Treat search results as a playlist

This is just an idea - an easy to implement, powerful idea.

On a competing online music player, searching "The Who" for example will return several results for The Who, just as Songza does. If I then play a song by The Who, when it finishes, a random other song from the results will immediately begin playing.

This is brilliant.

I did not realize that my key gripe (I didn't realize I had a gripe!) with Songza was that I had to return to it every 4-5 minutes to choose a new song, or painstakingly build a playlist.

By treating search results as a playlist, you take a substantial weight off of the user, and allow them to simply arrive, search, play, and enjoy. I have begun primarily using the competitor because of this feature alone - despite their horrible interface, their lack of selection, and annoying popup advertisements.

Even if it weren't the default operation, but could be enabled, I could joyfully return to using Songza. I love the service to the point that I rarely listen to the music I have downloaded over the past several years - but the ability to immediately throw up a list of songs and just leave them playing is paramount in usability of a music service.

Thank you for reading, if you have. I hope Songza continues to grow! (I didn't see this come up as a suggestion anywhere else, if it has, I'd love to find out how that went.)

-Wyatt Carss
University of Guelph, Ontario
Computer Science Department