• Spotify is now asking UK users to prove their age to access mature content
  • The age verification checks have been introduced as part of the UK’s Online Safety Act
  • Spotify says it will present age checks if it suspects you’re under 13, but many users have encountered checks despite being over 18

Spotify has become the latest app to introduce measures designed to comply with the UK’s Online Safety Act, by asking users to undergo age verification checks if they want to view or listen to age-restricted content – and many users aren’t happy.

The age verification requirements of the Online Safety Act came into effect from July 25, and requires all platforms that display adult content to verify that users are over 18 using age verification checks.

So far, we’ve seen the likes of Xbox, Discord and Reddit introduce age verification, and now Spotify has done the same.

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Like Reddit and X, Spotify has partnered with digital identification firm Yoti, a service that conducts age checks via facial scanning. For Spotify users, Yoti will use different means of age verification, from facial scanning to requesting a scan of your ID if it suspects you’re under 13 (Spotify’s minimum age requirement).

It will also use algorithmic methods to estimate a user’s age. But Spotify is taking it a step further, stating in its official outline that “your account will be deactivated and eventually deleted” if you fail to complete the age verification process.

While Yoti claims that your data will be kept safe, and eventually deleted, the new requirement has caused uproar among some Spotify users.

Some have take to forums such as Reddit to point that young people are clever enough to find ways around the checks, for example using a VPN to change their location to somewhere other than the UK – and a minority have even threatened to revert to piracy (see below). What is ‘mature content’ in Spotify?

A phone on a green background showing a Peaches album on Spotify (Image credit: Spotify)

This is the burning question among Spotify fans, considering the music streaming app doesn’t host X-rated content on the same scale as Reddit or X. However, the platform does have certain features that are aimed at mature users.

In Spotify’s case, you may be asked to verify your age if you try to “access some Spotify content and features, like Music videos that are labeled as 18+ by rightsholders”. This could also apply to podcasts that discuss mature content and songs with explicit lyrics.

Fortunately, there is a way back if your account becomes deactivated due to an inaccurate age estimation. According to Spotify, you’ll get an email that “allows you to reactivate your account within 90 days of deactivation”, after which you’ll need to go through age verification checks again.

So far, I haven’t been asked to verify my age in the Spotify app when trying to access mature podcasts and music videos, but a handful of users on forums like Reddit who are well over the age of 18 have have already encountered the checks. Why have VPNs become so popular?

Spotify has explained in various community posts that it isn’t designed to work with VPNs, and you naturally shouldn’t use one to circumvent any age verification checks.

However, this hasn’t stopped free VPNs from dominating Apple’s UK App Store, as internet users look to find ways of protecting their data from future breaches, or perhaps even bypass those checks completely.

VPNs work by encrypting your internet traffic, but they’re not all equal – so it’s important to choose the right one for your needs. Free VPNs can log an excessive amount of data, which could ultimately put your privacy at risk, and sometimes lack important security features.

  • rumba@lemmy.zip
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    10 days ago

    I never stopped downloading my favorite stuff. I pay for streaming, but I’m not trusting them to give me access forever.

  • dudesss@lemmy.ca
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    10 days ago

    If you buy your music, say on Bandcamp Friday where Bandcamp waves their revenue, you could host your own streaming server, and eventually cancel your Spotify membership.

    https://isitbandcampfriday.com/

    https://www.navidrome.org/

    https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome

    There is also Qobuz as an alternative which pays the artist $. 01873 per stream, as opposed to Spotify’s $0.003 per stream. About 5x more. Plus you can buy the music from the platform if you want. And it has higher quality audio, family plans, gift cards.

    https://www.qobuz.com/ca-en/music/streaming/offers

    • ReluctantZen@feddit.nl
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      10 days ago

      Qobuz+navi has been my go to for a while. Sadly, a fair amount of music I listen to isn’t on Qobuz (or Bandcamp).

    • 21bits@lemmy.world
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      9 days ago

      I’ve recently gone back to outright buying my music (CDs mostly for me - I like having a hard copy), and tbh I find I’m actually enjoying the music more too.

  • Valmond@lemmy.world
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    10 days ago

    I wonder how “bad” it really is for a kid to be exposed to nudity (and “worse”!), if actually at all or even the reverse.

    Then Bam 18 years old, let’s look at beheading videos and 2 girls 1 cup no problemo?

  • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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    11 days ago

    Funny enough, I think music is the streaming service that is safest from piracy.

    A lot of us have considered migrating away from music services over the years and mostly always run into the problem of… this isn’t the 90s and 00s where we might listen to one band at all times. Instead it is more about liking a few songs from one band that The Algorithm then uses to figure out we like these songs from another and so forth. Its a mess for those of us who grew up on listening to all of Hybrid Theory on repeat for a month. Let alone the kids who grew up with nothing BUT algorithm based curation.

    My understanding is there is stuff like lidarr and the like that try to capture that kazaa style experience but it is still inherently a pull experience in a world where the vast majority of people expect to have new songs pushed to them while they drive and so forth.

    Movies and TV are one thing since even The Algorithm is mostly about telling us that we want to watch Palm Springs outside of The App.

    And for everyone who is going to chime in saying “Well I don’t mind”: Fuck off. If you were the norm then Spotify et al would have never gotten popular in the first place.

    • valium_aggelein [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      10 days ago

      the way people listen to music nowadays is awful and has made the average person wayyyy less capable of talking about music. It’s actually very sad. Constant drive to consume new tunes without any context of deep listening to an album or looking at the evolution in a bands discography. I hope streaming services die for this reason alone. Being more deliberate about what you listen to is a good thing for your artistic mind. So hopefully some people do actually switch to pirating again and spend time building out a library of their own

      • NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip
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        10 days ago

        People are unable to talk about much of anything these days. There was a fairly popular thread on one of the games communities about “games where nothing happens” that is just people spewing anything they didn’t understand or which didn’t resolve every single plot thread in its entirety. Or just any time someone talks about a “plot hole”.

        Media literacy is dead. Hell, basic literacy is pretty dead. Listening to more than one band doesn’t impact that. Yes, some bands have pretty crafted albums that are meant to be listened to as basically an opera. The vast majority don’t and you don’t need to “Cornelia Street” apparently 3 minutes and 19 seconds before starting “London Boy” to understand whatever theme t swizzle was talking about then.

      • Eddie Hitler@lemmy.world
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        11 days ago

        Me and my friends started pirating in 1994 when nntp was all the rage. It’s gone through many interations, from bulletin boards, to news groups, to torrenting and now I find that I mostly use a debrid client with Kodi. Of all the time that’s gone past the streaming services have still not gotten rid of geo locking, it’s like they never seem to learn. Everything turns into profit over everything else. They keep screwing themselves. Convenience will always trump even piracy, but they can never understand that they could have had the greatest business model on earth and one of the largest audiences, but profit takes precedence and they dilute the product, in this case streaming, to the point where it becomes no longer feasible for the common people to use it.

        Streaming services now cost the same thing as cable bundles cost me 20 years ago, and in a lot of places you’re still required a Cable bundle on top of this. Just imagine if Netflix still had every show that was on every other streaming platform, even if you paid $75 a month for it it would still be worth it. But they all want the whole pie, not a piece. So they cannibalize what was a great step forward and then wonder why their subscriber numbers dwindle every quarter. And now they’ll make new draconian laws to force people to use their shitty substandard products and scratch their heads wondering where everything went wrong.

  • My jellyfin server doesn’t ask for age verification, has no monthly fee, unlimited skips, can work while offline and allows to download the media. It also can be used by in several devices at the same time and has not just music but pretty much any kind of media.

    Fuck you, spotify. If people go back to piracy, it’s on you.

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
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      10 days ago

      Moving is always a hassle (like windows=>Linux) but can be so beneficial, I’m on the road to musical independence and jellyfin seems to be the beast. Is there some android “app” for it so that you can download music and listen when you’re offline?

      • AbsolutelyNotAVelociraptor@sh.itjust.works
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        10 days ago

        The jellyfin clients allow to download media from your server (if your user has permission to do so, but if you are your own admin, you decide your own permissions, so…).

        To download music for the server I use soulseek. It’s pretty much like the old napster and has also an android client.

        • Valmond@lemmy.world
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          10 days ago

          BTW are there an open jellyfin test server somewhere? I’m checking out the android app on holidays (so can’t set up my own server just yet).

    • gigachad@piefed.social
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      10 days ago

      Our of interest, where are you running Jellyfin and have you opened it so you can access it from outside your WiFi?

      • I have a zimablade home server.

        To access my server from outside my wifi I use Tailscale on my phone and other devices. I have created a rule for certain tags so I can create keys that when assigned to those tags, have access only to the port of my jellyfin server and not the rest of the services running on it. That way I can share it with friends.

        Since android only allows a single vpn at a time and I browse internet with a vpn, I installed shelter on my phone to create a “work” profile where I installed the tailscale vpn and jellyfin so throuch the wrrk profile I am connected to the vpn of my home server while I retain my normal vpn for the rest.

      • bizarroland@lemmy.world
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        10 days ago

        If you are running your jellyfin at home, there’s a lot of companies and systems and setups out there that will allow you to VPN into your home network and access the services that you are running there.

    • fitgse@sh.itjust.works
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      11 days ago

      Same but I use navidrome for music (Jellyfin is create for my tv/movie collection)

      I’m also working on a new open source server and front end for a personal pandora like service, that uses machine learning (not popularity from last.fm) to find songs that are statistically similar across 150 dimensions.

      • I submit my listens to listenbrainz and let it give me a weekly list of new songs to try.

        Jellyfin works for me because I also use it to watch concerts and other content, so having everything in the same app is convenient.

      • skarn@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 days ago

        Let me add myself to the chorus of “Fuck yes please”.

        Any chance that this could be used in combination with existing streaming servers like Jellyfin or Navidrome? It would be most convenient to have generated playlists that I can download before leaving home.

        Also, I have all my music already tagged with acousticbrainz metadata. Are those good for anything?

  • lemmyknow@lemmy.today
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    10 days ago

    I swear if they continue with this kinda shit, I’m gonna go from ‘fan’ to ‘disappointed paying customer’

            • Chakravanti@monero.town
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              10 days ago

              For corporations? Yup. You got it.

              You were. Then it got pointless and personal. Like you seemed to have understood and immediately swept the rug right under yourself like a cartoon.

              I’d ask if the head you cracked needed help but I think you may have made the point already.

              Besides, I tried that a few years ago and I don’t understand any of the attention the experience has generated such an obsessive and chronic repetition of consumption among the masses. I like thinking. Same thought of anything opiate to boot. A real WTF?

  • ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com
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    11 days ago

    Replacing the huge library that I have on music streaming services with actual downloaded music I get to keep feels like it would be an absolute mammoth task. I really wouldn’t know where to begin.

    I know how to pirate music, but it would take so long to comb through every album, artist, and playlist. Not to mention it would take up so much storage space on my phone.

    If I could automate it somehow though, I’d find a way to make it work.

        • B-TR3E@feddit.org
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          10 days ago

          Well. then I guess you’ll die as a lazy, fat slug too lazy to get up from the couch and you’ll have to listen to whatever trash you’re getting served by those willing to spare you the trouble of walking three steps for an ever increasing fee. But stop blaming anyone else for your awful lifestyle.

          • ordnance_qf_17_pounder@reddthat.com
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            10 days ago

            I’m not paying for any streaming service, nor am I lazy or fat. How awful that I don’t want to have to constantly move files back and forth between my phone and PC, assuming I’m even at home where I can physically access my computer.

            Maybe you’re fine with having 20 songs on a playlist to last you for a week, but some of us have very different listening habits. Try offering up something helpful like others have done and not being a total wankstain.

            • FauxLiving@lemmy.world
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              10 days ago

              You don’t have to move files around. Keep your collection at home and stream it to your phone.

              Jellyfin is a FOSS media player, with apps for every OS and a web interface if you only have access to a web browser.

              You collect music, put it into a specific folder structure (like …/artist/album/track.mp3) and Jellyfin makes it available to stream to any device.

              It works for movies and TV shows as well. I have my entire TV, movie and music collection available to stream.

              It takes a little setup but it gives you a lot more control over your collection.

        • brachiosaurus@mander.xyz
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          10 days ago

          If mobile phones weren’t built to be disposable you probably wouldn’t have to. Pinephone supports up to 2TB micro SD.

    • valium_aggelein [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      10 days ago

      I did this a couple years ago. It was definitely a huge task. I split it up over the course of a few months. Downloading albums I didn’t already have from slsk, tagging them with music brainz, putting them up on a plex server (I bought a tiny cheap PC and a hard drive for this purpose alone). I’m very glad I did it and now I can stream the library anywhere but it’s definitely a mammoth task

    • MotoAsh@lemmy.world
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      11 days ago

      Begin with what you want to play. It’s not like you need a 1-1 replacement before it’d become useful.

    • An easy way to start is: using a free service to migrate your playlists to youtube music. Then, use yt-dl to download them from youtube.

      When you have downloaded most of your library, you can start looking for some specific stuff with soulseek (which is something like the old napster).

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    10 days ago

    People only threaten to leave but never actually do it because “muh recommendation algorithm”

      • Mr_WorldlyWiseman@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        10 days ago

        Navidrome and lidarr.

        1. Download all your Spotify playlists and listen history from their privacy page
        2. Download the full discography from all the artists with lidarr
        3. Listen to your new music with dynamic recommendations from your downloaded songs with Navidrome.
        • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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          9 days ago

          Download the full discography from all the artists with lidarr

          Damn, that’s gonna be a looot of stuff

      • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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        9 days ago

        Last.fm has been decent for me.
        Also, believe it or not, Youtube. Just looking up the odd song once in a while has resulted in good stuff showing up on my home page pretty regularly.

  • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.comOP
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    11 days ago

    This is never going away no matter how much we hate it and it has very little to do with age verification.

    • IcyToes@sh.itjust.works
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      11 days ago

      Maybe not. Signed former Spotify user looking to get albums second hand and rip for personal consumption.

      Fuck Keir Stalin.