Spotify's Taste Profile reaches US Premium users with plain-language control over recommendations

Spotify opens its recommendation engine to US Premium users

Spotify has begun rolling out a feature called Taste Profile to Premium subscribers in the United States, giving them a first look at how the service's recommendation system interprets their listening habits — and a direct way to change that interpretation. According to TechCrunch, the rollout started on Wednesday and is available to listeners aged 18 and over.

The feature shows users Spotify's current model of their taste across music, podcasts and audiobooks, and lets them request adjustments in plain language: more variety, fewer suggestions from a particular genre, less of a specific artist, or a shift in the overall mood of what appears in the Home feed.

From New Zealand beta to Spotify's largest market

Taste Profile was first previewed in March at the SXSW conference in Austin by Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström. Until now, the beta had only been available to listeners in New Zealand. The US arrival moves it into the country TechCrunch identifies as Spotify's largest market by both traffic and revenue, making this a far bigger test of whether users will actually engage with algorithm controls at scale.

The feature remains in beta, and Spotify has not provided a timeline for a broader release.

How it works

On the mobile app, users tap their profile picture, scroll down and select Taste Profile. From there they can review how Spotify currently categorizes their preferences, then use a "Tell us more" field to describe what they would like adjusted. TechCrunch reports that the Home feed reflects the new suggestions within a few hours of submitting a request.

The feature's reach goes beyond the Home feed. According to TechCrunch, Taste Profile is the underlying model that drives what Spotify suggests in Discover Weekly, its Made for You playlists and the annual Wrapped recap, meaning edits here can cascade across the product.

Spotify suggests the tool can help listeners explore an unfamiliar genre or era when they don't know where to start, tilt recommendations toward more energizing tracks, or shape the podcasts and audiobooks the service surfaces.

A fix for stale and skewed recommendations

The launch addresses a long-running frustration: recommendation systems that keep serving more of the same. TechCrunch notes that Spotify's suggestions often fail to reflect how tastes evolve, pushing similar music when a listener would rather branch out.

The feature also tackles incidental listening that pollutes the model, such as sleep sounds played at night or the music a teenager streams on a parent's account during car rides. Users can now tell Spotify to stop letting that activity shape future suggestions.

Previously, the company's controls were narrower. Users could exclude individual tracks or playlists from their taste profile, and Spotify more recently added a toggle to keep children's music from affecting parents' recommendations. Taste Profile replaces those piecemeal options with a single, language-based editing surface.

Why it matters

Spotify's recommendation engine has long been viewed as central to its competitive edge, and this launch makes a portion of that engine visible and editable for the first time. It marks a shift from purely opaque personalization toward a model where users can audit and correct the assumptions the system makes about them — something few consumer platforms offer.

If natural-language tuning proves effective in Spotify's biggest market, it could pressure other streaming and content services to offer similar transparency. It also has practical value beyond curiosity: households sharing accounts and listeners with situational habits stand to get meaningfully better recommendations. The open questions are adoption and durability — the feature is still in beta, and Spotify has not committed to a timeline or confirmed whether free-tier users will ever get access.