A cross-cultural study of mood in K-POP Songs

Prior research suggests that music mood is one of the most important criteria when people look for music – but the perception of mood may be subjective and can be influenced by many factors including the listeners’ cultural background. In recent years, the number of studies of music mood perceptions by various cultural groups and of automated mood classification of music from different cultures has been increasing. However, there has yet to be a well-established testbed for evaluating cross-cultural tasks in Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Moreover, most existing datasets in MIR consist mainly of Western music and the cultural backgrounds of the annotators were mostly not taken into consideration or were limited to one cultural group. In this study, we built a collection of 1,892 K-pop (Korean Pop) songs with mood annotations collected from both Korean and American listeners, based on three different mood models. We analyze the differences and similarities between the mood judgments of the two listener groups, and propose potential MIR tasks that can be evaluated on this dataset. © Xiao Hu, Jin Ha Lee, Kahyun Choi, J. Stephen Downie.published_or_final_versio

Challenges in cross-cultural/multilingual music information seeking

Understanding and meeting the needs of a broad range of music users across different cultures and languages are central in designing a global music digital library. This exploratory study examines cross-cultural/multilingual music information seeking behaviors and reveals some important characteristics of these behaviors by analyzing 107 authentic music information queries from a Korean knowledge search portal Naver (knowledge) iN and 150 queries from Google Answers website. We conclude that new sets of access points must be developed to accommodate music queries that cross cultural or language boundaries

Cross-cultural mood perception in pop songs and its alignment with mood detection algorithms

Do people from different cultural backgrounds perceive the mood in music the same way? How closely do human ratings across different cultures approximate automatic mood detection algorithms that are often trained on corpora of predominantly Western popular music? Analyzing 166 participants responses from Brazil, South Korea, and the US, we examined the similarity between the ratings of nine categories of perceived moods in music and estimated their alignment with four popular mood detection algorithms. We created a dataset of 360 recent pop songs drawn from major music charts of the countries and constructed semantically identical mood descriptors across English, Korean, and Portuguese languages. Multiple participants from the three countries rated their familiarity, preference, and perceived moods for a given song. Ratings were highly similar within and across cultures for basic mood attributes such as sad, cheerful, and energetic. However, we found significant cross-cultural differences for more complex characteristics such as dreamy and love. To our surprise, the results of mood detection algorithms were uniformly correlated across human ratings from all three countries and did not show a detectable bias towards any particular culture. Our study thus suggests that the mood detection algorithms can be considered as an objective measure at least within the popular music context

Creativity and Songwriting

This study tested a number of theories of creativity in an experiment where a song was written and recorded every day for over 170 days using various techniques and ideas. 15 have been reworked, finalised, and released on an audio CD, attached as Appendix 1. The finished CD contains material from a number of styles and is intended to showcase the gradual progression of the songwriting process and the change in style over time, and explores the question of whether songwriting and creativity in general can be improved through regular practice. It also demonstrates a wide array of skill and fluency in songwriting and creativity gained from a large amount of practice, whilst also exhibiting examples of the material that was written in the daily songwriting practice routine. The audio CD (Appendix 1) is accompanied by a data CD containing 100 recorded demos of songs written over the course of the experiment (Appendix 2) and a thesis explaining the creative process behind selected tracks, complete with a literature review of research into the current understanding of creativity. This is explored from both a psychological viewpoint and a more subjective viewpoint, relating specifically to songwriting. The thesis also attempts to find common ground between psychological practices aimed at improving general creativity, and more specific songwriting techniques, intended to explore how songwriters can produce a higher quality or quantity of work. It addresses such issues as writer’s block, songwriting as a routine, and also the relationship between the number of songs written and the quality of those songs, whilst also autoethnographically detailing the writing process of the songs written over the 170 day period, and the experience of the artist of the effects of the practice routine. The project aimed to determine whether creativity could be improved by following a regimented practice routine over the course of a set period of time (in this case, roughly half a year). Both quantitative and qualitative data have been collected from this experiment and analysed from an autoethnographical perspective, and it has been determined that in this case, the artist’s perceived skill in songwriting has grown due to the amount of time specifically dedicated to it, the regular practice enabling a larger volume of higher quality work to be produced. Secondary research also showed that creativity in general was improved from the exercise, and that this enhanced creativity can be applied more generally than simply to songwriting

Popular music lyrics and the COVID-19 pandemic

A limited amount of previous research suggests that deteriorating socioeconomic conditions may be associated with greater popularity of music lyrics featuring negative emotional content and references to relationships. The present research considered this in charting popular music before and during the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic. A dataset based on the song lyrics of the top-5 charting weekly songs in the UK and USA from January 1999 to August 2020 was computer-analysed for interpersonal variables, such as satisfaction and human interest, and positive and negative emotional valence. Results indicated lower satisfaction and human interest in lyrics in the USA and UK in the first six months of the COVID-19 pandemic compared to the lyrics in charting songs in 2015-2019. The USA charting songs in 2020 also saw higher leveling and negative emotional content; and, when considering monthly data from 1999-2020, there was a positive association between economic misery and the number of negatively-valenced words. The findings broaden our understanding of the relationship between significant global events and trends in popular music

Music Uses and Gratifications Among Youth

This study identified the uses and gratifications of music genres and communication needs among young adults. An online survey of young adults in the College of Liberal Arts at Rochester Institute of Technology was conducted. Seven communication factors were found to correlate with listening to 21 different music genres. A sense of identity was significantly related to alternative, indie, jazz, and new age music. Behavior was related to dance, easy listening, hip hop/rap, new age, pop, and world music. Interaction with others was related to easy listening and pop music. Knowledge was related to alternative, dance, easy listening, hip hop/rap, pop, and rhythm and blues. Needs was related to classical, electronic, Asian pop, pop, and world music. Negative moods management was related to alternative, Asian pop, rhythm and blues, and world music while positive moods management was related to alternative, electronic, indie, Asian pop, rhythm and blues, and world music