UK Online Safety Act - Child Safety

Spotify is an app providing access to millions of songs, podcasts, and audiobooks from creators all over the world. We want to be the best place for young people to discover their new favourite artist or song in a protected environment. To that end, we have built a number of safety measures to protect users under the age of 18 from illegal or abusive content. We work closely with experts (e.g. organizations like Thorn, the Tech Coalition, WeProtect Alliance, and the Internet Watch Foundation) to continuously improve these measures and stay on top of emerging risks.

How do we protect young people from harmful content?

Spotify’s Platform Rules outline the content we do not allow on our platform. These rules help us offer a safe and enjoyable experience on Spotify, regardless of age. In the UK, content on Spotify additionally complies with the UK Online Safety Act’s (UK OSA) rules relating to illegal content and content harmful to children (for example: pornographic content; content that promotes suicide; self harm and eating disorders; bullying, abuse and hate content; violence, dangerous stunts and harmful substances content; etc.).

If you encounter a song or podcast or audiobook you think violates Spotify’s Platform Rules, you can easily fill out our Platform Rules reporting form. If you encounter something you believe is illegal or harmful to children under the UK OSA, you can easily fill out our UK illegal content reporting form. In response, Spotify will review the content to make sure it violates and may remove or restrict it.

What actions are taken on this content when we identify it?

Spotify works to apply our Platform Rules consistently across the world, and we do so using a combination of technology and human review. In addition to reports made by users, we also use technology to automatically detect content that may violate our Platform Rules. These tools include:

• Systems that scan for keywords and links associated with harmful content on Spotify
• Technology that looks for Spotify user behavior that may signal potentially harm

This technology operates on Spotify:

• before content is first uploaded or shared on Spotify; and
• after content is uploaded on Spotify

We have teams around the world developing, maintaining and enforcing our Platform Rules. When Spotify detects or a user reports potentially violating content, our teams work to take the right enforcement action.

How do we know if a user is under 18?

Spotify offers personalized listening to music, podcasts, and audiobooks for users around the world. To help offer experiences that are age-appropriate, Spotify is continuing to better understand our users' ages.

Providing Date of Birth When Signing Up: We ask all users to provide their date of birth when they sign up. This helps us understand if you are old enough to use Spotify in the UK, where you must be at least 13 years old. For users under 13, who are not permitted to sign up for their own independent Spotify accounts, we offer Managed Accounts within Premium Family. These accounts are for kids younger than 13 years old to explore Spotify’s music with parental guidance.

Age-Estimation Technology: We use age assurance technologies in select markets, partnering with Yoti, to help us identify if users are of eligible age to access certain Spotify content and features. As a part of this process, you may be asked to confirm your age to access features like music videos labeled for users who are 18 years and older or Messages, which is only for users who are 16 years and older.

To learn more about Spotify’s age assurance processes, please see here.

Blocking other users on Spotify?

If someone’s bothering you and you don’t want to communicate with them anymore, you can use our block tool.

Here’s what happens when you block someone:

• The other user won’t see your profile or playlists.
• The other user can’t follow you or find you in search.

We won’t let the other user know you’ve blocked them.

To learn more about how to block someone, please see here.

Information for parents and caregivers

We understand that navigating the digital world can be challenging for parents, and that decisions around the content and experiences that are right for your family are often personal. If you are a parent or caregiver, you can read more here.

This page focuses on protections for under‑18 users in the UK and how they relate to the UK OSA. For more information on our global safety efforts, please see the Platform Rules and other Safety & Privacy Centre resources.