Spotify is testing a feature that turns off personalized song recommendations

Spotify is reportedly testing a tweak that will allow music fans to turn off its popular personalized recommendations system. That system currently allows Spotify to recommend new music based on the songs and artists that a user likes and frequently listens to, but a new report claims that there is work afoot to give people the ability to disable all of that.

The testing was first reported by MacRumors, although it isn't yet clear how it will work or how Spotify will market it. However, it seems likely that Spotify will give users the opportunity to temporarily disable the personalized recommendation system to allow them to listen to songs without having those songs negatively impact future recommendations. The most obvious use for such a feature is road trips where a family member's songs could alter recommendations moving forward. Nobody wants Baby Shark to have an effect on which songs they're recommended, do they?

If that all sounds familiar, it should. Apple recently started testing a similar function in the current iOS 17.2 beta that allows people to disable Apple Music's listening history when they are in a particular Focus Mode. With that in mind, music fans with a Driving Focus Mode could have their listening history disabled when driving but then have it automatically turn back on when they aren't.

Hopefully Spotify follows a similar route with its own feature change and lets users hook into a similar Focus Mode feature as well. Otherwise, they'll have to manually turn off personalized recommendations every time their toddler wants to listen to that same song for the 15th time on repeat.