Patent ID: 8642872

Claim:
A method performed by a music playing device with which songs are downloaded for playing, the music playing device including a processor and memory, the method comprising: storing downloaded songs on the music playing device along with attribute tags respectively associated with the songs, the attribute tags having been automatically detected by analyzing binary playable sound data of the songs; receiving a user selection of a seed song, and using the attribute tags associated with the seed song and attribute tags of respective candidate songs to compute similarity metrics representing similarity of the candidate songs, respectively, to the seed song, wherein a similarity metric is computed based on the attribute tags of the seed song and the attribute tags of a corresponding candidate song and has a value according to similarity of the attribute tags of the seed song and the attribute tags of the corresponding candidate song; based on the similarity metrics automatically adding some of the candidate songs to an active playlist, the active playlist currently active on the music playing such that one of the songs in the active playlist is being currently played by the music playing device; and providing a monitoring process that repeatedly and automatically adjusts song membership in the active playlist based on similarity metrics by detecting user interactions with individual songs as they are playing on the music playing device, the user interactions comprising fast-forwarding or skipping portions of songs when being played, and by using the attribute tags of the interacted-with songs to automatically compute new similarity metrics of songs in the active playlist and songs not in the active playlist, and based on the new similarity metrics automatically selecting one or more songs that are automatically added to the active playlist and one or more songs that are automatically removed from the active playlist, whereby the user steers the song membership of the active playlist by interacting with the songs on the music playing device, the steering comprising weighting similarity metrics of some of the songs according to the some of the songs having been fast-forwarded or skipped when being played.