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Spotify begins cracking down on family plan sharing by asking for user locations

Kitten Mittens

Kitten Mittens

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Dec 11, 2018
2,368
From a story on The Verge:

Spotify is cracking down on family plan sharing — again. According to a new set of terms and conditions for the plan that the company published back in August, Spotify is now requiring the primary account holder and everyone else on the plan to show proof that they reside at the same address, which it will now confirm from "time to time" by asking users to verify their addresses, as spotted by CNET.
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As Spotify's fine print notes, the shared family plan — which costs $15 and allows six users to access Spotify's Premium service — is only for "family members residing at the same address." New accounts will be required to verify their address using Google Maps, and Spotify "may from time to time ask for re-verification" of your home address. If you fail to meet those criteria, Spotify notes that it can terminate or suspend your family plan.

It's still unclear to what extent Spotify will be pursuing this kind of account verification or if it actually intends to cancel accounts that are violating the geographic limits. But the new terms do state that it can.
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Heard about this last month but thought nothing of it until today I was asked to confirm my address. The one I gave them doesn't match the account holder (my sister), so we'll see what happens.
 

mrmoose

Member
Nov 13, 2017
22,091
How do they ask you to confirm your address, though? Like you have to physically be there and turn on location services for google maps? Or if you just know the address you can input it?
 
Lima

Lima

Member
Oct 26, 2017
770
This is fine honestly. Even at the regular $10 price point I basically feel like I'm stealing music.
 
modestb

modestb

Alt-Account
Banned
Jan 24, 2019
1,126
Yeah I got this email, I just reminded my two siblings and mother on my plan that we all DEFINITELY LIVE ON THE SAME STREET ADDRESS AND JUST IN CASE YOU FORGOT HERE IT IS

So far haven't had to do any 'location' junk to prove it.
 
DJ_Lae

DJ_Lae

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,223
Edmonton
I guess I can't blame them. It did get me to check to see what the criteria are for Google family sharing, which are more lenient than I expected:

Family member requirements
To join a family group, you must meet these requirements:
  • Have a Google Account. If you're under 13 or the applicable age in your country, your family manager needs to create a Google Account for you.
  • Live in the same country as the family manager.
  • Not be part of another family group on Google.

 
Sketchsanchez

Sketchsanchez

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
2,702
This is gonna be one of those threads where entitled people get mad that they can't game the system anymore is it.
 
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Kitten Mittens

Kitten Mittens

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Dec 11, 2018
2,368
mrmoose said:
How do they ask you to confirm your address, though? Like you have to physically be there and turn on location services for google maps? Or if you just know the address you can input it?
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"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 data is encrypted and can be edited by the plan owner as needed."
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They use that location data to establish your location during sign up it looks like. What I experienced was simply a request from the app to verify my address, which I provided honestly. It doesn't match the one where the account holder created it, so I'll see what happens. The only real change so far is that they updated their TOS in August to allow for this.

As for the argument that some family members go to college and dont live at home, Spotify's answer to that appears to be "They should have a student account."

As for children of divorce, my assumption is that Spotify recommends you live with the parent who had the good sense to sign up for Spotify.
 
dhlt25

dhlt25

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,909
already happened to me a last month. Tried to sign up for a family plan with my brother and it wouldn't let me. The shitty thing is I had to switch my plan to family to find that out and it effectively killed my free hulu sub lol. So stupid
 
sgtnosboss

sgtnosboss

Member
Nov 9, 2017
4,786
so if it asks me to verify and I am at work, I am 35 minutes from home... is it suddenly going to think I am lying?
 
collige

collige

Member
Oct 31, 2017
12,772
While Spotify is way too cheap, this is some dumb shit. Netflix already learned this lesson, hiking prices is way more straightforward than trying to do some snooping shit to stop account sharing.
 
Seesaw15

Seesaw15

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,824
Sketchsanchez said:
This is gonna be one of those threads where entitled people get mad that they can't game the system anymore is it.
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Lol. Basically. A good loophole is great but don't get indignant when you get called out. The game of cat and mouse over luxury products isn't fun if people take it too seriously.
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KenyaPSP

KenyaPSP

Alt Account
Banned
Aug 26, 2019
43
They need to change the name of the plan because it's crazy that they only consider a family to be people that live in the same house. WTF happens to kids that are spending the weekend with their divorced parent or worst spend the entire summer with them when it ask you to reconfirm your address???
 

Coyote Zamora

alt account
Banned
Jul 19, 2019
766
DJ_Lae said:
I guess I can't blame them. It did get me to check to see what the criteria are for Google family sharing, which are more lenient than I expected:

Family member requirements
To join a family group, you must meet these requirements:
  • Have a Google Account. If you're under 13 or the applicable age in your country, your family manager needs to create a Google Account for you.
  • Live in the same country as the family manager.
  • Not be part of another family group on Google.

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The only thing that this really counts for is YouTube TV which further requires all family members using that service to log in from the family managers zip code once every 90 days
 
OP
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Kitten Mittens

Kitten Mittens

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Dec 11, 2018
2,368
I like how HBO handles this. They basically said, "We know you're sharing our service. Go ahead and keep doing it. If it gets out of hand, we'll take it away."
 
abellwillring

abellwillring

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,331
Austin, TX
KenyaPSP said:
They need to change the name of the plan because it's crazy that they only consider a family to be people that live in the same house. WTF happens to kids that are spending the weekend with their divorced parent or worst spend the entire summer with them when it ask you to reconfirm your address???
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You type in an address. It isn't checking vs the actual location via location services -- you just say this is where I live and the other people have to verify the address. If the kids don't know their parents' address offhand, they can ask them what it is.

It's a really minor change that honestly probably isn't a strong enough deterrent but should presumably prevent completely random people from sharing an account.
 
Poutine

Poutine

Avenger
Oct 27, 2017
982
I've read that once you confirm your address it won't check anymore, if that's the case it won't change anything really, you just need to communicate with your plan members to enter the good address manually and not use google maps to find you.
 
Seesaw15

Seesaw15

Member
Oct 27, 2017
8,824
sgtnosboss said:
so if it asks me to verify and I am at work, I am 35 minutes from home... is it suddenly going to think I am lying?
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KenyaPSP said:
They need to change the name of the plan because it's crazy that they only consider a family to be people that live in the same house. WTF happens to kids that are spending the weekend with their divorced parent or worst spend the entire summer with them when it ask you to reconfirm your address???
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Folks are taking this way too literally. You're not under house arrest. Its probably like logging into Gmail from a different city or if your bank notices odd spending habits on vacation. Your account will get flagged and you'll just have to verify.
 

Deleted member 18944

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,944
dragonbane said:
Pretty sure cause the terms say so. Tons of people are breaking the TOS every day, same with Netflix and co. Don't be mad when the fun ends
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Coyote Zamora said:
Because those were the terms that you agreed to to get six accounts
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Yes, I understand what the terms are, my question was not "does this break TOS?" it was "how is this gaming the system" and answering with "it breaks the TOS" does not answer that question.

So lets try that again!
 
TheMadTitan

TheMadTitan

Member
Oct 27, 2017
28,593
The solution is to just tell everyone your address, manually add their accounts yourself, or do nothing.

They're not going to get as many subs out of this than they think they are, and getting all of the Premium features without a paid membership is easy as shit these days.

This is probably mostly a bluff to scare people into buying their own subs, I think.
 

Coyote Zamora

alt account
Banned
Jul 19, 2019
766
Hobbes said:
Yes, I understand what the terms are, my question was not "does this break TOS?" it was "how is this gaming the system" and answering with "it breaks the TOS" does not answer that question.

So lets try that again!
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Here let's make this simple for you. Spotify made you an offer. Well give you did accounts for use with the people in your household that you call family. You said ok then gave it to people that don't meet that criteria. They do not meet the term of family as identified by Spotify and outlined in your terms of service.

If you don't understand that then your being wilfully obtuse.
 
Sal_S

Sal_S

Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,477
Hamilton
Can they make a family plan for people living in different addresses? Like come on.
Also, my sister and I use the same account and I've never been asked for any proof, so... cool?
 
Coyote Starrk

Coyote Starrk

The Fallen
Oct 30, 2017
57,673
When people inevitably find a way around this they will most likely just end the family plan entirely due to people abusing it. And then people will complain that they removed it.
 

Deleted member 18944

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 27, 2017
6,944
Coyote Zamora said:
Here let's make this simple for you. Spotify made you an offer. Well give you did accounts for use with the people in your household that you call family. You said ok then gave it to people that don't meet that criteria. They do not meet the term of family as identified by Spotify and outlined in your terms of service.

If you don't understand that then your being wilfully obtuse.
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Again, this doesn't explain why spotify considers this gaming the system or why it is such an issue. In both situations, they are still getting their money.

I don't need you to explain how the family plan works and what happens when you click agree, I need you to explain why it is such an issue for them. Saying because it breaks terms is some surface level shit. I need something further.
 
DJ_Lae

DJ_Lae

Member
Oct 27, 2017
7,223
Edmonton
Hobbes said:
I don't need you to explain how the family plan works and what happens when you click agree, I need you to explain why it is such an issue for them. Saying because it breaks terms is some surface level shit. I need something further.
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To some extent it's a lost sale/subscription, although you do get a bit of the piracy argument there as not everyone who shares a Spotify subscription against the TOS would pay for their own.

The same generally goes for other passes and services, as there's a balance between making it easy for one immediate family to add all of their members and yet still having some form of deterrence for abuse, as obviously it's cheaper for someone to sneak onto a family than pay for themselves.

Physical zoo pass near me, for example: *Family Admission: All members of the same household related by birth, legal status or marriage up to a maximum of seven people. But I'd imagine they aren't overly strict about asking for bills, birth certificates, etc, so you could probably tack on another person or two without issue.
 
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