Please Spotify, Grant Me a Music Pause: Understanding the Need to Mute

Key Takeaways

• Spotify’s “Made For You” playlists are highly personalized but can lead to song repetition.
• Streaming services like Pandora offer a “cooldown” feature to avoid repetitive songs.
• Spotify needs to improve its algorithm or provide more control options for users.

One of the main reasons why I continue to use Spotify is its music recommendation features. “Made For You” playlists take a lot of the guesswork out of finding something to play. However, once Spotify knows I like a song, it will play it over and over again. Sometimes, I just need a break.

The Problem

Spotify’s “Made For You” playlists are, as you would expect, heavily geared toward your preferences. In fact, Spotify’s personalization probably goes deeper than you think.

A hyper-specific Spotify genre I recently discovered is called “Coastal Grandmother.” I sent Spotify’s “Coastal Grandmother Mix” playlist to a friend and we quickly realized the songs we were seeing were vastly different. On closer inspection, the playlist description says, “Coastal Grandmother music picked just for you.“ I didn’t expect a genre mix to be so personalized.

That’s exactly why songs can easily get repetitive if you listen to a lot of Spotify’s personalized playlists. For example, as I’m writing this, my Daylist is called “happy indie stomp and holler friday afternoon.” Without looking, I knew “Happy Idiot” by TV On The Radio was going to be in the playlist, and it was. Liking a song shouldn’t mean I’m destined to hear it every day of my life for the rest of time.

The Solution

Streaming services figured out the solution to this problem a long time ago. Remember Pandora? It pioneered the concept of music recommendation when it launched all the way back in 2005. As far as I can tell, one of the original features was an option in the song menu called “I’m tired of this song.”

The beauty of this feature is you don’t have to make a permanent decision on the song. You can tap “I’m tired of this song,” and you won’t hear it again for a while. Eventually, it will come back into your rotation. Spotify only gives you the option to “Hide this song “—and even that is only available on mobile.

There are very few songs that I dislike enough to want to remove them from my life permanently. And let’s be honest, I’m never going to remember to go back and undo that action a few months later. The “cooldown” approach is much more user-friendly and effective.

I don’t know if Pandora has an ironclad patent on this feature or what—all I know is Spotify is killing me with repeat songs. Spotify is great at a lot of things, but if I’m angry when songs I actually like start playing, there’s a problem. Fix the algorithm or give us more controls, please.

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