How to exclude specific Spotify playlists from your taste profile

Learn how to stop specific Spotify playlists like your favorite workout music from influencing recommendations you see by excluding them from your taste profile.

As you use Spotify, the app builds out your taste profile based on the songs, playlists and artists you listen to most. The taste profile informs the algorithm about your listening habits, which enables Spotify to recommend new stuff you might like.

But what if you’d like to stop specific playlists from influencing your taste profile?

What is a taste profile on Spotify? How does it work?

An iPhone running Spotify laid flat on a table alongside AirPods and an Apple Watch
Stop any playlist from influencing recommendations | Image: Cezar Sampaio / Unsplash

But first, what kinds of playlists would be good candidates for the exclusion? A great example would be activity-based playlists for working out, sleeping and parenting. Even though such playlists include carefully curated music to fit those activities, they probably don’t match your general listening habits.

“We understand why you might not want kids’ music popping up in your Blend playlists or white noise dominating your Discover Weekly,” Spotify writes on its For the Record blog. Follow along with our quick tutorial to learn how to exclude specific playlists from your taste profile and make recommendations work better for you.

How to exclude a playlist from your Spotify taste profile

Marketing image showcasing excluding a Spotify playlist from the taste profile
Exclude a playlist from your taste profile in four steps | Image: Spotify

To stop a specific playlist from influencing your Daily Mixes, Discover Weekly and other recommendations on Spotify, including your top songs, use the three-dotted menu to choose the option to exclude the playlist from your taste profile.

  1. Launch Spotify on your iPhone, iPad, Mac or the web.
  2. Navigate to the playlist of your choice.
  3. Hit … (three dots) near the top of the playlist.
  4. Choose the Exclude from your Taste Profile option from the contextual menu.

Check back later if you don’t see the option in the menu. Spotify has just begun rolling this feature out to all users, which will take some time to complete.

Clean up your Daily Mixes and Discover Weekly

Your sleep playlist probably gets a lot of listening time, but we imagine you’d like to avoid the sounds of nature or white noise from ruining your Discover Weekly recommendations. The same goes for those energetic tracks you listen to as motivation during your workouts or a Kidz Bop playlist that keeps your kid happy.

With the ability to exclude any playlist from your taste profile, Spotify makes it a cinch to clean up your Daily Mixes and color the recommendations you see.

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