You open Spotify and Home is already a verdict. On September 23, 2026, Spotify started rolling out Taste Profile in beta to Premium listeners ages 18 and older in the United States, after testing it in New Zealand earlier this year. For the first time, those listeners see a brief interpretation of their taste across music, podcasts, and audiobooks, and a note they can send about what Home should pick up or drop.
It is not on every account. It is Premium, 18 and older, in the United States and New Zealand, and still in beta. Spotify has not given a date for anyone else.
What the Taste Profile Actually Shows
The control is in the mobile app. Tap your profile picture, open Taste Profile, and read how Spotify currently understands you. Under “Tell us more,” you type the change and send it.
Spotify calls those notes gentle guidance for the Home feed. You can ask for a genre or era, a different mood, or podcast and audiobook topics you actually want. Its own examples include ’90s alt-rock, modern indie pop, music that feels energizing, and subjects such as tech, history, or art.
Changes typically show up within a few hours. You can edit or delete a note, or leave the profile alone.
TechCrunch reported the feature was unveiled in March 2026 at SXSW in Austin by co-CEO Gustav Söderström, then limited to a New Zealand beta. The US rollout is a larger test. The company did not offer a timeline for a broader release.
A Note Steers the Home Feed
Exclude from Taste Profile already lets a listener drop a specific track or playlist. More recently, parents can keep kids and family music from moving the algorithm. Those controls remove one input.
Taste Profile is the new box: you write, in your own words, what you want more of and what you are finished with. Spotify says Home follows. TechCrunch described practical cases the old tools missed — sleep sounds played at night, a teenager’s music on a parent’s account, or a feed that keeps offering near-copies when you want something else.
This is not a settings walkthrough. The useful part for a business is what happens when the guess is wrong and nobody can answer it.
Your Homepage Makes the Same Guess
A recommendation nobody can correct is a homepage that picked the wrong customer. A visitor in Kirkwood wanted a Thursday loaf. The first screen is still wedding cakes and a tasting button, because that is what last month’s campaign sold.
They do not file a complaint. They leave. You paid for the visit and lost the order.
That is a different failure from a layout where every block shouts at the same volume. Hierarchy is the order of the page. This is the page stating a life the visitor does not have, with no field to correct it.
User research is how a team stops designing from the last campaign alone. Taste Profile is the public version of a smaller honesty: show the assumption, then let the person reply.
Where the Reply Is Missing
You will recognize these without a product spec.
- One screen, one customer: the hero, the menu, and the ad all describe last month’s buyer. Everyone else has to translate.
- A next step that assumes yes: “Book a tasting” when they wanted a loaf. There is no second path, so the honest move is the back button.
- Copy that invents their week: “You are planning a wedding” in the first line. Microcopy can name a real job to be done. It should not assign a life they did not claim.
If the correction is buried, it does not exist. Spotify put Taste Profile behind the profile picture, on mobile, for a slice of Premium. A shop does not get that excuse: the person is already on the page.
Read Your First Screen Out Loud
Do this on the phone, the way a stranger would.
- Cover the logo. Who does this page think just arrived?
- Look for the reply. Is there a path for the person who is not that customer — a second offer, a plain question, a menu that is not the hero?
- Ask someone who does not work with you what they would tap if the hero is wrong. If they would leave, the wrong guess already cost you the visit.
On Spotify, a note typically reaches Home within a few hours. On your site, the wrong sentence stays up until you replace it.
Give Them a Way to Correct You
The first line of your homepage is a taste profile you already published. Spotify wrote one down and, for some listeners, left a box underneath. Your site can do the smaller version: one line that says who the page is for, and a next step for everyone else.
If the first screen still describes a customer you no longer want, or hides the offer the real one came for, that is UX work — the sentence, the paths, and a reply that does not require a support ticket. We design that on our UX and UI page.
Bring the URL and the customer you keep missing. Fifteen minutes on the calendar is enough to see whether the guess is the problem.
