Spotify now lets you select which playlists you’d like to impact your recommendations less • TechCrunch
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 listens 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.
Since a lot of your white noise playlists or kids’ playlists also make their way into your annual Spotify Wrapped experience, you can use the new feature to determine what content you want to avoid seeing in your Wrapped at the end of the year. A spokesperson from Spotify told TechCrunch that if you choose to enable the new feature, it will impact your personalized Wrapped results by excluding all streams only from playlists marked Exclude from Taste Profile from several of your data story experiences, including top song, top artist and top genre. The company notes that streams from these playlists will still count toward your total number of minutes listened.
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 or Wrapped experience.
“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 factors and one of the reasons Spotify continues to lead the music streaming market.
