Spotify hands control of AI recommendations to users with new Taste Profile feature

AI-Recommended Music? Spotify Is Giving You the Power to Personalize

Macy has been working for CNET for coming on 2 years. Prior to CNET, Macy received a North Carolina College Media Association award in sports writing. A new Spotify feature promises to let you review and customize your Taste profile, Co-CEO Gustav Söderström announced during a session at South by Southwest Friday. Right now, Spotify's Taste Profile is AI-driven based on your listening habits, history and song preferences. The in-app AI analyzes what you skip, play, repeat, revisit and save to personalize the recommendations you see in Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes and Wrapped playlists. But this new feature is giving you, the listener, the power to shape what you see. This feature is currently in beta and will begin rolling out first to listeners in New Zealand in the coming weeks. With this feature, Spotify is taking you under the hood to show you how the app understands your music taste. Then you can edit it for yourself to mold what you're recommended on Spotify's homepage. Want to listen to more Justin Bieber? You can ask for more. Want less house music added to your recommended playlists? Ask for less. You can also tell the app what genres and artists you're in the mood for, or if there's a certain vibe you're looking to curate. Over time, your input will fine-tune your music recommendations, so what gets prioritized, queued and discovered on Home is curated with your help.

Spotify's new Taste Profile feature lets users fine-tune their algorithm's recommendations

You're responsible for your own Spotify algorithm now. On stage at SXSW, Spotify's co-CEO, Gustav Söderström, announced the Taste Profile feature, which allows users to personally customize exactly what they want to listen to, whether it's music, audiobooks or podcasts. This AI-powered feature is still in beta, and it will be available to Premium users in New Zealand in the coming weeks. From its short video demo, Spotify's Taste Profile feature will show you a summary of your listening habits and offer a "Tell us more" prompt at the bottom. With the new prompt, users can inform the AI what they want to see more of or if they want to get rid of a genre that keeps popping up in their algorithm. Spotify said that the Taste Profile will take into consideration more ambiguous prompts, too, like if you're training for a marathon and want upbeat music or want to listen to news podcasts during your commute to work. Spotify added that Taste Profile is an optional feature, and unwilling users can "leave it and enjoy Spotify as usual." With Taste Profile, Spotify is continuing its momentum of offering AI features, like the Prompted Playlist feature that was made available last month. Unlike the existing AI Playlist feature, Prompted Playlist lets you put in specific requests to generate a playlist, like only including songs from a specific TV show. Like Taste Profile, the Prompted Playlist feature saw beta testing in New Zealand first, before expanding to US and Canadian users a month later.

Spotify's newest feature will let you control your recommendations - 9to5Mac

Spotify was early to the algorithmically recommended music game. Now the company is testing a feature that lets listeners have more direct input over what Spotify recommends. The feature is called Taste Profile, and it's currently in beta. If you've ever created custom preferences inside an AI chatbot app, Spotify's Taste Profile feature works a lot like that. You tell it what you want to be recommended, or what listening habits you have in mind, and it informs your recommendations. Here's more on how it works from Spotify: Taste Profile lets you see how Spotify understands your taste and shape it yourself, giving you the ability to steer what you see on the Spotify homepage. It brings together what you listen to across music, podcasts, and audiobooks, from the artists and genres you love to the habits that define your day. You might see that you're starting to explore '90s alternative rock, or gravitating toward hip-hop with distinctive influences. If something doesn't feel quite right, you can tell us by flagging when your profile misses the mark -- asking for more or less of a certain vibe, or simply sharing what you're in the mood for. Your input helps determine what gets prioritized, what gets dialed back, and what you discover next on the Spotify homepage. As a beta feature, Taste Profile won't be readily available just yet. Instead, Spotify is testing it with Premium subscribers first in New Zealand, starting in the coming weeks. Recently, Spotify has released new features for all subscribers like making playlists sound better and recommending audiobooks.

Spotify just handed the keys to your taste profile to millions of subscribers -- here's how to change it

Spotify is finally letting users take a look under the hood and seize the reins of their recommendations. At Friday's SXSW conference, Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström announced a major update that fundamentally changes how your listening data is shared and influenced by both other users and Spotify's algorithmic model. It's called your Taste Profile, an AI-powered feature that lets you customize what music, audiobooks, or podcasts you want to listen to. It's still in beta for now and will roll out to Premium users in New Zealand first before a wider launch in the coming weeks. With it, your once-private taste profile is more transparent and easily tweaked than ever. For those of us who treat our Spotify feeds like a digital sanctuary, this shift might feel a bit invasive. But don't worry; now you don't have to let your toddler's "Baby Shark" phase or your Jam session that went off the rails with one too many sea shanties wreck your recommendations. Taste Profile surfaces everything Spotify understands about your preferences in one place, such as listening patterns, most-played artists, and preferred genres. Users can then edit this profile and fine-tune Spotify's future recommendations. Training for a marathon? Tell Spotify you want more pulse-pounding, high-energy tunes. Commute dragging on forever? Ask for some new podcasts to listen to. Spotify will tailor future recommendations based on the vibe you want, and change the homepage to reflect these new suggestions. The company added that Taste Profile is an optional feature, and users are free to "leave it and enjoy Spotify as usual." How to change your Spotify Taste Profile To check out your Taste Profile, tap on your profile picture in the Spotify app or on desktop. Scroll down and select Taste Profile, where you'll see a breakdown of everything Spotify has gleaned about your tastes. Tweaks can be made using natural language prompts. This is where Spotify's AI push is headed Taste Profile is Spotify's second big AI feature to roll out so far this year. Last month, the company brought Prompted Playlist, which lets you put in specific requests to generate a playlist, such as only including shows from a specific show you like, to the U.S. and Canada after testing it out in New Zealand. It signals a larger shift in how Spotify sees algorithmic curation, not as something its users passively engage with but rather another tool in their arsenal to shape their listening experience as they see fit. Prompted Playlist remains exclusive to Spotify Premium, and Taste Profile is likely going to remain behind that paywall for the time being. There's no word yet one when us plebs will get it. Follow Tom's Guide on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds.

Spotify Co-CEO Gustav Söderström Puts Listeners in Charge of Taste Algorithms

Söderström's latest move puts Spotify's recommendation engine under user control, turning "taste" into a setting instead of a fixed label. Gustav Söderström, one of Spotify's new co-CEOs, has only been at the helm of the Swedish streaming giant for a couple of months. But he's already making his mark with a whirlwind of features designed to give users more control over how they consume music. His latest move, unveiled onstage at this year's SXSW yesterday (March 13), allows listeners to edit Spotify's interpretation of their personal taste. Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter Sign Up Thank you for signing up! By clicking submit, you agree to our <a href="http://observermedia.com/terms">terms of service</a> and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime. See all of our newsletters Users will soon be able to review and tweak their Taste Profile, the algorithmic summary of their preferences that shapes their home page, generated playlists and experiences like Spotify Wrapped. They can then ask for more or less of a specific genre, artist or even "vibe," directly steering how the recommendation engine responds. "Taste is not fact. It's an option," said Söderström while speaking at SXSW. Söderström and fellow co-CEO Alex Norström took over the Stockholm-based company in January, after longtime chief Daniel Ek stepped down at the end of 2025 to become Spotify's executive chairman. Both are veterans: Söderström has been with Spotify for 17 years and Norström for 15. The duo previously served as co-presidents, with Söderström also acting as chief product and tech officer and Norström as chief business officer. They will keep their focus on product and business, respectively, but say they plan to synchronize their work rather than run separate fiefdoms with distinct teams and meetings. Even before becoming co-CEO, Söderström had ramped up Spotify's product cadence, with the company rolling out 50 new features and updates last year. Recent launches include the Prompted Playlist tool, introduced in January, which creates customized playlists based on user prompts and listening history, and Spotify DJ, an interactive A.I. assistant first released in 2023. The updated Taste Profile builds on these personalization bets. Users will be able to see how Spotify "reads" their listening habits -- for instance, noticing that they have been leaning more into 90s alternative rock or hip-hop -- and then nudge the system in a new direction. Typing feedback like "I want to start listening to more Justin Bieber" will push that preference across their recommendations. Personalization is also central to Spotify's broader strategy to dominate not just music, but also podcasts and audiobooks. The company has expanded its video podcast offerings through partnerships with platforms like Netflix and is doubling down on its audiobook while moving into physical book sales. Spotify now has 751 million monthly active users and counts about 3.5 percent of the world's population as subscribers, and it is aiming to grow that figure to 10 percent or even 15 percent. The new Taste Profile features will roll out to Premium listeners in New Zealand in the coming weeks before expanding more broadly. Users can opt in to fine-tune their preferences -- or simply keep listening as they always have.