Millions of Spotify users are in danger of having their accounts as the streamer introduces new rules.
It comes as the UK has this week brought in controversial new laws intended to protect young people on the internet, particularly on porn sites such as Pornhub.
Called the Online Safety Act, it has been heavily criticised, leading to a petition with over 300,000 signatures calling for it to be rolled back.
While predominantly focused on pornographic sites, others on the internet will be affected such as Reddit, X, and Discord, all of whom will now require age verification to access ‘Not Safe For Work’ 18+ content.
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Spotify has also introduced similar rules around age verification.
Christian Calgie of the Daily Express posted to X saying: “Your Spotify account is getting deleted unless you do age verification.”
Calgie linked to Spotify’s new support page around ‘Age restricted content and checking your age’.
Spotify’s new guidance states that, when trying to access what they consider to be ‘18+ content’ on the platform you will be prompted to do an age check.
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This will see users asked to carry out a ‘facial age estimation’ and, if that fails, an ID verification.
Spotify has stated that, if you don’t pass their age checks, your account will be deleted in a move that could affect millions across the UK.
It has, however, stressed that your account will only be deleted if you try to access 18+ content, such as a music video, then fail the checks.
If the user declines to complete the age verification check, they will be unable to access music videos but will not have their account deleted.
If a user is confirmed to be underage for a particular feature, such as 18+ music videos, they will not have access to that feature going forwards but can continue to use their account.
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In the UK, Spotify users must be 13 or over. If the age verification checks confirm the user is under 13, they will have their account deleted.
Spotify is by far the most popular music streaming service worldwide with 696 million users compared to Apple Music’s 93 million.
There may be a few less in the UK however as many will be faced with the choice of giving the company a scan of your face, a scan of your ID, or lose your account. Spotify has stressed Yoti, the digital verification company it has partnered with, will delete users' data once the verification process is complete.
Yet many people online have still hit out at the new rules, and similar checks introduced for other websites following the Online Safety Act.
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One reply to Calgie’s post about the move said: “It's the age-old government attitude of finding a spider in the bathroom and burning the entire house down to remove it. The lunatics run the asylum in the UK.”
Another said: “A reminder that 'age verification' is in practicality 'dox yourself to the government'.”
Despite widespread criticism of the Online Safety Act, including from Reform UK, the Government have stood firm by it.
In response to the mass petition calling for it to be repealed, a government spokesperson said there were ‘no plans to repeal the Online Safety Act’.
Michael Slavin