My 9 year old wants and MP3 player for her birthday but we already have a Spotify family account so I would rather she accessed that. We don’t want her to have a phone or tablet, just a simple Spotify playing device, like an MP3 player but working with Spotify.

Any ideas?

has to be something with an internet connection. ipod touch?

or this one:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/51215664/mighty-streaming-music-without-your-phone

iPod touch, set up with your iTunes account for app downloads.

old phone without a sim card? iPhones can be run in something called “kiosk mode” (used for e.g. iPads displaying product brochures on exhibition stands) so that only the Spotify app can be used, I’m sure Android has something similar.

This claimed to do it and got funding so may become generally available soon as it seems to have been manufactured now;

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/51215664/mighty-streaming-music-without-your-phone

not able to answer your question, as our 10 yr old uses his phone or his iPad mini. Do most 9 yr old not have phones now ?

Problem is that her older sister, now 11 has only just got an iPod. If we give the younger one a phone or iPod now we open up a whole can of arguments about why she is allowed one two years earlier than her sister!

why she is allowed one two years earlier than her sister!

‘because we say so’

our daughter had access to stuff a lot younger than her brother, we were more comfortable about imposing and policing boundaries on use and, tbh, so many of her freinds had stuff it became socially difficult for her not to join in. (Yes I know ‘socially awkward’ is not *that* big a deal but it is when you’re 9…)

You’ve created your own problem! 😀

She wants an MP3 player – you want her to use the Spotify account.

So it’s either a cheap Android tablet with nothing else installed, get the MP3 player and you spend hours ripping CD’s and downloading songs, or one of these – take her back to the 20th century…

edit

There’s a lot you can do around restrictions on iOS devices – https://support.apple.com/en-gb/HT201304

Easy enough to configure up an iPod touch with Spotify but no web browsing, email, etc.

The massive issue with Spotify is the one you’ve identified, it needs a device to sit on as essentially it’s an app…

So either de-simmed iphone or android.

There was a kickstarter a while back I saw called mighty that synced to your spotify acct and physically stored music, to be able to play without need to connect to internet. dunno what happened to it though.

Have a look at https://www.wondershare.com/ allows you to record direct from Spotify to an MP3 format. I use it to stire stuff on a USB for my car so I can control music through the car controls rather than use the spotify player on my phone with the stuff cached on there.

Old android handset in kiosk mode seems to be the answer, thanks everyone.

“Spotify family” doesn’t have any filters on explicit content. This is despite over 6000 votes for the functionality in the forum. It is the most commented on feature request from their users by far and they are just ignoring it.

Apple Music does – it’s not perfect but at least it’s something and they are trying.

Just FYI.