COVINGTON TWP, Pa., Nov. 1st, 2024- A recent topic among students has been the blocking of Spotify on the school issued Chromebooks. While the exact reasoning for this is unknown, the speculation revolves around students misusing the website or there being issues with licensing, but there has been no clarification on any of these guesses. The technology department had not responded to emails at time of writing.
The school has never been anti-music. All throughout the day, the radio is playing in the cafeteria and foyer. Students are welcome to wear earbuds and listen to music at appropriate times. Principal Ronald Collins’ opinion on how the blocking of Spotify is going to affect how students do at school is, “I don’t feel like it is a distraction as long as teachers can control it which they are able to.” As long as students are able to understand when is a good time to listen to music, and teachers are able to see what their students are doing, then it shouldn’t be a problem.
The cafeteria is not the only place where music is always playing. On the third floor, Mr. Anthony Duchnowski is always playing music in his classroom. As a teacher who loves music and is constantly playing it, he has not seen a change in how his students are doing. The disappointment is evident, but it has not caused a drop in any grades. He said, “I’ve seen kids who are able to listen to music that is downloaded on their phones. I think that students who use music to focus have found other ways to listen to it.” With the availability of YouTube, Pandora, Apple Music, and cellphones, students still have access to their music.
The anger over the blocking of Spotify is very noticeable in the student body. Although there are alternative ways of listening to music, the easiest choice was to log on to Spotify. Junior Carly Bajor believes the blocking of Spotify is terrible, and she absolutely hates it. As someone who listens to music while doing homework she said, “Listening to music helps hype her up to do school work but now she finds herself getting distracted and just not feeling inspired to do her work during study halls.” She now will use YouTube, but she tends to get distracted because “I have to search for every single song” as opposed to being able to queue up one of her playlists.
Senior Jack Edwards doesn’t have the same problem as Bajor, and he is able to focus on his work during class. He said his problem is, “I like to listen to music during my study halls and down time I have in class. It is very nice to be able to pull up Spotify on my Chromebook and listen to my playlists.” Now he obviously is not able to and has resorted to using the music downloaded on his phone.
While students are still managing their music without Spotify on their Chromebooks, the question of why it is blocked still lingers. Edwards thinks, “As a student, it would be nice to know why Spotify was taken away from us.” For now though, the students will be continuing on with music downloads and Pandora.
