- Deezer’s Flow Tuner just got a big upgrade
- Now you can ban or encourage certain genres depending on what you like
- AI slop is also omitted
Recently I’ve had a major Spotify problem – the algo-generated playlists insist on dropping random pop artists into my entirely non-pop playlists. Sorry, Spotify, but Chappell Roan and Olivia Dean are not 90s folk rock.
So does Deezer come to the rescue?
The French music streaming service (a subscription platform from France, not just for Guetta and Daft Punk) is rolling out an upgrade to its Flow Tuner feature, which creates a customized playlist based on your listening.
Now you can nudge the Flow Tuner in the right direction, which should help you tune the playlist generator in the right direction. The key is that you can disable certain genres or subgenres now, preventing Flow from adding them to the playlist – and you can re-enable them later if you decide your metal embargo is over.
You can also add genres you haven’t listened to before if you want to discover something new. The Flow playlist reflects your changes instantly.
Another step on the way
Plenty of streaming services give you the illusion of power over your algorithm-built playlists. Apple Music gives you thumbs-down songs you’d like to hear less often, but what it actually is do with that information is anyone’s guess. Spotify lets you exclude songs from your ‘taste profile’, although it appears to only remove one song and only from ‘made for you’ lists.
Deezer’s Flow Tuner gives you so much more control over the playlists you get. If you like to use these features to discover new music, it’ll be a nice little change – and stop you getting Roan or Dean to stick with 90s rock.
Using the feature is easy: when you create a flow, the app will automatically ask you which genres to include (or not). The tool seems to have quite a few sub-genres, so you should be able to wrangle the playlist to your liking despite how loose genre labels can be.
We rate Deezer as the best music streaming service for features, with quizzes, collaborative playlist building tools and music recognition tools that you won’t find in its competitors. This new change to Flow Tuner sounds like it’s just the next step of many in making the algorithmically generated playlist tool world-class.
An example of that? AI-generated tracks are banned from Flow Tuner and Deezer’s tools automatically exclude them. Less slop, more rock? Easily the most tempting reason to switch from Spotify I’ve heard in a while…
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