Share Spotify? This new toggle keeps your kids' tunes out of your recommendations
Spotify is finally giving parents a way to stop nursery rhymes, film soundtracks and kids' TV themes from taking over their recommendations
by Luke Edwards · T3
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Quick summary
A new Spotify setting lets you exclude kids and family music from your taste profile while still letting you play it as normal.
The change affects recommendations including Discover Weekly, Daily Mix and Wrapped, and applies retrospectively to music you've already listened to.
Are your Spotify recommendations coming up with nursery rhymes, animated movie soundtracks or whatever song your kids currently have on repeat? There's finally a simple way to take back control.
Spotify has introduced a new toggle that lets you stop kids and family music from influencing your personal taste profile. That means you can continue putting on the same songs for the kids without Spotify deciding that they're representative of your own musical tastes.
The new setting is designed for exactly the sort of listening that can wreak havoc on a parent's Spotify profile: songs from animated films, family TV shows, nursery rhymes, lullabies, sing-alongs and other music made for children.
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Once switched off, those tracks can still be searched for, streamed and added to playlists as usual. The difference is that Spotify won't use those streams to shape your personalised recommendations or listening insights.
That includes major parts of the Spotify experience such as Discover Weekly, Daily Mix and Wrapped. Crucially, Spotify says the change also works retrospectively, so music you've already played won't continue to count towards your taste profile.
That could make a big difference to Wrapped, where a year of playing the same children's soundtrack in the car can otherwise leave you wondering whose listening history Spotify has actually been tracking.
How to switch it off
The feature is rolling out globally on mobile for both Free and Premium users, and it's switched on by default. If you want to stop kids and family music affecting your profile, head to your profile picture, then Settings and privacy > Content and display, and switch off Include kids and family music in taste profile.
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Spotify says it can take up to 48 hours for the change to fully appear in personalised recommendations.
There's also no need to worry about accidentally blocking the music itself. The setting only changes how Spotify uses that listening to personalise your experience, so you can still put on Frozen, Bluey or nursery rhymes whenever the kids demand them.
The update builds on Spotify's existing option to exclude individual tracks and playlists from your taste profile, but makes the process far more useful for parents who regularly share their account with their children.