Music moods

Just last week I wrote about a new feature I'd like Pandora to add (music maps) and this week I've read about some new music sites that have this and other cool features included. I stumbled upon these sites through an article in Mashable called "5 great ways to find music that suits your mood".

A couple sites, like Musicovery, have the music map feature, but more interestingly all the sites listed try to match the music to your current mood. I think this is a great idea that would suit me really well. I have my 'Rock' station, and my 'Hip-Hop' station, but sometimes I want my Rock & Hip-Hop to match the mood I'm in right now. Am I in a mellow rocky mood, or a hard party rock mood? Do I want Hip-Hop that I can nod my head to, or do I want Hip-Hop to get me pumped and ready for the night? Sure, I could make Pandora stations for each mood, but overall I think the artists (and even albums) would overlap. It's really the individual songs and the feelings they invoke that would be driven by the "mood" settings.

I'll probably give one or two of these sites a spin and see how well they categorize "mood" at the song level. I wonder how their music catalog selection holds up against Pandora and the other bigger online players. Really I just want Pandora to add this feature so I don't have to keep track of multiple music sites and can keep all my musical preferences in one spot.