Spotify finally brings Taste Profile to the US, and it sounds like a boon for your iffy feed

In October last year, Spotify started testing a new feature that let users prevent certain songs from affecting their called Taste Profile. The whole idea behind this new trick was to let users customize their music feed and what they see on the homepage based on their specific preferences. Officially, Taste Profile became its own feature and went into the testing phase in May this year, but only for a limited audience. Now, it’s finally making its way to the US market.

Earlier today, Spotify announced that Taste Profile is now available to all users who are above 18 years of age in the US. “Taste Profile gives you more control over your recommendations, whether you want to explore beyond your usual interests or fine-tune what you already love. For the first time, you can see Spotify’s brief interpretation of your taste across music, podcasts, and audiobooks,” says the company.

The best part about this feature is that it’s not an overtly technical upgrade and doesn’t need any learning curve. Instead, it takes a conversational approach. So, when you swipe on the homepage and access the Taste Profile option in the side menu, you get a text box where you can write in natural language what it is that you want Spotify to show you more or less of. You can ask it to play more Pink songs in the evening, or surface more news-focused podcasts.

Spotify says these notes ultimately dictate what you see on your home feed, whether it’s discovery of new music, podcast, or a certain kind of audiobooks. Interestingly, the conversational notes that you feed into the Taste Profile search box don’t only cover genres of music, but they also dynamically respond to a certain mood, emotion, or areas of interest, like history, technology, or art.

You just have to describe what exactly it is that you want to hear more of, and your home feed and recommendations will be tailored accordingly. In order to check out the new feature, tap on the profile picture icon in the top corner, open the menu panel, click on Taste Profile, and type your note underneath the Tell us more, label.

Spotify says that once you have dropped a note to adjust your Taste Profile, you will see the changes reflected within a few hours. There’s also an option to edit or delete the notes that you have previously fed into the Taste Profile system. Spotify is separately working on a cache limit feature that lets users handle how much space Spotify’s temporary files take up on your phone’s storage.

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