Moodplay: Interactive Mood-based Music Discovery and Recommendation

A large body of research in recommender systems focuses on optimizing prediction and ranking. However, recent work has highlighted the importance of other aspects of the recommendations, including transparency, control and user experience in general. Building on these aspects, we introduce MoodPlay, a hybrid recommender system music which integrates content and mood-based filtering in an interactive interface. We show how MoodPlay allows the user to explore a music collection by latent affective dimensions, and we explain how to integrate user input at recommendation time with predictions based on a pre-existing user profile. Results of a user study (N=240) are discussed, with four conditions being evaluated with varying degrees of visualization, interaction and control. Results show that visualization and interaction in a latent space improve acceptance and understanding of both metadata and item recommendations. However, too much of either can result in cognitive overload and a negative impact on user experience.