Photo Credit: Christian Lambert
Spotify appears to be prepping a way for personalized recommendations to be turned off—though we’re unclear how it would work.
A toggle that turns off personalized recommendations has been found in beta code that Spotify appears to be testing with a small number of users. The option could work as an ‘incognito mode’ to turn-off listening history for recommendations, or personalized recommendations entirely. Spotify’s algorithms combine listening history with data on your favorite listening genres, artists, playlists, and bases recommendations on these combinations.
MacRumors reached out to Spotify to clarify if the feature would be coming to the app soon, but Spotify says it is “evaluating the ability.” There’s no commitment on whether the feature will actually make it into the live version of the app. Spotify has tested several features over the years that haven’t gone anywhere.
However, this is a feature that the Spotify Community has been asking to have incorporated for years. Parents with kids who love Baby Shark and people who only want to listen to music they enjoy yearn for turning off personalized recommendations.
“I have a premium Spotify account and a music playlist that I personally curated. Recently I noticed random songs being played when I listen to my own playlist—songs I do not like. When I go to check what this is, I see that it is a Spotify recommendation. I don’t like the playlist I make for myself being messed up by these Spotify recommendations,” writes one user on the Spotify Community.
“It’s making it impossible for me to listen to music because I have to constantly say what is this song when I just want to let my own playlists rock.”
It’s also impossible to enjoy music when every third or fourth recommendation is a new kid’s song. Sure there’s the Spotify Kids app—but it doesn’t work with CarPlay. So enjoy baby shark doo-doo, doo-doo, doo-doo on your main Spotify account for recs in the morning until this feature is implemented if you have kids.
