Spotify brings Taste Profile recommendation tool to the US

Spotify is giving listeners a new way to shape the recommendations that show up in their app’s Home feed. On Wednesday, the company began rolling out a feature called Taste Profile to Premium subscribers in the U.S., letting users see, for the first time, how Spotify understands their taste across music and other audio. Users can request changes with natural-language commands to fine-tune their recommendations or make broader changes.

Powered by Spotify’s AI, Taste Profile was unveiled in March at the SXSW conference in Austin by Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, but the feature was initially available only in beta to listeners in New Zealand. It’s now arriving in Spotify’s largest market by traffic and revenue, where it will be tested among a much larger group of listeners ages 18 and up.

Taste Profile essentially hands users the keys to Spotify’s recommendation algorithm — the system the platform uses to choose what music and podcasts to suggest, including in its Discover Weekly playlist, Made for You recommendations, and the annual Spotify Wrapped review. Though Spotify’s algorithmic understanding of listening habits is widely credited as the secret to its success, those recommendations don’t always keep up with users’ evolving tastes, and the platform can end up over-recommending music similar to what a listener already streams, even when they’d rather branch out.

By editing their Taste Profile directly, users can now request more variety, or ask for more or less of a certain genre, artist, or overall vibe. The feature could also be used to remove recommendations based on music a listener streams regularly but doesn’t necessarily want to hear more of — sleep sounds played at night, for instance, or whatever a teenager plays from a parent’s account. Until now, Spotify has let users exclude only certain tracks or playlists from their Taste Profile; more recently, it added a toggle that keeps kids’ music from affecting a parent’s recommendations.

To access Taste Profile on the mobile app, users tap their profile picture, scroll down, and select Taste Profile, where they can explore how Spotify currently understands their taste across music, podcasts, and audiobooks. Under “Tell us more,” they can enter what they’d like to adjust and send the message; after a few hours, the Home page reflects a different set of suggestions. Spotify says the feature can help when a listener wants to explore a new genre or era, adjust the vibe of their music, or reshape podcast and audiobook recommendations. The feature remains in beta, and the company hasn’t offered a timeline for when it will reach a wider audience.

Why it matters

Handing users direct, natural-language control over a recommendation engine that shapes their daily listening — and the annual Wrapped narrative built on top of it — could reset how much trust listeners place in an algorithm they’ve historically had to take on faith.