This article describes a personal music recommender system designed to overcome the ‘cold start’ problem that affects the visibility of recent works of composition and improvisation outside popular music. The approach builds upon our experimental results that showed increased levels of engagement by subjects with unfamiliar music through a focus on acoustic properties and emotional response. Set in the context of a digital music library, the developed recommender component provides two visual acoustic representations of the piece, and additionally allows users to record their own continuous affect responses. These interface elements are designed to invoke the behaviours observed in our experiments, meaning visitors stay engaged with the online resource for longer and so experience a broader range of music.