Does "Private Session" or "Offline Mode" affect Discover Weekly suggestions?

[dmiller3]

I've researched extensively and am getting contradictory information as to whether or not listening in a Private Session or in Offline Mode affects Discover Weekly. It looks like that around a year ago it did affect DW, but now it seems they may have changed it?

I listen to a lot of ambient stuff at night and don't want it to affect my recommendations. My question is if I can solve this by entering a private session or downloading and listening offline.

Thanks.

[itu_]

Hey! Welcome the Spotify Community!

As far as I know, "Private Session" or "Offline Mode" will not stop tracks from being used for Discover Weekly. It is mostly intended to listen to whatever you want, without having to concern about who knows what you are listening to.

Therefore, if you listen a lot of ambient music, some suggestions will be related or similar to it. But fear not! Spotify always takes in consideration the genres you listen the most!

If you need anything else, let me know 🙂

[Bittencourt]

Hey @dmiller3,

The Discovery Weekly songs are based on your listening history and the listening history of others with similar tastes to you. This means you actually need to listen to music via Spotify to count that in. So things like saving a song or adding it to a playlist won't count as music played. Also, it doesn't make any difference if you use Private session or not.

The only thing that won't affect your weekly suggestions is listening to your Discover Weekly playlist.

Hope this clears things up! You can also read Spotify's blog post for further info.

Cheers,

[joschhh]

Are you guys sure about that or are you just writing what you think? I've read that listening in private mode won't affect the music taste AI, respectively your Discover Weekly playlists.

About a year ago there was an idea submitted, which was about an "ignore mode" to exclude songs played during a session and thereby prevent messing up your personal music suggestions aka taste profile. The idea got closed because this feature is already implemented within the "private session" mode.

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Private Session fills what you're requesting: not only does it prevent it private listening sessions from appearing in your public profile and on Facebook, it also blocks these songs from influencing your Taste Profile (aka, Discover Weekly content).

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Source: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Closed-Ideas/Discover-Ignore-Mode/idi-p/1347777

Cheers

[aalexking]

As far as I know, "Offline Mode" and "Private Session" only affect who can see what you're listening to, so it stops your friends etc. from seeing what you are listening to. However, I don't think it affects what is on your Discover Weekly as Spotify considers everything you have listened to when it puts your Discover Weekly together. Hope this hepls!

[Bittencourt]

Hi @joschhh,

You're correct. I'm sorry for providing a wrong information. It was based on a Spotify's employee post back in 2015, but I should have done a better research. 

I did now, and I can assure that when the private session is enabled, the system will not consider all the music that's been played when the playlist is created. In other words, the private session does affect the Discover Weekly playlist.

Thank you all for helping making this clear 🙂