Spotify finally introduces a highly requested feature. The streaming service announced today that it’s launching a new “Exclude from your taste profile” feature that lets you prevent selected playlists from heavily influencing your personalized recommendations.
For context, your taste profile is Spotify’s interpretation of your taste in music based on what you listen to and is used to inform your recommendations. The new feature lets you tell Spotify which playlists you want to influence recommendations less so you can get a more tailored personalization experience.
People often have a specific playlist for certain activities, such as sleeping, exercising or parenting. If you’re someone who listens to white noise while sleeping, your Discover Weekly and other personalized playlists can often be dominated by white noise. If you’re a parent, you probably see your kids’ music popping up in your personalized playlists. Since this kind of content doesn’t fit into your general listening habits, it’s pretty annoying to see it show up in things like your Blend or Release Radar playlists.
Spotify is aware of how annoying this can be and that’s why it’s launching this new feature. Exclude from your flavor profile is rolling out to users across web, desktop, iOS, and Android starting today. To access the new feature, you’ll need to select a playlist, tap the three dots at the top of the playlist, and select “Exclude from your flavor profile.” Once you enable the feature, the streaming service will exclude past and future playlist listening from your taste profile. If you change your mind, you can disable the feature the same way.
Since many of your white noise or kids playlists also make their way into your annual Spotify Wrapped experience, you can use the new feature to control what content you don’t want to see in your Wrapped at the end of the year. A Spotify spokesperson told AapkaDost that if you choose to enable the new feature, it will affect your personalized Wrapped results by excluding only all streams from playlists marked as Exclude from flavor profile of 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 towards your total minutes listened.
When you exclude a playlist from your flavor profile, you can still find it in your Home tab. Spotify also notes that “liked” songs in the playlist are also not affected. This means that while you can still access your Pop 4 Kids playlist, it won’t be very common in your personalized playlists or Wrapped experience.
“We are constantly working to find new ways to further enhance 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 is looking to improve the personalized playlist experience on its service, especially since the company’s personalized playlists are one of its biggest selling points and one of the reasons why Spotify continues to lead the music streaming market.