What role does music play in controlling your mood?

When the Black Dog is biting our ankles, some people like to drive it out their system with some noisy, aggressive tunes, all catharsis and purging and heat. Others (myself included) like to coax our mood somewhere nicer, using cooler, upbeat music to bring a little welcome sunlight to the gloom we're in. Whatever our preference, we all know it works. (PsyBlog listed seven ways that music can influence our moods: you can find me somewhere between numbers three and four).

What we need is a radio station where we choose the mood instead of the tracks. And we've got one, here on the web - it's called Musicovery, and if it were possible to wear a Firefox bookmark out, I'd have done so over the last week. Pick a point between Dark & Positive and Calm & Energetic, and the application will play one of hundreds of commercially-available tracks of all sorts of styles and eras.

It's individually-tailored radio (without distracting DJ talk). It's absolutely terrific. And I dare any Black Dog to get in its way.

Image: Wesley Oostvogel