- Spotify has announced a new taste profile feature
- It allows you to enter comments and tell Spotify what recommendations you want.
- Taste Profile could be the key to eliminating AI waste, but I hope it’s not short-lived
According to Spotify, “more than 80% of listeners” say the personalization features are the best thing about the music streaming service; So naturally, Spotify is upping the ante even further on the personal listening front.
Today (March 13), Spotify introduced a new tool that lets you see your taste profile front and center, and directly drive its algorithm by feeding it notes. The feature was announced by co-CEO Gustav Söderström at SXSW and will roll out over the next few weeks in beta to Premium subscribers in New Zealand first.
Until now, your taste profile has remained hidden within the walls of the Spotify app. Now, it’s located right in the sidebar of the home page, allowing you to see exactly how you understand your listening habits across music, podcasts, and audiobooks, and updates as your listening behavior evolves. However, that’s not the most interesting part; gives you the option to edit and shape how your recommendations evolve on the home page as much as you want.
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Does your taste profile reveal your growing obsession with electronic music? Or that you’re slowly exploring ’90s rock and its specialized subgenres? You can ask it to give you more recommendations based on what you’re currently enjoying or explore a completely different genre. If you find recommendations that don’t quite fit what you’re looking for, you can ask Taste Profile for a more specific vibe or ask it not to recommend certain music altogether, which I imagine will be the case for many avid listeners.
For many users, Spotify’s algorithm can be unpredictable and its recommendations can fall flat, but for the first time, Taste Profile gives you direct control over what you want to see more of in your feed and what you want to see less of. This is a feature we’ve been anticipating since it was first spotted in code strings a few weeks ago, and while I’m intrigued to try it out myself, I fear it could go in one of two different directions.
There’s no doubt that Taste Profile adds a whole new layer to Spotify and is a one-of-a-kind feature that not even its rivals have tackled. Spotify has been criticized for flooding the platform with AI debris, and while I’ve largely managed to avoid such content, Taste Profile would be perfect to ensure it stops for users who stumble upon it more than they want.
But it’s the accuracy factor that makes Taste Profile a contender to be one of Spotify’s most valuable features. Before its announcement, you could adapt your algorithm using a multitude of tips and tricks; for example, excluding certain playlists from your taste profile or blocking individual artists from appearing on Spotify-generated playlists.
This works in the long term, but evolution takes time, while this new feature is designed to prioritize what you want to listen to here and now. My main concern, however, is that Taste Profile will be short-lived, like other customization features, and will only take up more space in Spotify’s already cluttered interface.
As I mentioned, I’ve found that in addition to creating and listening to my own playlists, as well as using the ‘Fans Also Like’ section to find new artists, manually removing artists and playlists from my taste profile has worked wonders to tailor an algorithm that perfectly suits my listening preferences.
I’m sure I’ve trained my algorithm to the point where I’m happy with the music it recommends, so I’m not sure how the new Taste Profile tab will further benefit me. It also raises the question of how well it listens to your feedback because, as I discovered with tools like requested playlists, you have to spend a lot of time editing the prompts for Spotify to give you exactly what you want. So my main concern is that I’ll get bored of it pretty quickly, which will result in me never using it again; I think Spotify should prioritize features like Song DNA.
Despite my reservations, I’m still intrigued to see how Taste Profile changes the game? Absolutely. On paper, it sounds like a useful feature for those struggling to adapt their algorithm; I just hope it doesn’t disappear into the messy background of Spotify.
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