Systems and methods for generating personalized pools of candidate media items

An electronic device stores, for a user of a media-providing service, a playback history that includes information about media items that have previously been consumed by the user. The electronic device receives a request to search for media content including search criteria. In response to the request, and without additional user intervention, the electronic device generates a vector representation of the user using media items from the playback history of the user that are relevant to the search criteria. The electronic device identifies one or more media content items from a media content library that match the vector representation of the user and the search criteria and provides, to the user, the one or more media content items.