Spotify Will Soon Let You Block Artists

Yes, it’s finally happening. Spotify seems to be testing a new feature for its app that will allow users to block any artist on the platform. The block button is a much-requested feature from Spotify users, which would allow you to block music from an artist on automatically curated playlists like Discover Weekly, your Daily Mixes, as well as things like global charts.

With an upcoming update, Spotify will let you block music from any artist you don’t like throughout the app. This means it will block music from that artist on your personal library, playlists, automatically curated playlists, charts, radios, and everything else. In fact, you won’t be able to manually play music from an artist you’ve blocked even if you wanted to — and you’d have to unblock an artist before you can play a certain track from them. Blocking an artist doesn’t block tracks they have featured on, however. The feature is going to be amazingly useful if you don’t like music from popular artists and always have to skip through their tracks on public playlists, algorithm-generated playlists and global charts. And you can block people like R. Kelly, too.

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The new feature can be accessed from the  “…” menu on an artist’s page, where you can click “Don’t play this artist” to stop playing music from an artist.

Spotify continues to say that blocking an artist “isn’t possible right now” as of yesterday. The company said back in 2017 that it has decided against offering a block button for artists after “serious” consideration. And it seems like that’s not the case anymore.

The new block button for artists still seems limited to a small number of users. I happen to be part of Spotify’s beta program on iOS, and thus I have access to the new feature, as well as a slightly tweaked design for artists pages. The new feature does not seem to be available on other platforms, including Spotify on the desktop and web. If you are on iOS, however, you will likely receive the feature sometime soon, as the company seems to have been testing it for a few months with a smaller group of users and the firm only started rolling out to a wider group sometime last week.

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Conversation 14 comments

  • Daekar

    21 January, 2019 - 4:37 am

    <p>Great step in the right direction. Now, let me block explicit songs too. Maybe that's a premium thing… </p>

    • mattbg

      Premium Member
      21 January, 2019 - 7:18 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#398344">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p>You’d miss half of most new albums released these days :)</p>

      • Daekar

        21 January, 2019 - 8:45 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#398354">In reply to mattbg:</a></em></blockquote><p>No big loss in my opinion…</p>

    • BMcDonald

      21 January, 2019 - 1:44 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#398344">In reply to Daekar:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>You can do this Premium…but only for mobile devices. Have yet to find a way to do it via the desktop client.</p><p><br></p><p>B</p>

  • wright_is

    Premium Member
    21 January, 2019 - 5:17 am

    <p><em>With an upcoming update, Spotify will let you block music from any artist you like throughout the app.</em></p><p>I'd prefer to block music from artists I don't like. ;-)</p>

    • Mehedi Hassan

      Premium Member
      21 January, 2019 - 7:08 am

      <blockquote><em><a href="#398347">In reply to wright_is:</a></em></blockquote><p><br></p><p>this is what happens when you write something before having the coffee in the morning </p>

      • wright_is

        Premium Member
        21 January, 2019 - 8:25 am

        <blockquote><em><a href="#398352">In reply to Mehedi:</a></em></blockquote><p>It is also the vagaries of the English language, what you wrote is, technically, correct, but can be read both ways. At least it is amusing.</p>

  • m_p_w_84

    21 January, 2019 - 6:17 am

    <p>good choice of test artist </p>

  • mattbg

    Premium Member
    21 January, 2019 - 7:20 am

    <p>With their funding formula, the artists you block would probably still get a cut of your subscription fee if they are popular. Really hope they fix that soon.</p>

  • cayo

    21 January, 2019 - 12:59 pm

    <p>What I would like to see is being able to block Discover Weekly, Daily Mixes, global charts, etc. Spotify, you don't know my music taste and never will, so please stop trying. Just let me pick my own music and stop recommending what to listen every time I start the app. </p>

  • Jeff Mills

    21 January, 2019 - 8:21 pm

    <p>Adios Post Malone! Muahahahaha!</p>

  • misterstuart

    Premium Member
    22 January, 2019 - 11:55 am

    <p>I'd also love to be able to customize the main menu when you start the app to show artists that I'm actually interested in and not just pop garbage. I don't think I'd have enough time in this life to block all the artist that I <em>don't </em>like! </p>

    • mattbg

      Premium Member
      22 January, 2019 - 4:10 pm

      <blockquote><em><a href="#398679">In reply to misterstuart:</a></em></blockquote><p>This is one of the big shortcomings – no matter how much I don't listen to pop and trap music, somehow it always wants to try and get me to listen to more of it and I have no idea why.</p>

  • skane2600

    23 January, 2019 - 4:53 pm

    <p>I'd prefer a whitelist to blacklist. There's probably thousands of artists I wouldn't be interested in hearing. It's like dealing with spam phone calls – it's a hassle to have to block each phone number individually.</p>

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