The feature, announced at SXSW by co-CEO Gustav Söderström, allows Premium listeners to view and influence the data model behind their recommendations, starting with a beta rollout in New Zealand
Spotify’s recommendation engine has quietly shaped user experiences for a decade, observing plays, skips, and inferring patterns without disclosing its conclusions. On Friday, at SXSW in Austin, Spotify aimed to change this.
Gustav Söderström, Spotify’s co-CEO, introduced Taste Profile: a new feature revealing the algorithmic model the platform builds for each user, allowing direct user modifications. The beta will start with Premium subscribers in New Zealand soon.
The concept is simple. Taste Profile consolidates a listener’s activity across music, podcasts, and audiobooks into a single view: recent genres, frequently played artists, and listening patterns.
If a user finds inaccuracies in their profile, such as an emphasis on old preferences or omissions of current interests, they can address it. Users can request more or less of certain vibes or describe current contexts like training or commuting, influencing homepage recommendations.
“This is the next step in our vision to make personalization more transparent, responsive, and truly yours,” Söderström stated at SXSW.
Spotify noted that over 80% of its listeners prioritize personalization. This claim, reiterated since 2023, elevates algorithmic curation as a core reason for user retention.
Taste Profile’s competitive logic is clear: if personalization is key, offering users more control enhances their engagement.
The announcement follows Spotify’s expansion of Prompted Playlist, a related feature allowing playlist generation through natural language, from New Zealand trials to Premium users in the US and Canada in January 2026, and later to Australia, Ireland, Sweden, and the UK in February. This sequence is intentional.
Both features support the idea that streaming personalization’s future is collaborative, not passive.
While Prompted Playlist generates new content from descriptions, Taste Profile adjusts the existing model, giving users a chance to review and refine what years of listening have documented.
Regardless of whether users have been passive or have specific preferences, the feature accommodates both. “You can shape your Taste Profile as much as you’d like,” Spotify stated, “or leave it and enjoy Spotify as usual.”
The beta will launch in New Zealand, a frequent testing ground for Spotify’s AI-adjacent features, including the initial Prompted Playlist launch. No timeline is provided for global release, and Taste Profile will be exclusive to Premium subscribers, with no indication of its availability for free-tier accounts.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2026, Spotify’s SXSW lineup includes concerts, a keynote by Söderström, country artist Lainey Wilson, and podcast host David Friedberg.
The Taste Profile announcement concluded the company’s main SXSW events, marking a product-focused note during the celebration.
Beyond functionality, the feature represents a shift in Spotify’s listener relationship, highlighting the algorithm’s presence and granting users influence as a feature in itself.