Spotify has tweaked its “Kids" category to offer more educational incentives. Engadget confirms that the music streaming service has re-launched a “Kids and Family” category, which introduces audiences with children to customized playlists such as playlists with themes inspired from everyday routines, tips and ideas for various activities such as vocabulary-building and more.
Some of the playlists are dubbed as playtime, traveling, bath time and bedtime. In-between songs, the category will feature tips and voice prompts from celebrities such as Diego Torres, Fantasia, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Wiz Khalifa and more. Some of these tips comprise of introducing activities to parents, which could help boost vocabulary skills and incorporate music as an educational tool for their child’s everyday learning routines.
The playlists will be made available in English and Spanish initially, however, there is a chance that other languages will eventually be introduced as well. These prompts will encourage parents to read and sing with their kids more, or maybe ask them to make up a new dance for the next track.
Even though the company has offered some services for young audiences in the past, the revamped category comes after it became increasingly active with Too Small to Fail and Vroom, educational initiatives. Now, the platform hopes to provide parents with better suggestions which can help boost interaction with their children in a productive manner.
Considering that Spotify operates as the dominant streaming service in the industry, with a user base of 30 million paying subscribers and additional 70 million “freemium” users, the revamped category will help boost its popularity even further in its 59 markets. As the trend of music streaming continues to bolster, we believe that Spotify’s decision to work with an educational motive will successfully help it to target many families.
The service has also gone over its former data to help derive results for songs which may trigger nostalgia among parents from their own childhood. The company’s editorial team has worked hard to create playlists which feature songs in popular genres and moods, along with songs with “characteristics” to encourage child learning. These interactive activities have clearly been planned out in advance.
Therefore, following this addition, it seems that the streaming service hopes to raise awareness regarding the importance of music for early brain and language development. The company claims that such practices have the best results if tried on kids from ages zero to three. With the new category working as a great marketing push as well, Spotify hopes that its suggested activities and tips will help set a trend where parents access the service to sing with their kids, whilst simultaneously prepping them for their academic life as well.
According to Spotify’s Director of Social Impact, Kerry Steib: “As we looked to relaunch our Kids Category, we wanted to support parents and caregivers through our specially curated playlists in giving their children the best possible start in life."
Spotify has plans to continue working on its revamped category, and will work with organizations like Univision, the GRAMMY Museum, VH1 Save the Music Foundation, Fatherly, The Bump and others to roll out with more themed playlists for children and families.
If the company’s efforts prove to be successful, then music may actually be used as a tool to market “education” on other streaming platforms as well. For now, there is a high probability that the latest category will ruin chances for Spotify’s rivals.
Considering that Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) music service remains adamant to pull up numbers from its existing 15 million subscribers, and has been working hard to come up with innovative features which might appeal to Spotify's users, the latter hopes that its focus on a more child-oriented category will help eradicate these threats altogether. The service also launched a new gaming section and original videos category recently, hoping to attract more users from around the world.