Streaming music for little ears
Your kids want music, but you don’t want them to hear dodgy lyrics. Blayne Slabbert has some useful advice.
If your kids love listening to music then you may want to consider subscribing to a streaming service. Music streaming has revolutionised the industry and it’s now easy to access nearly every song or album ever made.
While that’s great for grownups, it can pose a few issues for primary and high school-aged children and their parents, especially when it comes to exposing them to explicit lyrics.
Music has lots of benefits to children but research shows it has a negative impact when songs include references to violence, drug use and misogyny.
However, the main apps largely fail when it comes to offering protection for children. Only one, Apple, has parental controls available for all accounts.
Unfortunately, this is part of a trend with tech companies not appearing to care about what content people can access and hiding behind terms and conditions to protect themselves.
This means there are limited options for parents who care about the music their children have access to.
Parents should know that you need to be 18 or over to sign up to a music streaming account. That should give you some idea of what type of content is on the platforms.
However, all the services state children aged 13 and over can sign up with consent from their parents. Children can also be added to family plans, which allow up to six people in the same household to use the service.
Note that while all the services offer ‘‘student’’ accounts for about half the price of an individual account, these are only available to those studying at a tertiary institution.
Also be aware that streaming music when out and about can chew through mobile data – 12 hours of listening will use about one gigabyte.
Here are your options from best to worst.
Apple Music
This app is the most family-friendly as you’re able to manage explicit content on individual and family accounts.
Managing the content is easy and it includes passcodes to prevent your kids from changing the settings.
It costs $14.99 a month for an individual account or $22 a month for a family plan and it works on Apple and Android devices.
It’s great if you already have an account and could be worth switching from one of the competitors if you want your school-aged children to listen to music without hearing inappropriate lyrics.
Deezer
This app allows you to add child profiles on the family plan ($19.49 a month), setting them to deliver content appropriate for children 12 years and younger.
However, no filters are available on the individual plans, which cost $12.99 a month.
Deezer, which works on Apple and Android devices, may not have as many popular musicians as other services but it does have some cool options such as a lyric feature so you can read those hardto-hear verses.
Google Play Music
Google offers some filtering but not on its main accounts (individual $12.99, family $19.99).
You can, however, use its radio stations for free, which allow you to block explicit songs, though there are ads on this service.
It works on Apple and Android devices.
Spotify
Spotify doesn’t have any parental controls that allow you to filter out inappropriate music, which is disappointing for one of the pioneers of music streaming.
Parents may be tempted by the free version of Spotify but it features a lot of ads and it also has no parental controls.
Also, album covers, which may also include violent or inappropriate images, show when the songs play.
However, it does have a kids’ playlist section with a range of child-friendly songs.
Individual accounts cost $14.99 a month and the app works on Apple and Android devices. Its family account costs $22.50 a month.
Amazon Prime Music
This app is similar to Spotify in that it also doesn’t have any parental controls.
This can be a problem if you’re using an Amazon Echo smart device and your kids ask for a song and your home is filled with crass lyrics for everyone to hear.
You should also know that Amazon has the explicit version of songs as the default setting.
This app costs $14.50 a month for an individual account or $22 a month for a family plan and it works on Apple and Android devices.
Other options
If you don’t want to play nearly $15 for an individual account for your child then you may want to consider a second-tier service.
One option is the YouTube Kids app. It features music videos appropriate for children under 12 in a safe environment.
One downside is that the app has to be active to listen to it so you can’t use it while doing something else.
Another possibility is iHeartRadio (available as an app for Apple and Android devices) which lets you listen to live radio stations.
Kiwi radio stations all abide by the Broadcasting Standard Authority so all the songs will be child-friendly, but that would not necessarily be the case for overseas stations.