have to wait for them to respond. Once they accept, their accounts’ display names and avatars will replace open slots.

Apple Music Family plan vs Spotify Premium Family

Apple charges the exact same amount ($16.99) and likewise supports up to six people. There’s no separate kids app, but there is Apple Music Classical if you want to make it easier to find your favorite recordings of Wagner or Ligeti. You’ll also have access to lossless audio and Dolby Atmos for tracks mastered in those formats, both of which are things Spotify is (currently) missing.

While Apple Music supports a variety of platforms, including Android, it only really makes sense in a household centered around Apple devices. Some features are reserved for those devices, taking advantage of the company’s tight (and walled) ecosystem integration. People also tend to prefer Spotify’s playlist selections, though Apple is gradually improving content.

Is Spotify Premium Family worth it?

If you live with two or more fellow music fans but only one person is paying the bill, Premium Family is almost a no-brainer. We say “almost” simply because you might be just fine sharing Individual or Duo Spotify accounts, and there’s no sense spending extra money if you don’t need to.

There’s also the issue of device compatibility. If your home is full of Google Nest speakers, displays, and/or Chromecasts, YouTube Premium could easily make more sense for the sake of combining YouTube Music and ad-free video. If you use HomePods, Spotify is only supported on them by way of AirPlay, which means no voice control. In that scenario, you’d probably want Apple Music.

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