Spotify want your music streaming experience tailored to you personally and soon that will include the option to block artists from appearing in your stream, especially R Kelly.

Spotify are preparing a new ‘block’ feature so that users can mute particular artists and groups that they don’t want to hear under any circumstance. They have been testing the feature in the latest version of their iOS app. It allows you to select an artist and block their entire catalogue from playing. The feature stops artists playing from your library, in playlists, chart stations or radio stations on Spotify.

With the massive popularity of playlists on Spotify this feature will come as a joy to many who may enjoy listening to their playlists when they’re updated weekly but might want to avoid certain artists who come up frequently.  For example if you’re a hip-hop fan but haven’t got time for Drake, your Rap Caviar experience is about to become a lot more tasty. Whilst the block feature works universally on an artist’s entire catalogue it doesn’t extend to tracks that they have featured on.

The feature comes following the surge in notoriety surrounding singer R Kelly’s history of sexual violence and abuse, thanks in large part to a new documentary. The #MuteRKelly protest has re-invigorated support for dismissing R Kelly’s music from Spotify which they decided not to do in 2017 when his allegations were brought to the forefront again. After “serious consideration” Spotify decided not to remove R Kelly’s music from their platform. Last year Spotify did remove all instances of R Kelly’s music from their own curated playlists.

To acknowledge the dispute without causing issues with the labels Spotify are putting out their new feature to put the control into the listeners hands. This new feature works far beyond the R Kelly controversy and is actually quite a neat feature that will no doubt come in handy far beyond the muting of R Kelly on the streaming service.