You are now responsible for your own Spotify algorithm. On stage at SXSW, Spotify co-CEO, Gustav Söderström, announced the Taste Profile feature, which allows users to individually customize exactly what they want to listen to, whether it’s music, audiobooks, or podcasts. This AI-powered feature is still in beta, and 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 a “Tell us more” prompt at the bottom. With the new prompts, users can inform the AI about what they want to see more of or if they want to get rid of a genre that keeps popping up in their algorithms. Spotify said the test profile will also take into account more vague signals, like if you’re training for a marathon and want upbeat music or listen to a news podcast on the way to work. Spotify said that flavor profiles are an optional feature, and that uninterested users can “skip it and enjoy Spotify as usual.”
With the Test Profile, Spotify is continuing its momentum of offering AI features like the Prompted Playlist feature it made available last month. Unlike the existing AI playlist feature, Prompted Playlists lets you make specific requests to create a playlist, such as only including songs from a specific TV show. Like the Test Profile, the Prompted Playlist feature was first beta tested in New Zealand, before expanding to US and Canadian users a month later.
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