Oh, Spotify. You’ve achieved music and podcast streaming dominance, but you seem to love pissing off your subscriber base. Sometimes it’s not your fault, and sometimes it is. We’re only half a year out from the Spotify Wrapped AI debacle, yeah?
And let’s not even get into that Joe Rogan stuff, because that’s well documented and deserves its own deep dive. Crack a beer, pop some popcorn, and settle in for that one.
No, this time users are griping about ad-like music recommendations, although they’re not new. Spotify has had them around for a while, although the latest round of attention on social media has brought them to the forefront (again). You may have seen them pop up under headings that read “You might like…” with a small disclaimer underneath saying that they’re sponsored recommendations.
Luckily for everyone but Spotify, there’s a way to turn them off. Spotify doesn’t say much to advertise this ability (why would they want to?), but it’s easy to do.
how to turn them off, once and for all
First things first. You’ve got to log into your Spotify account through a browser on a desktop computer. If you head through your Spotify desktop app, it’s just going to take you to the Spotify website on your default browser anyway. So log into your account.
Then click Profile, next to your bio image, if you set one. If you never got around to it, like me, then it’ll just be a silhouette of a person’s bust. No, not that bust. A bust like the marble kind you’d find in a museum, pervert.
Now click Account. It’ll open up a new page. Scroll down most of the way and you’ll see a header labeled “Security and privacy.” Under that, you’ll find Account Privacy. Clicky, clicky.
After you go to Account Privacy, you’ll get a page like my screenshot above. It’s here that you can turn over sponsored music recommendations. It’s not immediately obvious, because the page doesn’t use the language “sponsored content” at all. Rather, it calls them tailored ads and refers to them with vague language.
Click the slider labeled “Process my personal data for tailored ads” so that it’s greyed out. There. Now you’ve turned off the annoying sponsored ad recommendations. While you’re on the page, you may as well scroll down just a teeny bit more and deselect “Process my Facebook data,” too. The less they know about you, the better.
The post How to Turn Off Spotify Premium’s Annoying Sponsored Music Recommendations appeared first on VICE.
