Family Plan does not work on separate devices/speakers

[BanalbanyJr]

Plan

Premium/Family Plan

Country

US

Device

Desktop PC, Amazon Echo, iPhone, iPad, Samsung Note 9)

Operating System

(iOS 10, Android Oreo, Windows 10,etc.)

My Question or Issue

I have a Premium Plan, and my daughters and wife have free accounts. Several times over the years, I have upgraded to a Family Plan to see if Spotify has figured out how to have different accounts truly plan on different devices. I just recently tried and failed to do this, and reverted back to a solo Premium Plan.

As I write this, it seems there's no solution--which leads me to think Spotify's true goal is just to have every human pay 9.99 a month for music.

At first I blamed Amazon. And why not? We have Echo devices all over the house, and we learned the hard way that you can't have more than one instance of Spotify on an Echo household at a time. This is a notoriously famous problem with no solution.

At first, the workarounds were successful, but you try telling a 10-year-old to say, "Alexa, play Major Lazer's 'Bubble **bleep**' on X's Spotify account." 

But, eventually, Spotify would just default over to the main account. Lately, even using Bluetooth connections for non-Echo devices, even non-smart home devices, Spotify will switch accounts on my wife or daughters' iPads to the main account.

No Amazon gamesmanship there.

Is this Spotify's not allowing more than once instance of Spotify in one household under any circumstances?

Are they discouraging me from using a Family Plan? How is a Family Plan even used successfully? 

I don't envision a solution for this, other than to force other family members to get Amazon Music, Tidal, or some other service. In the meantime, I don't see how a Family Plan's reason for existing is anything over than just charging 5 extra bucks for no enhanced services. 

[EthanS1]

Hey there @BanalbanyJr,

Thanks for taking your time to share the feedback over on the Community here and the recent experience with Spotify's Family plan. 

It's a known that Spotify users aren't able to officially link more than one Spotify account to the Alexa App which powers the Spotify integration except through workarounds that others have mentioned however as per the guidance this isn't recommended. I will pass your feedback across to the teams at Spotify as they work with the partners day in day out and I'm sure it's not the experience either of them wanted you to have. 

Just to check on the iPads and non smart home devices was each of the devices for example an iPad and a speaker I'll use for an example. Was each iPad which was connected to the speaker signed in with each family members unique account or were you using the Plan admins details across all the devices? 

Keep me in the loop, 

[BanalbanyJr]

The iPad instance is a perfect example of my further confusion with what is
going on with Spotify. Here's the scenario: the daughter is signed in to
her free non-associated Spotify account on her iPad, then connects to a
"dumb," non-smarthome bluetooth speaker. How does her Spotify account then
plays music through my Spotify account is a complete mystery.

This example has nothing to do with all of the Alexa stuff, which is also
an issue.

[EthanS1]

Thanks for the quick reply,

It sounds like your experiencing Spotify Connect. Spotify Connect works by allowing users on the Same Wi-Fi network to be able to use another device as a remote control for another device in the household - You do not need to be logged in to the other account to do this. You can learn more about this here.

For example, I can control my iPad on a completely different account to the Spotify account I use for the Community from my iPhone using Spotify Connect.

Let me know if you have any other questions. 

[BanalbanyJr]

She's actually on a different wifi network, since we use a mesh and a
router; plus as I said she's signed in as a different Spotify user
entirely.

So: I don't understand, while on a separate wifi and logged into a
different Spotify account, how playing on bluetooth cause Spotify Connect
would kick in by leapfrogging onto another Spotify account and play it from
there. That's not a value-add for me?

[EthanS1]

Thanks for coming back to me, I'm going to pass this across to the Spotify teams backstage to see if I can get some further insights on what to what's going on, there maybe a short delay whilst I await for a response but I'll be back with you as soon as I can.

Have a lovely day,

[EthanS1]

Hey @BanalbanyJr,

After some conversations with the teams backstage, they've mentioned a few things to try so we can try and see what's happening here. 

They think that their potentially could be an issue with the pairing of the Bluetooth devices, each time you want to use multiple bluetooth devices you need to re-pair them for a successful connection. Could you attempt to re-pair and see if the issue still persists, let me know. 

Could you also try 'Signing Out Everywhere' which can be accessed here across all of your affected accounts and then login to your accounts again and see if this resolves the issue. 

Standing by,

[Stacymaharg]

My mom pays for a family account as well and we cant play it on our apple devices it simply over rules it and will only only play on one device at a time such a rip off we want a discount because the product is not as described we cant play it on all the devices for the family plan so Spotify has a problem they are not resolving but they certainly do continue to charge you for a family rate plan