Spotify stops ‘test’ to find out location users family subscription

Spotify has stopped asking for the location of users who join a family plan. Some Premium for Family users were asked for GPS data or a location and threatened to cancel their subscription.

That reports the usually well-informed TechCrunch. The music service would no longer send emails to customers asking for location information. Spotify also asked for a GPS location, in order to determine whether users of the family subscription are in the same location; to be able to use the family subscription, the users must live at the same address.

When the news about the location check came out earlier this week, Spotify received a lot of criticism. According to critics, Spotify asks for privacy-sensitive information and this causes inconvenience to users. If GPS is turned off, you will also be prompted to enter a zip code.

In a response, Spotify said it was a test to “improve the user experience of Premium for Family”. It is plausible, however, that the music service wanted to determine whether users are abusing the family subscription by sharing a subscription while they are not related to each other. This was also apparent from the content of the emails, which threatened to cancel the subscription if no location was provided.