Whenever a new subscription service is announced, a family plan option is usually the most coveted. The same goes for Spotify and its Family Plan, which sadly still isn’t available in South Africa, with the offering being more cost-effective if you have a group of people interested in streaming music.

For Spotify though, this offer comes with specific terms and conditions, one of which being that all members (it caters for up to six) linked to a Family Plan need to be residing at the same address.

The company confirmed as much in a recently released update to its terms and conditions which reads, “In order to be eligible for the Premium Family Subscription, the primary account holder and the subsidiary account holders must be family members residing at the same address.”

Now Spotify appears to be cracking down on users who are not adhering to the T’s & C’s, with CNET reporting that the streaming service will now send pop-ups to users asking them to confirm their address from time to time.

It’s unclear what the frequency of this requests will be, but as The Verge points out, this isn’t the first time that Spotify has attempted to police the terms of service for its Family Plan. The company attempted something similar last year as a test, prompting users to provide precise GPS coordinates, but that test was halted over concerns regarding privacy and use of data.

Whether this newly proposed system is less of an infringement remains to be seen, but Spotify is clearly trying to clamp down on users who may be taking advantage of its Family Plan.

This course of action is understandable, but if I’m a parent and my child is at a university residence using my Family Plan, the locations will be different. As such there is scope for anomalies within the Family Plan location and address-focused system.

It’s still to be seen how users react to this policing, but perhaps Spotify should look into a Group Plan for friends wanting discounts on linked accounts?