Users can search for clean versions of songs in Apple Music, but it sometimes takes a lot of scrolling to find them. Listeners can go to Settings>Screen Time>Content & Privacy Restrictions>Content Restrictions to make the change.Īpple Music explains this will help prevent the playback of music, music videos, podcasts, news and workouts containing explicit content. Users will need to head to Screen Time to manage explicit content for themselves or for other accounts they manage. Spotify does make it easy to search for clean versions of explicit music. Managers can log in to their Premium Family page and click on any member to filter their content by tapping “Remove explicit content”. If users pay for and manage a Spotify Premium Family plan, they can allow or block anything with an explicit tag for any other member in the plan. To enable this feature, users can go to Home>Settings>Explicit Content>Allow Explicit Content and toggle it off. Listeners won’t be able to play the songs and the app will automatically skip them. But once users turn off the ability to play explicit content, any music tagged as such is grayed out. In other words, the filter isn’t perfect. Spotify points out on its website that when it comes to rating something explicit, that it relies on the information received from those who hold the rights to the music. Fortunately all three music services provide ways for moms and dads to filter out some of the content they may not want flowing into their kids’ ears. While these examples may say something about what demographic is listening to which streaming service, they definitely show there is a need for some parental oversight when it comes to music streaming. And Amazon Prime Music listeners didn’t have an explicit song listed in its top charts until #22. Two of the top five on Apple Music had no option other than the explicit one. Of those five chart-topping songs on Spotify, the three with explicit ratings all also had clean versions.
Some songs will also come in a clean version, but not all. Recording artists or a record label may use this parent advisory if a song includes strong language or depictions of violence, sex or substance abuse. The Recording Industry Association of America uses this to help parents recognize the music could contain inappropriate content. Listeners can see whether a song or album has an explicit rating if they spot an ‘E’ next to the listing. A peek at Spotify shows three of its top five flagged with explicit ratings. As the time of writing, all but one have an explicit rating (thank you Harry Styles). Take a look at the top five songs on Apple Music.