According to a report over on Thurrott, Spotify is currently testing a feature that lets users block an artist completely, meaning that the artist will not appear on automatically curated playlists like Discover Weekly and Release Radar, as well as other things like global charts.
Reportedly, when an artist is blocked, they won't appear in your personal library, playlists, automatically curated playlists, charts, radios, or anywhere else they would normally be included in. In fact, in order to be able to play any music from blocked artists requires you to manually remove the block first.
The new feature is accessible from artists page by tapping on the “…” menu, which then brings up the “Don’t play this artist” option to stop said artist's tunes appearing across the platform. In the image example above, Thurrott reporter Mehedi Hassan opted to block Ariana Grande for test purposes.
According to Hassan, the block feature is limited to "a small number of users" and is available apparently only through the iOS beta app, of which Hassan is a beta tester. In our own testing, the feature hasn't shown up on the Windows 10, or Android apps yet.
Blocking artists on Spotify has long been a requested feature from its users, with the company saying as recently as a few hours ago that "this isn't possible right now." Spotify said back in 2017 that "after serious consideration", it had decided "not to offer blocking/ hiding/ or blacklisting artists or tracks on Spotify", instead pledging to improve features like Discover Weekly and Release Radar.
Since the feature is in testing within a small group, and for now at least, only on the iOS beta app, it's unclear when it will move to a larger pool of users or platforms or if it will ever make it out of the testing phase.
Source & images: Thurrott
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