[samatman]

Music Popcorn reminds me of a favorite idea I'll never use: a self-organizing mp3 dj. It simply makes a weak link between any two songs that get played in order, makes an anti-link between a song that gets skipped and the previous song, and then makes stronger links for awhile, presuming the user is paying attention if she's skipping songs. It gives some weight to playlists, but not too much: if you want the playlist you play it, so we have to be careful not to burn grooves in the network that way.

This would make the 'random' mode function better, so that when I'm listening to relaxing music in the evening and get served bass music, skipping it makes that less likely to happen in the future. The player itself doesn't know what 'genres' are, though it knows albums, artists, and playlists.