What you need to know
- Spotify's latest beta announcements highlights Taste Profile, a feature that lets the user see how the platform interprets their tastes and lets them control it.
- Taste Profile will deliver a breakdown of a user's recent artist and genres, while giving them a text box to say what to add more of or less of.
- Recent updates for Spotify include offline lyrics and a Prompted Playlists beta for the U.S. and Canada.
How Spotify gauges your musical tastes for suggestions is getting an upgrade following a beta that's preparing to take flight.
In a Newsroom post, Spotify announced that it's preparing to launch a Taste Profile beta in a select market overseas. Right off the bat, Spotify says Taste Profile will be the user's direct line into how the platform understands what type of music they enjoy listening to. It adds, "Taste Profile is designed to capture new dimensions of your taste, like your current interests and habits." In an attempt to steer the platform and the user's ability more toward personalization and "transparency," Spotify says users in this beta can manipulate their Taste Profile.
A short video showed that, upon entering Taste Profile's beta, Premium testers in New Zealand will see a full breakdown. This breakdown will consist of your "recent taste," including artists you've preferred listening to and any genres. However, the main highlight here is when you scroll down to find the "Tell us more" box.
This text box is where the user can write in what they'd like to hear more of. If you've really been feeling metalcore, Sabrina Carpenter, or maybe the K-Pop group, Itzy, you can let your profile know. Alternatively, as Spotify states, you can also tell the platform what to exclude from your Taste Profile. If it's been giving you too much of a specific genre or artist just because you listened to one or two songs someone recommended, you can tell it to chuck them.
The post states, "Your input helps determine what gets prioritized, what gets dialed back, and what you discover next on the Spotify homepage." As previously stated, this is a test for Premium users rolling out in New Zealand "over the coming weeks."
Walking that personalized line
In the interest of personalization, Spotify had a beta to start the year called "Prompted Playlists." This feature finally expanded its beta to users in the U.S. and Canada, giving Premium the chance to describe to Spotify's systems the type of music they wanted to hear. Prompted Playlists would consider the user's account history, vibes, cultural influences, and more. After hitting "generate," Spotify would compile a playlist that (hopefully) fits the description you've given it, alongside a text description at the top of the list.
Spotify has since rolled out a few more updates, such as one for "About this song," which gives users background insight into an artist's inspiration. The top of February brought offline lyrics to users and the official rollout of lyric "Previews" when viewing the Now Playing screen.
Android Central's Take
Our musical tastes can be quite the conversation starter. I know people whose musical tastes differ from mine and I've gotten into their tastes, alongside my own. I listen to Spotify a lot, especially while writing, and there are times when there's a song that's a bit of an outlier. Maybe it's because of something I listened to in passing or perhaps something from years ago. But this beta, from my understanding, can help us really fine tune it, so that we're only hearing what we want. Thinking of it that way, I'm excited for when this hits the States.
