Adaptive jukebox : a context-sensitive playlist generator

Nowadays, a lot of users own large collections of music MP3 files. Manually organising such collections into playlists is a tedious task. On the other hand random playlist generation may not always provide the user with an enjoyable experience. Automatic playlist generation is a relatively new field in computer science that address this issue, developing algorithms that can automatically create playlists to suit the user’s preferences. This paper presents our work in this field, where we suggest that playlist generators should be more context-sensitive. We also present Adaptive Jukebox, a context-sensitive, zero-input playlist generator that recommends and plays songs from the user’s personal MP3 collection. Initial experiments suggest that our system is more accurate than both a random generator and a system that does not take context into account.peer-reviewe

Current Challenges and Visions in Music Recommender Systems Research

Music recommender systems (MRS) have experienced a boom in recent years, thanks to the emergence and success of online streaming services, which nowadays make available almost all music in the world at the user's fingertip. While today's MRS considerably help users to find interesting music in these huge catalogs, MRS research is still facing substantial challenges. In particular when it comes to build, incorporate, and evaluate recommendation strategies that integrate information beyond simple user--item interactions or content-based descriptors, but dig deep into the very essence of listener needs, preferences, and intentions, MRS research becomes a big endeavor and related publications quite sparse. The purpose of this trends and survey article is twofold. We first identify and shed light on what we believe are the most pressing challenges MRS research is facing, from both academic and industry perspectives. We review the state of the art towards solving these challenges and discuss its limitations. Second, we detail possible future directions and visions we contemplate for the further evolution of the field. The article should therefore serve two purposes: giving the interested reader an overview of current challenges in MRS research and providing guidance for young researchers by identifying interesting, yet under-researched, directions in the field

A multicriteria ant colony algorithm for generating music playlists

In this paper we address the problem of music playlist generation based on the user-personalized specification of context information. We propose a generic semantic multicriteria ant colony algorithm capable of dealing with domain-specific problems by the use of ontologies. It also employs any associated metadata defined in the search space to feed its solution-building process and considers any restrictions the user may have specified. An example is given of the use of the algorithm for the problem of automatic generation of music playlists, some experimental results are presented and the behavior of the approach is explained in different situations. 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science under the funding project CENIT-MIOI CENIT-2008 1019 and by the Microsoft Research Labs (Cambridge) under the "Create, Play and Learn" program.Mocholi Agües, JA.; Martinez Valero, VM.; Jaén Martínez, FJ.; Catalá Bolós, A. (2012). A multicriteria ant colony algorithm for generating music playlists. Expert Systems with Applications. 39(3):2270-2278. doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2011.07.131S2270227839

Indexation et classification de la musique : approches d'analyse musicale, descripteurs et plateformes de recherche

Travail réalisé à l'École de bibliothéconomie et des sciences de l'information (EBSI), Université de Montréal, sous la direction de Mme Audrey Laplante dans le cadre du cours SCI6850 Recherche individuelle, à l'automne 2012.Les méthodes de recherche adaptées à la musique ont beaucoup évolué depuis quelques années. Nous n'avons qu'à penser au nombre toujours grandissant de sites dédiés à la musique en ligne. Il y a de plus en plus de moyens différents d'indexer les documents musicaux. Mais sur quelles caractéristiques se baser pour effectuer ce processus? Quels aspects de la musique sont pris en compte pour indexer les documents? Comment les principales approches d'analyse en musique se reflètent-elles dans l'indexation? Dans cette recherche, nous nous proposons de faire un tour d'horizon des différentes approches d'analyse en lien avec différentes plateformes de recherche. Pour ce faire, nous résumerons les différentes approches d'analyse musicale puis nous les comparerons avec les facettes utilisées dans trois plateformes musicales utilisant chacune une méthode d'indexation différente. La première partie de cette recherche traitera donc de trois différentes méthodes d'analyse musicale, soit 1) l'approche axée sur l'analyse des éléments intrinsèques de la musique, qui correspond à l'approche musicologique classique; 2) l'approche axée sur des éléments extrinsèques à la musique, plus récente, qui correspond à l'approche psychosociologique, prend en compte la perception de l'auditeur, les contextes sociaux et culturels de la musique; et 3) l'approche combinant les aspects intrinsèques et extrinsèques de la musique. Des facettes de descriptions pour chaque approche seront ainsi mises en relief. Dans la deuxième partie, nous présenterons trois types d'indexation musicale, soit par vedettes-matière (subject headings), par des experts ou par taxonomie sociale (social tagging). À l'aide d'exemples — le système de vedettes-matière RVM de l'Université Laval, la plateforme Allmusic pour l'indexation par des experts et la taxonomie sociale de Last.fm — nous identifierons quelle approche est privilégiée dans quel cas

The impact of tecchnological advancements on intermediaries in the motion picture industry.

The main research objective of the dissertation is to systematically capture and explain those changes in a particular sector of the media industry that are triggered through technological advancements and have an impact on intermediation. Intermediation is an economic concept, which has proven its usefulness in the analysis of certain industries such as the trade or the financial service sector. However, the microeconomic-based concept of intermediation is typically not used for the analysis of technology-driven changes. In order to achieve the aforementioned objective, a new approach, namely, the Intermediation Analysis Approach is developed over the course of the dissertation and applied to a sample sector. The motion picture industry has been selected for this as intermediaries such as sales agencies and distributors traditionally play an important role. In addition, the motion picture sector has witnessed numerous technological advancements in the past and is thus perfectly suited for an ex-post analysis of the last fifteen years. In addition, intermediaries in the motion picture industry received little attention so far in literature. The theoretical foundation established at the beginning of the dissertation is from paramount importance for the development of the Intermediation Analysis Approach. Industrial Economics is used as the theoretical frame of reference. Industrial Economics provides a suitable frame of reference for the research objectives and questions of this dissertation, as it is characterized by a high degree of reality. In this context, the theory of the firm is particularly important and is therefore discussed in detail from different viewpoints. In addition to the theory of the firm, the large volume of literature on intermediaries is also highly relevant for establishing the theoretical foundation. This includes findings from various research strands on intermediation, including, but not limited to, the trade and marketing literature as well as the literature on financial intermediation In the course of the analysis, the activities of intermediaries, the value provided by intermediaries and the incentives to cooperate with intermediaries are identified as the key factors that have to be examined. All these facets are incorporated into the Intermediation Analysis Approach and tools are developed for each facet. The analysis approach itself thus consists of four steps: (1) the analysis of industry characteristics (incl. the value added structure in order to identify intermediaries), (2) the analysis of the activities performed by intermediaries, (3) the analysis of the value provided by intermediaries and (4) the incentives to cooperate with intermediaries. The tools of the analysis approach employ comparative statics analysis to examine the impact of technological advancements at two distinct points in time. By examining each facet in detail, the impact of technological advancements on intermediaries can be determined and explained. While the Intermediation Analysis Approach can be employed in a variety of use cases. It is used ex-post for the analysis of the motion picture industry where the status quo of intermediaries in 1999 is compared to their status in 2014. The objective of the application of the analysis approach is to answer a variety of practical research questions for the motion picture industry. Even more importantly, the applicability of the Intermediation Analysis Approach is demonstrated. The results of the analysis show that some interesting developments have occurred. Many of which received little attention or are contrary to what some researchers predicted in the past. The analysis results show, that the activities of most intermediaries have not been directly influenced by technological advancements. Particularly the activities on the informational level still require a high degree of specialization and experience. In regards to the value that intermediaries in the motion picture sector provide and its change in the last fifteen years, the results of the analysis reveal a variety of value sources, which enable intermediaries to add value. The contact reduction based on the Baligh-Richartz-Effect, standardization, scale effects and specialization are the most prominent value sources that enable the intermediaries in the motion picture industry to increase the transaction efficiency. Technological advancement did not reduce the strength of most value sources. In regards to the incentives and disincentives of up- and downstream market participants to cooperate with intermediaries, the analysis results show that a variety of incentives and disincentives can be identified. However, in most cases the cooperation is not optional, often for both of the intermediary’s transaction partners. Nevertheless, the analysis still reveals noteworthy incentives and disincentives. The most prominent one is the observation that the decrease in transaction costs and increase in transaction efficiency is in the interest of the involved transaction partners as well. Since most intermediaries’ ability to increase efficiency improved in the examined timeframe, the incentives to cooperate with them grew stronger as well.Administración y Dirección de Empresa

Proceedings of the IEEE Multimedia Computing and Systems Int. Conf., Firenze, (Italy), pp. 457-462. A Combinatorial Approach to Content-based Music Selection

Advances in networking and transmission of digital multimedia data will bring soon huge catalogues of music to users. Accessing these catalogues raises a problem for users and content providers, that we define as the music selection problem. We introduce three main goals to be satisfied in music selection: match user preferences, provide users with new music, and exploit the catalogue in an optimal fashion. We propose a novel approach to music selection, based on computing coherent sequences of music titles, and show that this amounts to solving a combinatorial pattern generation problem. We propose constraint satisfaction techniques to solve it. The resulting system is an enabling technology to build better music delivery services. 1. Music Delivery and Selection Music delivery concerns the transportation of music in a digital format to users. Music delivery has recently benefited from technological progress in networking and signal processing. In particular, progress in networking transmission, compression of audio, and protection of digital data [7] allow now or in the near future to deliver quickly and safely music to users in a digital format through networks, either internet, or digital audio broadcasting. Additionally, digitalization of data makes it possible today to transport information on content, and not only data itself, as exemplified by the Mpeg-7 project [9]. All these techniques give users, at home, access to huge catalogues of annotated music. These techniques address the distribution problem, but also raise the problem of choosing among these catalogues. In the case of music, a typical database of titles contains about 500.000 titles ([1, 10]). A database containing all tonal music recordings would probably reach 4 millions titles. Ethnic music and less “standard” types of music would probably double or triple this number. Every month, about 4000 CDs are created in western countries