Since the start of the week, you likely have seen reports of Spotify starting to crack down on users sharing a Family Plan without being in the same household. It looks like the company has confirmed that it is indeed doing so, but rejects the framing of its actions, and is calling it a “routine improvement” to its existing verification tools instead.

In case you missed it, some Spotify users have shared that they’ve been prompted to scan a QR code being displayed on their plan manager’s phone as part of the authentication. Failure to scan said QR code within seven days will not only see the user get kicked out of the family plan, but they will also be barred from joining another Duo or Family Plan for the next 12 months.

TechCrunch reports that, during its third-quarter earnings call, an investor asked a question about the crackdown and what that means. Spotify co-CEO Alex Norstrom downplayed the change and, as mentioned above, called it a “routine improvement” and not a “crackdown”.

“Family Plan has existed for a long time. It has been around for, I think it is now close to 12, 13 years in Spotify history, and it makes up a pretty significant portion of our subscriber base … As such, it is important for us to just make sure over time that we improve the verification methods that we have. There are certainly ways, over time, to find holes around it. As it happens, we figure out how to improve it over time”.

Family Plan vs Housemates Plan

The irony of things being called a family plan but locking out family members who don’t live under the same roof is probably not lost on actual families affected. Unfortunately, fixing the mismatch between the plan’s name and what the service actually provides is likely not very high on the list of issues that Spotify is looking to fix, if at all. The report speculates that “this move is meant to boost subscriptions to Spotify’s profitable Premium plan, rather than allowing adult children or friends who live apart from gaming the system to get a cheaper plan by splitting a Family Plan subscription”.

To Netflix’s credit, while it’s not a good look for it to be cracking down on password-sharing when it made that now-infamous tweet about love being the sharing of a password, at least it did not call any of its plans a Family Plan. Also, speaking of priorities, we’re hoping expanding the rollout of lossless audio is still on the cards at Spotify. It’s been over a year since the feature officially launched, but it has still not hit our shores.

(Source: TechCrunch)