YouTube Music puts restrictions on some Disney and other ‘Made for Kids’ songs

Ben Schoon | Jan 30 2020 - 6:43 am PT

YouTube Music is evolving into a pretty good music streaming platform with some features and perks that others can’t quite match. However, a wider issue going on with YouTube is causing Music to restrict some Disney songs and others that are “Made for Kids.”

Recently, YouTube rolled out changes to its platform to fall in line with COPPA government regulations. Following a huge fine, YouTube decided to make these changes that are designed to protect the privacy of children. The biggest impact of this is that any content uploaded to YouTube must be marked as “Made for Kids” if it has content that targets children.

Since those changes took effect, some users have noticed issues with YouTube Music. Android Central details that some songs, especially a lot of Disney tracks, have new restrictions on YouTube Music.

For example, “Let it Go” from the first Frozen movie (sorry for putting that earworm back into your head) is marked as “Made for Kids” and blocks specific features. One of those features is the miniplayer. This doesn’t block the song from being played in the background (as long as you’re a Premium subscriber), but you won’t be able to navigate within the YouTube Music app when playing that Disney song. Further, the like/dislike buttons are disabled.

Both of those restrictions aren’t really that big of a deal, but what’s most annoying is that these songs can’t be added to playlists. At the moment, though, both adding to playlists and like/dislike still works on YouTube Music’s desktop app for Disney and other “Made for Kids” songs.

It’s clear that these restrictions are due to the COPPA changes, but one can only hope that Google can somehow fix this in the future. As it stands, these restrictions are just ridiculous.