Spotify is finally introducing a highly-requested feature. The streaming service announced today that it’s launching a new “Exclude from your Taste Profile” feature that lets you keep selected playlists from heavily influencing your personalized recommendations.
For context, your taste profile is Spotify’s interpretation of your music taste based on what you listen to and is used to inform your recommendations. The new feature lets you tell Spotify which playlists you’d like to impact your recommendations less to allow for a more tailored personalization experience.
People often have specific playlist for certain activities, such as sleeping, working out or parenting. If you’re someone who listening to white noise when sleeping, your Discover Weekly and other personalized playlists may often be dominated with white noise. If you’re a parent, you likely see your kids’ music popping up on your personalized playlists. Given that this type of content doesn’t fit with your general listening habits, it’s quite annoying to see it appear in things like your Blend or Release Radar playlists.
Spotify is aware of how annoying this can be, which is why it’s launching the new feature. Exclude from your Taste Profile is rolling out to users on web, desktop, iOS and Android starting today. To access the new feature, you need to select a playlist, tap the three dots near the top of the playlist and select “Exclude from your Taste Profile.” Once you enable the feature, the streaming service will exclude past and future listening of the playlist from your taste profile. If you change your mind, you can turn off the feature using the same process.
When you exclude a playlist from your taste profile, you can still find it in your Home tab. Spotify also notes that “liked” songs within the playlist will also be unaffected. This means that while you’ll still have access to your Pop 4 Kids playlist, it won’t be heavily featured in your personalized playlists.
It’s unknown if the feature also excludes playlists from your annual Spotify Wrapped experience. TechCrunch has reached out to Spotify for clarification.
“We’re continuously working to find new ways to further improve the personalization experience by introducing ways to connect listeners, artists, and creators in a unique and enriching way,” Spotify said in a blog post.
It’s no surprise that Spotify looking to enhance the personalized playlist experience on its service, especially since the company’s personalized playlists are one of its biggest selling factor and one of the reasons Spotify continues to lead the music streaming market.
