The Spotify Family plan allows a single account to be shared among four family members. However, it is frequently used by colleagues or sold via online forums as a way to reduce monthly costs compared to individual accounts. Spotify has now begun requiring Spotify Family users to verify that they reside at the same address.
The primary account holder will be provided with a QR code that must be scanned by the devices of the other three users on the plan. The code changes periodically, making it difficult for users to bypass the verification process using screenshots. Previously, Spotify did not strictly enforce the requirement that Family plan members must live in the same household.
Once the verification code appears on a device, all members of the Spotify Family group must complete the verification within 7 days. Failure to do so will result in the loss of access to the service, and the users will be barred from joining another Family group for 12 months. To continue using Spotify’s premium features, they will need to subscribe to an individual plan.
This measure mirrors the approach taken by Netflix and Disney+, both of which can detect when additional profiles under a single account are accessed from different IP addresses.
