Voice activated music playback system

An apparatus for selecting recordings from a database stored in a memory, comprising:

• a speech recognizer for representing a spoken query as a phonetic lattice;
• means for converting paths through the phonetic lattice to a set of text queries;
• means for searching the database to generate a playlist of recordings matching the set of text queries;
• a scanner for playing samples of the recordings on the playlist, the scanner including a speaker;
• means for updating the playlist with recordings in the database matching an acoustic query;
• and
• means for selecting a particular sample from the playlist, having two modes, in a first mode, said means is capable of selecting a particular sample as the acoustic query, and in a second mode said means is capable of selecting a particular sample associated with a recording in the database matching the acoustic query.