How to exclude artist and/or genre from recommendations

[crabby7]

Hello,

We are using Spotify Family since a very long time and are all happy with it. But I do have a problem since 1 year now and I'm starting to get mad about it.

So, what happened is that last summer, my son used my phone to cast music during a party. He played rap, then rap, and rap again. After that, as expected, rap artists appeared on my automatic playlist (recommended, new issues...). I thought, after a while, all this rap would disapear as i don't listen rap at all myself.

After 1 year, I still get maybe 5-10% of recommended tracks or new issues as rap and I'm getting mad about it as i need to jump quick on my device to move to next track hopping Spotify will not count it as listenned.

After one year of fighting, I'm really sick to be forced to listen rap when I relax or even sleep (yes, I often sleep listening music).

So here is my question/demand : is it possible to block artist / genre so spotify won't ever include it in the weekly playlist again?

[CHR_M]

Hello Yordan,
Thank you for your reply.

Unfortunately, I don't think this is a solution to my problem that I would like to implement. I am generally interested in the audiobook artist. That's why I wouldn't like to use "not interested". I just don't want him in music playlists or in automatically generated playlists from Spotify.

I have now tried hiding him in the 2010 Mix Playlist. However, I realized that hiding only works on the smartphone and the tracks hidden there are still displayed in the Windos version.

So it seems that there is no solution?

[MihailY]

Hey @CHR_M,

Unfortunately, we're not aware of a different workaround for this, so if you don't want to see audiobook chapters being included in your personalized playlists, we'd suggest voting for this idea.

Cheers,

[JimmyWigs]

Well, the button no longer exists in the Spotify app now, so how do we hide an artist in 2023?

[the__mrc]

Premium Plan

USA

Device

iPhone 11/Windows Laptop

My Question or Issue

Hello, 
Spotify keeps recommending an artist that I want to remove from my recommendations completely. I have already selected "Don't play this artist" on my phone. I don't see the option on the desktop app. Whenever I open my phone, that artist is the first thing I see and I really, really hate their music. Despite having selected "Don't play this artist" they came up in radio just now. 

How can I remove them from my recommendations? I am thinking of deleting my spotify account if this feature doesn't exist. 

[CptShadows]

you guys need to go to the artist on spotify mobile, then press the 3 dots on their profile and choose "don't play artist".. it used to be an option on the songs themselves whenever they were put in "discover weekly" or "release radar" playlists before, but now it just hides that song. before we could say "I don't like this artist". I swear spotify just gets worse by every year

[davidjhixon]

I just had the DJ start suggesting Christian rock... a genre I hate with a passion. I am not about to go through every single artist of that genre and block all of them, but the fact that it thought I wanted to hear it really annoys me. There has to be a way to tell spotify you hate certain types of music!

[gatorbee]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

iPhone 15

Operating System

iOS 17.5.1

My Question or Issue

For the past few weeks I’ve been having the same issue where songs from a playlist I’ve explicitly excluded from my taste profile keeps getting thrown into mixes, my “on repeat”, etc. Basically, it’s quietly infecting other playlists that those songs have no business being on. Lol. So I looked to the support boards and found a couple of purported solutions from only one or two posts, including logging out everywhere, re-including it in my taste profile then excluding it again, logging in and out twice, etc. and while it might reset it for a bit, if I go back to listen to something on that excluded playlist, it’ll pop back up soon enough on my others. Super annoying. And yes, I’m definitely only listening to that stuff within that playlist and not outside of it, nor are there other playlists it could be from.

If anyone has had this happen before and figured out how to make it permanently stop, please let me know!! Otherwise I’m just posting here so hopefully Spotify sees this is a continuing issue 😞

[gatorbee]

Plan

Premium

Country

United States

Device

iPhone 15

Operating System

iOS 17.5.1

My Question or Issue

For the past few weeks I’ve been having the same issue where songs from a singular playlist that I’ve explicitly excluded from my taste profile keeps getting thrown into mixes, my “on repeat”, etc. Basically, it’s quietly infecting other playlists that those songs have no business being on. Lol. So I looked to the support boards and found a couple of purported solutions from only one or two posts, including logging out everywhere, re-including it in my taste profile then excluding it again, logging in and out twice, etc. and while it might reset it initially, if I go back to listen to something on that excluded playlist, it’ll pop back up once again on my others. Super annoying. And yes, I’m definitely only listening to that stuff within that playlist and not outside of it, nor are there other playlists it could be from.

If anyone has had this happen before and figured out how to make it permanently stop, please let me know!! Otherwise I’m just posting here so hopefully Spotify sees this is a continuing issue 😞

[machineabuse]

The lack of any method to exclude genres/artists from suggestions and playlist generation makes this service progressively bad over time.

Look, your algorithm has no idea WHY a music choice was made, be it that it was used for a social event, a joke or that the user actually liked the music. Without being able to make that distinction why the **bleep** won't you give people the ability to manually separate the wheat from the chaff?

It's reached the point where I'm strongly considering deleting my accounts just to start with a clean slate.

[Dbinder101]

My Question or Issue

I've been playing many of the "Made For You" playlists and it seems that almost all of them include too many tracks from the same  artist. Is there a way  I can filter out certain artists so that it doesn't focus so much on a specific artist?

[Eickswag]

Hi Spotify Team,

I hope you’re doing well! I wanted to share a suggestion that could improve the listening experience for users with different music habits.

I listen to classical music while working, but outside of work, I prefer other genres like pop and rock. Since I spend more time listening to classical while I work, it’s started to dominate my Discover Weekly and other recommendations, which doesn’t fully reflect my personal taste.

Would it be possible to add a feature that lets us exclude certain playlists or listening sessions from influencing recommendations? Maybe a toggle to mark work/focus playlists that don’t affect the algorithm, or an enhancement to the “Private Session” feature that keeps the algorithm separate from the social aspect.

I think this could really help users who switch between different types of music depending on the situation!

Thanks for considering this!

[Scoochy]

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

Device

iPhone 15 Pro

Operating System

iOS 18.1

My Question or Issue

I often uses Spotify to play nature sounds/white noise overnight. Now all of my recommendations are for nature sounds instead of the music and podcasts that I actually like to listen to when I'm awake and not just trying to block out nighttime background noise.

Is there any way to tell Spotify to not include specific "songs" in its recommendation algorithm? Or just delete or dislike recommendations? The "hide song" feature seems too extreme. I don't need to hide nature sounds tracks. I just don't want them in my recommendations.

[Sigistrix]

This is not helpful for when one wants to remove someone/thing from their recommends.  I am NOT going to listen to Tucker ****ing Carlson just to be able to remove him.  Same goes for Glenn Beck and all those horses asses of the apocalypse.

[Sigistrix]

My issue is on the Desktop app (current-most).  There is nothing to indicate there is any way to block, remove, hide things I don't want to see or hear. And, the solution says that I have to be listening to said garbage to be able to get rid of them.  I just want to get rid of things I will never, ever, EVER, listen to in the first place.

[MTA-P]

Plan

Premium

Country

New Zealand 

Device

(Android phone)

Operating System

(Android.)

My Question or Issue

I've been playing a game called Music Leagues in which other players submit songs to a playlist that everyone votes on. So I've been mostly listening to music that other people chose and my listening habits don't reflect my tastes. So when I signed up to premium, I "favourited" like a hundred artists that I liked, in order to quickly train the algorithm in what I like. 

But the algorithm, the daily mixes, and especially the AI DJ seem to be ignoring this information and just looking at my history, music that I mostly didn't choose.

Poor old DJ X is tearing his hair out trying to determine my tastes, and keeps repeating my Wrapped top 5 and riffing on that. I can't train the algorithm by liking songs because I mostly listen while driving. The only feedback I can give is skips. 

(Sometimes I'll play a song to the end just to give him a win. I feel bad for him.)

This is frustrating when there's a list of favourited artists right there. 

I've been through my history since I switched to premium and liked all the good songs. Hopefully this refines it. But it's weird and annoying that it's ignoring the information that I offered freely.

[klpratt8749]

I often listen to instrumental music while sleeping and since this makes up a large portion of my listening time, my suggested content and playlists are mostly the same type of music. I don't want more of this to be suggested to me - I'm not picky about it and actually I usually listen to the same playlist. I would like more suggested content of the music I listen to for entertainment/enjoyment. Is there a way to do this? I'm not even sure what to type in the search bar for potential solutions. I have a Premium Individual account, but my thought would be to have a separate user account for the instrumental/sleep music, however I don't want to pay more money or use a free account and potentially have commercials wake me up. 
Thank you!

Plan

Premium

Country

USA

[ClaireSun]

Plan: premium

I keep seeing Ariana Grande’s face on the covers of recommended playlists and I don’t want that. I thought once I banned the artist the. I won’t see them again.

[12176822238]

Plan

Premium

Country

Canada

Device

(Android and PC)

Operating System

(Android, Windows 10)

My Question or Issue

I frequently use focus playlists for work. I listen to other genres for enjoyment. All of my new music recommendations are classical, electronic ambient, etc. similar to the focus playlists. I want my recommendations to be sourced from all the other non-focus playlist music that I enjoy listening to. Is there any way to block the Spotify algorithm from including the focus playlists in the general recommendation algorithm? 

[Vin8tan]

It really bothers me that we don't have full control over the home page of a service I'm paying for. I really don't need religious music, especially Christian music because it's really offensive, especially, white, American Christian music.

[alicianalozada]

Hello,

This is Aliciana 

I've been user for a long, but as Christian I do only wish to hear my church music, in the spiritual section, but the app shows me a rainbow of different religions, so I can not use the app fully because of those changes and as I try to block those other artists, the keep sending more and more mixing my selection with things I do no wish to hear, is there any way to block that spiritual automatic selection, to only hear my church Music when I play it?

I do here a lot of different music genres but it's really annoying trying to be focus when this chabges comes talking about the spiritual section I do wish to block that.

Really grateful for your help and aware for you answer to check of its possible to continue with my subscription.