

Play Strength, a Rdio Feature Concept - avand
http://avandamiri.com/2012/11/29/play-strength-a-rdio-feature-concept.html

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brianwhitman
EN (which powers the Rdio create station feature that rolled out recently) has
similarity data and popularity data for songs & artists natively.

Popularity of a single song:
[http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FIL...](http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FILDTEOIK2HBORODV&format=json&results=1&artist=radiohead&title=karma%20police&bucket=song_hotttnesss)

List of songs by an artist ordered by popularity

[http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FIL...](http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FILDTEOIK2HBORODV&format=json&results=10&artist=radiohead&bucket=song_hotttnesss&sort=song_hotttnesss-
desc)

Since we have Rdio in our Rosetta ID space, you can natively use Rdio IDs and
get them back in your calls:

[http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FIL...](http://developer.echonest.com/api/v4/song/search?api_key=FILDTEOIK2HBORODV&format=json&results=10&artist=radiohead&bucket=song_hotttnesss&sort=song_hotttnesss-
desc&bucket=id:rdio-US&bucket=tracks&limit=true)

~~~
avand
#awesomesauce

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diesellaws
Music listening is completely subjective based on the smallest of changes
within any given moment. Sure, the ideas of play strength/stars/constant
radio/genre/BPM all helps in culling a mood, but it will never go all the way
(without some sort of brain connection device).

I may create a playlist one day based upon a certain artist (with similar
artists in the mix) however the next day I may want to listen to something a
bit heavier, making those playlists irrelevant no matter how far I've drilled
down my preference list.

While Play Strength is a good concept, it's still just a feature that can
become just as underused or overused as a star count.

Instead of focusing on how 'perfectly-automatic' we can make a playlist based
on features such as genre, BPM & play strength, we should be focusing on tools
that help better understand our moods, the environment around us & the energy
and vibes we intend to create from the music itself. The Effect > The Cause.

~~~
avand
Selecting music to play at any given moment is entirely human. Play Strength
was not intended to make music selection automatic.

I think humans can make better decisions with data. Play Strength attempts to
expose insights already locked inside your music library.

For example, one of the big changes in driving some hybrid vehicles is a real-
time monitor of how power is flowing in and out of the battery. I think just
_seeing_ that data changes your driving habits.

That's what I was going for with Play Strength. Thanks for sharing your
thoughts.

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mw63214
Killer feature(idea): Work with a Kinect sensor on a feedback loop to update
the playlist based on number of people, size of the room, acoustics, aggregate
playlist taste of people who "check-in" to the room so their tastes gets
included (you're a good host right?). I imagine it would bring a more social
component to the playlist and put that social component to use.

~~~
avand
You're blowing my mind here. Really good stuff.

What I think is really cool is that all this stuff is coming. There are a lot
of stakeholders deeply invested in seeing these ideas come to fruition.

To the future! Cheers.

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zeedog
Very neat ideas here. I love the idea of helping Rdio choose what to play next
by this combination of your recent plays combined popularity as defined by
other users.

I also appreciate that many of the UI changes for these features are very
subtle.

I just wonder how many users would actually find these features useful. I had
to explain the concept of the "Collection" of a few people recently, which
scared me since it's one of Rdio's core features!

~~~
avand
Thanks for the kind thoughts!

I agree, the whole concept of a cloud-based music library is very new. Forget
music, the concept of the cloud is new! I'm looking forward to a holiday
filled with questions like, "where is it, who owns it, is it secure?"

Once people are comfortable with the paradigm shift, will really be cooking
with gas.

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varikin
I once had the idea of using markov chains to help build playlists. I find the
order of songs can be very important, and that way I could build a more random
playlist based liking song B after song A, and just keep going.

The problem was two fold, one, I really love whole albums when done right. So
that most of the music I listen to is album based. The markov chain is
pointless then. Two, I would need a really big data set to make it worthwhile.
Rdio has that data set (or possibly even Echo Nest).

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overcyn
I love posts like this having spent a decent bit of time designing a music
queuing UI myself. I think number 4 is really interesting if you could get the
recommendations right. And you could do it in addition to play strength.

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JimEngland
I like the idea of using stars to indicate favorite tracks. iTunes has a 5
star rating system that I use to keep my music organized and I wish Rdio had
the same.

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avand
I need something more binary. Deciding between three and four stars seems
totally arbitrary.

~~~
tkahnoski
It's all about optimizing recommendations. If you just have a star or not
starred. There's a chance the service will recommend a song you will likely
hate (now you could be clever here and factor in skips). So now we have Hate,
Love, Unrated. This works except for your OCD users will want to rate
everything. And the more ratings you have, the better your recommendations
will be.

~~~
zeedog
What about Hate, Like, Love and unrated?

I always liked the idea of being able to specifically call out those few liked
tracks that are a just a _little_ more special :)

