It is a common thing that family members annoy each other. While some annoyances are solved within the family, others make it to the public. For example, to the internet. There, these irritating family members become not only your problem but netizens' as well.
Today's antagonist fits into this narrative very well. They're a mother and the manager of her family's Spotify plan, who decided to turn off explicit content as she wasn't comfortable letting her grown children access it, which made her annoying not only in her child's eyes but to the internet as well.
More info: Reddit
Some people just like pushing their flawed ideas on others, even if the time and place for it isn't right
Image credits: willow_the_tree
One day, today’s OP wanted to listen to some tunes on one of the largest audio-streaming services called Spotify.
This service was founded back in 2006 in Stockholm, Sweden, by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. Less than two decades later, Spotify was the 47th most-visited website in the world as of December of 2023. In 2024, it was revealed that the streaming service has 574 million monthly active users worldwide.
A mom from today's story decided to turn off explicit content on Spotify for the whole family
Image credits: willow_the_tree
Bored Panda reached out to one of these users, Jurgita, who has been a Spotify Premium subscriber and avid user since 2019, and she agreed to share some thoughts about the platform and today’s story.
Many say that Spotify’s success can be attributed to several factors: a large library of music and other kinds of audio content, affordability, an easy-to-use interface, and personalized recommendations.
Jurgita fully agrees with the latter one. She said that ever since she started using Spotify, she finds new music and new artists way more often than before due to these personalized recommendations. She also added that the only thing she misses out on by using this service is music videos, yet Spotify has announced that they’re slowly launching this function on their app as well, so maybe in the near future, this need of our interviewees will be satisfied.
She justified it by saying that she doesn't feel comfortable paying for explicit content and providing it to her grown children
Image credits: willow_the_tree
Besides simply being able to find new music pretty quickly and music videos in the near future, Spotify has plenty of other features. For instance, Premium users can download music and listen to it while offline, and people can follow each other and see what others are listening to. Users can also use already existing Spotify playlists, of which there are plenty for every mood and type of music you can imagine, or create their own. Jurgita revealed that she uses this exact function the most often, and she also listens to podcasts from time to time.
There’s also a Spotify function that filters out all the content that is marked as explicit, which is marked by an E letter. This exact feature is what caused today’s main story.
Image credits: cottonbro studio (not the actual photo)
So, as we mentioned, one day, the original poster went on Spotify to listen to some music. But they were met with a message saying that the manager of their current plan turned off the ability to listen to anything marked with that E letter. Since this plan manager was the OP’s mom, who lived apart from them, they wrote to her asking her what was up.
Apparently, this mom has turned off the explicit content for the whole family because she felt conflicted about giving them access to content that isn’t clean. She added that she always has this kind of content off for herself, so she will be deciding whether to turn it back on for everyone else or not.
Her 22-year-old child found this idea foolish and complained about this interaction online
Image credits: willow_the_tree
Well, it’s no surprise that the OP expressed a want to get their own plan from now on, as they said they simply wanted to listen to some of Kendrick Lamar’s music, but it got blocked by their mom and her interesting idea of not giving explicit content to a full-grown adult.
Many people online agreed with this sentiment and found the mom’s way of censorship kind of weird. Our interviewee, Jurgita, wasn’t the exception by saying that it didn’t make sense that “the OP can vote, drink, and drive but can’t choose what to listen to.”
Along with a complaint, they added the text messages between them and the mother, seemingly as proof of the whole thing
Image credits: willow_the_tree
Jurgita also mentioned that while she doesn’t use this Spotify feature, she sees why it can be useful for parents with younger children, as exposure to explicit content can be damaging to those who aren’t old enough for it.
Yet, today’s original poster is way beyond that age, so it’s almost natural that this kind of interaction with their mother ended up in this subreddit. Well, let’s just hope that when the mom makes the decision she’s teasing in the text messages, it will be to allow uncensored music and the family will be able to use their family Spotify plan as intended.
Image credits: Anna Shvets (not the actual photo)
Internet users found this idea just as foolish as the author did, and some of them were amazed at how naive (or obnoxious) this mother seemed to be
