How to block artists on Spotify: Put a stop to recommended songs from musicians you don't like

Spotify, unlike the radio, supposedly comes with the advantage that you can control what you listen to - but for some that doesn’t stop the same tracks being thrown up.

Noah Kahan’s Stick Season was the most played song as of April on the listening platform - although you’ll have to wait until Spotify Wrapped to get the full data for 2024.

But not all of Kahan’s 99 million streams were from listeners who actively sought him out, perhaps while drinking alcohol until their friends came home for Christmas.

Like radio, Spotify does package up the hits of the day in trend-making playlists like New Music Friday, Discover Weekly, Release Radar, Today’s Top Hits and Hot Hits UK.

Sure enough, if you give these enough rotations, you will get the same songs coming up and again, which is fine if you like Sabrina Carpenter’s ever-present Espresso, but not if you don’t.

But luckily, if her self-described ‘twisted humour’ isn’t doing it for you, there is a way to press mute on artists and songs you don’t want to hear anymore.

How to block an artist on Spotify

Step 1.

If you go to an artist’s main page, you can then click on three dots to the right of the ‘follow’ button.

Step 2.

You will then see an option that says ‘Don’t play this artist’. Click that, and Spotify will say, ‘Ok, we won’t play this artist again’.

Blocking an artist will stop Spotify from recommending any songs by them and it also won’t play songs by them, even if you try to. Their songs on any playlist will not play and it will also stop them being added to any mixtape put together by the platform’s recent AI generator.

The exception is that if they are a featured artist on another track, you will still hear them. Spotify cannot, yet, censor certain voices on songs they have featured on - so too bad if you want to get rid of R Kelly or P Diddy.

How to unblock an artist

You can reverse your decision to block an artist at any time by clicking on the no entry sign on their name.