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

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

Algorithms Aside: Recommendation as the Lens of Life

In this position paper, we take the experimental approach of putting algorithms aside, and reflect on what recommenders would be for people if they were not tied to technology. By looking at some of the shortcomings that current recommenders have fallen into and discussing their limitations from a human point of view, we ask the question: if freed from all limitations, what should, and what could, RecSys be? We then turn to the idea that life itself is the best recommender system, and that people themselves are the query. By looking at how life brings people in contact with options that suit their needs or match their preferences, we hope to shed further light on what current RecSys could be doing better. Finally, we look at the forms that RecSys could take in the future. By formulating our vision beyond the reach of usual considerations and current limitations, including business models, algorithms, data sets, and evaluation methodologies, we attempt to arrive at fresh conclusions that may inspire the next steps taken by the community of researchers working on RecSys

The psychological, psychophysical and ergogenic effects of music in sport: A review and synthesis

This is the post-print of this chapter - Copyright @ 2008 RoutledgeWe have presented two complementary conceptual approaches underlying the study and application of music in sport and exercise contexts [103, 104]. We have also established that music can be applied to sports training and competition in many different ways, and have provided 573 initial evidence for a quartic relationship between exercise heart rate and music tempo preference. One of the main demonstrated benefits of music is that it enhances psychological state, which has implications for optimising pre-competition mental state and increasing the enjoyment of training activities. Used synchronously, music can boost work output and makes repetitive tasks such as cycling or running more energy efficient. When we embarked upon our programme of research almost two decades ago, our intention was to promote more judicious use of music. The evidence that we have accumulated coupled with the findings of many other researchers from around the world, should allow athletes and practitioners to tap the psychological, psychophysical and ergogenic effects of music with greater precision

MIR task and evaluation techniques

Existing tasks in MIREX have traditionally focused on low-level MIR tasks working with flat (usually DSP-only) ground-truth. These evaluation techniques, however, can not evaluate the increasing number of algorithms that utilize relational data and are not currently utilizing the state of the art in evaluating ranked or ordered output. This paper summarizes the state of the art in evaluating relational ground-truth. These components are then synthesized into novel evaluation techniques that are then applied to 14 concrete music document retrieval tasks, demonstrating how these evaluation techniques can be applied in a practical context

Preferred levels for background ducking to produce esthetically pleasing audio for TV with clear speech

In audio production, background ducking facilitates speech intelligibility while allowing the background to fulfill its purpose, e.g., to create ambience, set the mood, or convey semantic cues. Technical details for recommended ducking practices are not currently documented in the literature. Hence, we first analyzed common practices found in TV documentaries. Second, a listening test investigated the preferences of 22 normal-hearing participants on the Loud- ness Difference (LD) between commentary and background during ducking. Highly personal preferences were observed, highlighting the importance of object-based personalization. Sta- tistically significant difference was found between non-expert and expert listeners. On average, non-experts preferred LDs that were 4 LU higher than the ones preferred by experts. A sta- tistically significant difference was also found between Commentary over Music (CoM) and Commentary over Ambience (CoA). Based on the test results, we recommend at least 10 LU difference for CoM and at least 15 LU for CoA. Moreover, a computational method based on the Binaural Distortion-Weighted Glimpse Proportion (BiDWGP) was found to match the median preferred LD for each item with good accuracy (mean absolute error = 1.97 LU ± 2.50)

How people find videos

At present very little is known about how people locate and view videos 'in the wild'. This study draws a rich picture of everyday video seeking strategies and video information needs, based on an ethnographic study of New Zealand university students. These insights into the participants' activities and motivations suggest potentially useful facilities for a video digital library