Spotify is testing a long-awaited upgrade that gives listeners more control over the recommendations they see every day. Announced at SXSW by Spotify co-CEO Gustav Söderström, the new feature (now launching in beta) lets users review and edit their Taste Profile for the first time—Spotify’s algorithm-driven model of what you like to listen to.
If you’ve ever wondered why Spotify keeps pushing the “wrong” songs, artists, or playlists, your Taste Profile is the reason. It’s the engine behind Spotify’s biggest personalization features, including Discover Weekly, the Made For You hub, and even your end-of-year Spotify Wrapped summary. When that profile gets noisy or inaccurate, everything downstream can feel off, from your Home feed suggestions to the playlists Spotify builds around your habits.
With this beta release, Spotify will start by offering the feature to Premium listeners in New Zealand. The idea is simple: bring all of your listening signals into one place inside the app—across music, podcasts, and audiobooks—so you can finally see what Spotify thinks you’re into. From there, you can adjust your profile and steer future recommendations by requesting more or less of a certain vibe. After you make changes, Spotify says the Home page will update to reflect a refreshed set of suggestions.
Access is designed to be quick. Users can tap their profile picture, scroll down to find the Taste Profile section, and then make edits using natural language prompts. That means instead of hunting through settings or trying to “train” the algorithm indirectly, you can more directly correct what Spotify has learned about you.
Spotify has offered limited controls for some time, but they didn’t go far enough for many listeners. Previously, you could exclude specific tracks or playlists from influencing your taste, but the broader Taste Profile itself remained mostly hidden and difficult to manage. That lack of transparency has fueled a common complaint: Spotify recommendations don’t always match what people actually want to hear.
This problem has only gotten bigger as Spotify accounts are frequently shared in real life. Families often use one account through a smart speaker or a living room TV, and teens might take over music in the car. Even if you’re the main account holder, your listening isn’t always a pure reflection of your preferences. Sleep sounds at night, quiet background tracks during work, or kids’ music can all end up shaping the algorithm in ways you never intended. And because it’s easy to forget what played—or too time-consuming to clean it up later—your Taste Profile can slowly become cluttered with audio you don’t even like.
For many users, the fallout shows up most painfully in Spotify Wrapped. When your year-end “top songs” and “top artists” are hijacked by bedtime playlists or toddler favorites, the recap can feel misleading, frustrating, or outright ruined. Spotify users have been asking for a fix for years, and this new Taste Profile editor is the company’s clearest answer yet.
Spotify says the feature will roll out over the coming weeks in New Zealand before expanding to additional markets. For listeners who want more accurate Discover Weekly picks, better daily recommendations, and a Wrapped that actually reflects their year, this could be one of Spotify’s most meaningful personalization updates in a long time.
