The other day, a sorority sister from college – hey Denise, love you! – who shares a love of music sent me a text with a dilemma. She is a masseuse and a fitness instructor, so she plays a lot of music for sessions and classes that she wouldn’t ordinarily listen to.

The problem is, it was completely jacking up her Spotify Discover Weekly playlists, giving her recommendations that weren’t quite in the genre that she enjoys.

There was also a recent news story about folks complaining that their 2019 Spotify Wrapped end-of-year results were a mess because they were listening to meditation or sleep music at night, making their “top tracks” or “top artists” something that they wouldn’t really qualify that way.

So, Denise wanted to know if I knew of a way that she could avoid that from happening.

Confession: I did not. But I’m a really good Googler. And I figured I’d share what I found here because it’s actually super helpful.

Turns out, there’s a way that you can help reduce the likelihood that workout music, sleep music, meditation music, whatever, will influence your Discover Weekly, New Releases, and Wrapped 2020.

It’s called “Private Session.” It takes a little bit of manual work on your part, but if you want to influence your Spotify algorithm, this is the best way I can figure out to keep the integrity of your recommendations to what you want.

How to enable a Private Session on Spotify

So here’s how you do it…

Before you turn on your workout class playlist, your sleep music, or whatever it is you want to listen to in private, take these steps.

Desktop Spotify app

Click the dropdown arrow next to your username in the upper right hand corner of the app and select Private Session.

Mobile Spotify app

Click on the gear icon for Settings in the upper right hand corner.

From the menu, choose Social.

Locate Private Session at the top and use the slider to turn on the Private Session. It will display as green when the Private Session is on.

Don’t forget to turn the Private Session off

The important thing to remember is to turn the Private Session off when you’re done so that your regular listening can be counted toward your algorithm.

Happy Spotify-ing, kids.