Everyone knows how to like songs on Spotify, but what about disliking them? For many apps these days, liking/disliking is a fairly common feature. It’s long been the primary way people rate YouTube videos. Reddit posts are centered around upvoting and downvoting posts. Even Twitter has shown interest in implementing a dislike feature.

While those social-focused apps use likes and dislikes for people to vote on content they think is good or bad, liking songs on Spotify is a bit different. If someone is listening to a song and particularly enjoys it, they can tap the heart icon next to that song to ‘like’ it. All liked songs show up in that person’s library in the Liked Songs playlists, it helps train Spotify to play songs similar to that, and it generally makes the whole experience feel more personalized. One of Spotify’s greatest strengths is creating playlists/stations based on someone’s listening preferences, and by liking songs, users can help train that algorithm to better understand them.

Related: Sick Of Spotify? Here Are The Best Alternatives

Liking songs on Spotify is pretty straightforward, but what about disliking them? Although a traditional dislike feature doesn’t exist, Spotify does allow users to ‘hide’ songs and artists — essentially the equivalent of disliking something. Spotify doesn’t call it a dislike button, but the utility is the same. If you come across a song you don’t like, tapping the hide button lets Spotify know to skip that track and play fewer songs like it. While that sounds easy on paper, finding the hide/dislike button varies depending on how you listen to Spotify.

How To Dislike Songs As A Spotify Free User

Spotify's 'dislike' button on the app for a Spotify Free user

For folks using the free version of Spotify, disliking a Spotify song is as follows. Open the Spotify app, start playing a song, and open the playback screen. Here, there should be a ‘⊖’ icon to the right of the play/pause button. Tap the button, and it’ll hide that song from appearing in that particular album, playlist, or station. This dislike/hide button should appear on any song, whether it’s being played from an album, playlist, Daily Mix, etc.

How To Dislike Songs As A Spotify Premium User

Hiding a song in the Spotify iOS app

Strangely enough, ‘disliking’ songs like this can be more difficult to find as a Spotify Premium subscriber. When listening to something on the iOS app, users need to tap the three dots at the top-right of the screen, then tap ‘Hide song.’ On Android, the ‘⊖’ button should appear on the music player just like it does for free users. It’s unclear why Spotify has two different UIs like this, but that’s how it’s set up.

It’s also worth mentioning that the dislike/hide feature doesn’t exist on Spotify’s web player or desktop apps. The feature has always been limited to Spotify for Android and iOS. One can hope this changes down the road, but for now, that’s how Spotify has chosen to run things.

Other Ways To Dislike Songs On Spotify

Spotify controls to not play songs and artists

But that’s not the only way to dislike songs on Spotify. If someone searches for a song on the Search page, they can tap the song and then tap the three dots on the song page. Doing so shows a different ‘Don’t play this song’ option. This functions a bit differently than hiding songs, with it instead blocking the song from all applicable playlists/stations instead of hiding it from a specific one. Similarly, users can search for an artist, visit their Spotify page, tap the three dots, and tap ‘Don’t play this artist.’ Like the method above, this tells Spotify to not play that artist in any playlists, stations, etc. that they’d normally appear in.

Overall, the act of disliking/hiding songs on Spotify could use some work. It gets the job done if someone knows where to look, but this is something that Apple Music, YouTube Music, and others have done a better job at. At the very least, this article should have made it easier to understand. Keep enjoying Spotify, rock out the hits, and don’t forget to press that dislike/hide button if a stinker comes along.