That's a great suggestion! Autoplay right now just takes into account your current playing song. We're hoping to build an algorithm that learns as your music moods change and adapts real time. If that doesn't give good results we might opt to give users more choice in how they want their recs to be delivered.
Oh yeah, you def need to implement that. Thing is, that most people will search for a song that fits the type they want. So letting the genre wander, just delivers them wrong results.
i.e. you start out with Hip Hop, then eventually you'll hit a song that is Hip Hop/Country, then you'll hit a song that's Country/Country, and then you are stuck listening for 3 hours to country music. Until you hit Country/Hip-Hop and get out of the loop.
You could probably expand the options a little bit by making a few mutually exclusive lists. For example someone whose initial search was a country music song, probably doesn't want to ever hear gangsta rap. And vice versa.
As far as trying to figure out the mood, I don't think that's plausible. The whole like/dislike/forward thing isn't going to get you the results you want. For example, I might "like" a song, but it doesn't mean I want to start hearing more songs like that at the moment. The dislike/forward is mostly used to skip past the songs that don't fit my initial criteria.
I think it's something that you are better off leaving for your users to do manually. If they want to start hearing new types of music, they'll just search for a new song. There is no real reason to try to guesstimate their mood, since chances are you'll just get it wrong and will ruin the user experience.
Oh and here is another suggestion for auto-play, let users use it without searching for the initial song. Use it as a "Play me a random song" button. This way users can discover new music.
Duly noted. Thanks again. The comment about adapting to your mood is in reference to how much weight we should give to your prior play history versus your current playing song. It sounds like you like the emphasis on the current song but want it to stay in the same genre until changed.
