I like the idea of radio mode, and it seems to be generating a good selection of artists, however I have noticed that I still get a lot of "obscure" songs from the artist (album tracks that no-one on the radio really ever plays). With a very large library to select from, it becomes really noticeable.

Since radio mode already takes information from last.fm, it would be really nice if it could use the popularity information to influence the track chosen (either total number of plays or "currently trending" info, not sure which would work better). Some control over this would also be good.

e.g. There might be a "popularity" setting in mix settings that varied the desired popularity of the songs chosen, from 1= strong desire for popular tracks, 2=mild desire, 3=don't care (i.e. doesn't influence selection). So, now, "radio mode" would choose the "similar" artist as usual, but it would use the popularity setting to bias more heavily towards more popular tracks from that artist; e.g. random selection with weighting applied using number of plays from last.fm and "popularity" setting. Setting 1=2 x number of plays weighting, 2= 1 x number of plays weighting, 3= no weighting.

In order to make it work well, the algorithm would probably also need a "no repeat bias" which would try to avoid playing the same track more than once in any given mix. If track has been played before in the mix, re-select.

With something like this, "radio mode" would become like a real radio, by selecting tracks that seem to be more popular or "currently trending" with the general public.