Blog · July 27, 2026

Spotify Kids vs Apple Music for kids: an honest comparison

Your kid wants music. You already pay for a streaming service. The question is whether the service you pay for can give a seven-year-old something to listen to without you hovering, and the answer depends a lot on which logo is on your bill.

I'm a dad, I've run both setups, and I ended up unhappy enough with my options that I built my own app. So yes, I have a horse in this race. I'll point at it clearly when we get there, and everything before that is the comparison I wish someone had written for me.

One thing before we start. You'll notice YouTube Kids isn't in this comparison, and that's on purpose. For parents who care about curating, YouTube is kryptonite, a fire hydrant of content with no easy way of shutting it off, and "music" over there means videos anyway. Music apps only today.

Spotify Kids: a real app, with a catch

Credit where it's due. Spotify actually shipped a kids app, which is more than anyone else in big streaming can say. If you pay for Premium Family (about $20 a month), Spotify Kids is included. Separate app, bright kid interface, big buttons, no ads, and nothing explicit in it at all.

The content is a walled catalog picked by Spotify's editors. Thousands of tracks: kids classics, movie soundtracks, clean pop. Your kid can't wander out of it. You get a parent PIN, you can block specific tracks, and you can see what they've been listening to.

For a four-year-old, honestly, it's decent.

The catch is who's holding the pen. Spotify's editors decide what's in the walled garden. You can subtract from their list, but you can't add to it. If your kid is into something the editors didn't pick, or the editors' idea of appropriate doesn't match yours (it happens, "kid-appropriate" is not a universal constant), there's no move for you to make. It's their garden. You just get to pull some weeds.

Also, the design skews young. My experience is that kids around seven or eight start feeling like it's a baby app, and then they start lobbying for the real Spotify, and now you have a different problem.

Apple Music: a great catalog and no kids app

Apple Music has no kids mode. No kids app, no kid profiles, nothing. What Apple gives you is a filter: flip on Screen Time restrictions and explicit-flagged songs won't play. I wrote a whole breakdown of that filter and where it leaks, but the short version is that your kid ends up in the full adult app with a politeness setting. They browse the entire catalog, they see every album cover, they live in your library, and "clean" means bleeped, not appropriate.

You can give a kid their own Apple ID through Family Sharing and manage the filter remotely, which helps with logistics. It doesn't change what they're using, it's still the same app you use, minus some words.

For an iPhone family that's already paying for Apple Music, this is a genuinely weak default, and Apple has left it that way for years.

Side by side

So which one?

If your family already runs on Spotify and your kid is little, use Spotify Kids. It's included in what you're paying, it's safe inside its walls, and little kids don't care who curated the garden.

If your family runs on Apple Music, the honest answer is that Apple didn't build you an option. The filter is better than nothing. Turn it on. But don't confuse it with the thing you actually want, which is your kid having their own music world where every single song got a yes from you.

That third thing is what I built.

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I'm Pedro. Songkrate turns the Apple Music subscription you already pay for into a kid-safe music player. You pick every song from the full catalog, your kids get their own profiles and their own player on iPhone, iPad, and Apple TV, and nothing you didn't approve exists in it. No editors, no algorithm, no surprises. $4.99 a month after the free trial. Try it here.

Try it with your own kids

Songkrate turns the Apple Music you already pay for into a player that only has the songs you approved. Free trial, then $4.99/month.

Download on the App Store