Spotify Announces Taste Profile Editing. BlackTape Launched With It.

Spotify announced at SXSW 2026 that users will soon be able to edit their Taste Profile — directly shaping the inputs used by Discover Weekly, recommendations, and Wrapped.

I noticed this because BlackTape shipped a TasteEditor on February 17th and launched publicly on March 2nd. Eleven days before the announcement.

I'm not claiming Spotify copied a two-week-old indie app. The timing is just a useful illustration of where the industry is heading — and why the two implementations mean completely different things.

The difference is architectural.

Spotify's model: observe everything, infer taste, then let you submit corrections when the inference is wrong. The Taste Profile editor is a feedback mechanism on top of an inference model. It's useful. It's also an admission that years of listening data didn't produce an accurate picture of who you are as a listener.

BlackTape's model: taste is the starting point, not the output. You bring your collection, your ratings, the artists you've deliberately sought out. The TasteEditor is how you build and refine that input — not how you correct a machine's mistakes about you.

Same feature name. Opposite philosophies.

One says: we watched you and got it wrong, here's a form. The other says: tell us what you love, and we'll go from there.

If you're curious what the second approach feels like in practice, BlackTape is in early access at blacktape.org.