Spotify now lets premium users hide songs they hate from playlists

By Simon Cohen Published April 25, 2023

Spotify and playlists. The two words have almost become synonymous. Starting today, everyone’s favorite Spotify feature just got a lot better for the company’s Premium subscribers, thanks to the ability to hide any song you don’t like from a playlist.

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That’s right: Whether it’s one of your playlists, a playlist made by a friend, or even one of Spotify’s own human-curated playlists, you can now eradicate that one track — or two, or 12 — which kept it from being the perfect playlist for you.

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Hidden tracks never really go away, they simply stay in a grayed-out state of limbo until such time as you decide to unhide them. Hidden tracks won’t play, but you can still see them listed on the playlist page.

The new feature is available for iOS and Android users for now; Spotify hasn’t said if it plans to add it to other platforms. Cleverly, once you’ve hidden songs on a playlist on one device, they should stay hidden on all devices that are connected to the same Premium Spotify account. We tried to reproduce this by hiding songs on an iPhone and then checking the playlist on an Android device, as well as the same Spotify account connected to a Sonos system, but the hidden tracks still appeared.

Still, whether this bug gets sorted out or not, being able to hide tracks from playlists is a fantastic addition to the Spotify platform, giving subscribers even more granular control over the music they hear. Previously, Spotify added the ability to block artists entirely, but that’s more of a thermonuclear option. Hiding tracks at a playlist level is like customizing the ingredients in a recipe to your personal taste.

Spotify’s playlists have evolved over the years to become an incredibly powerful way to hear, explore, and share music. For more on how to work with playlists on Spotify, check out these handy how-to guides:

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Contributing Editor, A/V

Simon Cohen is a contributing editor to Digital Trends' Audio/Video section, where he obsesses over the latest wireless…

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Spotify is the first name that comes to mind when you think of music streaming services. Love it or hate it, Spotify is currently the most popular music-streaming service, boasting 615 million users and more than 239 million subscribers, putting it ahead of competitors like Apple Music. But what exactly is Spotify, and how does it really work? We're answering all your questions with this deep dive into what you can expect from Spotify.
What is Spotify?

If you spend even a little time online, you've probably heard of Spotify. It's a popular free and paid music-streaming service founded in Stockholm in 2006 by Swedish friends Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. Fun fact: the name happened by fluke when the partners were shouting names back and forth from different rooms in Ek's Stockholm flat, and Ek misheard one of Lorentzon's suggestions as "Spotify." They later backtracked the meaning as a combination of spot and identify, and there you have it.
Spotify today is a behemoth of a streaming service that also offers access to podcasts, videos, and highly tailored playlists driven by your unique usage. With several plan tiers to choose from, Spotify's free version lets you listen to unlimited music, podcasts, and even videos, so you can explore your taste without shelling out a thing, but you do have to endure ads and limited functionality (more on that below). It does offer much more robust paid options (more below, too), but the free version is more than enough for the casual listener.
Spotify is also quite device-versatile, so you can use it on your smartphone, tablet, computer, laptop, TV, smartwatch, gaming console, and even in your car. You get the expected, intuitive controls like play/pause, next/previous, loop a song/playlist, and save favorites. But that's not all. There's a lot that Spotify offers, so let's break down what you can look forward to.
Spotify features: music, podcasts, audiobooks, and more

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If you want to get the best of Spotify, you'll want to sign up for a Premium account that, as of June 2024, for new subscribers, costs $12 a month for an individual membership. There are also subscription options for two people (Spotify Premium Duo, $17 a month), families (Spotify Premium Family, $20 a month), and students (Spotify Premium Student, $6 a month).

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Spotify on an iPhone.

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Although Bloomberg's report, which cites a "source familiar with the plan," is light on specific resolution details, it says that the new high-fidelity audio option will be sold as an add-on for existing customer,s who could be charged at least an additional $5 per month depending on their base plan.