Method for producing playlists for personalized music stations and for transmitting songs on such playlists

Abstract

A method of producing a playlist of music for a personal music station comprising the steps of assigning a artist block rating to each of a plurality of predefined artist blocks, using the artist block rating to produce an artist rating for each artist in the artist block, generating a list of artists, wherein the number of times each artist appears in the list is related to the artist rating for each artist, randomly selecting artists form the list of artists, producing a prioritized list of songs for each of the randomly selected artists, and selecting songs from the prioritized list of songs for inclusion in a playlist. The playlist can be subsequently edited to create a playlist having a less than a first predetermined number of songs by each of the artists for broadcast within a predetermined time period and having less than a second predetermined number of adjacent songs by each of the artists. A method of distributing songs on a personal music station using the playlist is also included.