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

An architecture for life-long user modelling

In this paper, we propose a united architecture for the creation of life-long user profiles. Our architecture combines different steps required for a user prole, including feature extraction and representation, reasoning, recommendation and presentation. We discuss various issues that arise in the context of life-long profiling

CHORUS Deliverable 2.2: Second report - identification of multi-disciplinary key issues for gap analysis toward EU multimedia search engines roadmap

After addressing the state-of-the-art during the first year of Chorus and establishing the existing landscape in multimedia search engines, we have identified and analyzed gaps within European research effort during our second year. In this period we focused on three directions, notably technological issues, user-centred issues and use-cases and socio- economic and legal aspects. These were assessed by two central studies: firstly, a concerted vision of functional breakdown of generic multimedia search engine, and secondly, a representative use-cases descriptions with the related discussion on requirement for technological challenges. Both studies have been carried out in cooperation and consultation with the community at large through EC concertation meetings (multimedia search engines cluster), several meetings with our Think-Tank, presentations in international conferences, and surveys addressed to EU projects coordinators as well as National initiatives coordinators. Based on the obtained feedback we identified two types of gaps, namely core technological gaps that involve research challenges, and “enablers”, which are not necessarily technical research challenges, but have impact on innovation progress. New socio-economic trends are presented as well as emerging legal challenges

A Phenomenology of the Practice of Music Therapy with Children

Music therapy has been demonstrated as an effective mode of therapeutic intervention for children in recent literature. There is extensive research suggesting benefits for various populations of children, namely: children in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), children who have experienced trauma, and children with disabilities. The current study served to address gaps found in the literature by conducting a phenomenology of professionally trained music therapists. Four board certified music therapists near major cities on the east coast were interviewed to comment on how they understand music therapy, and how they live out those understandings in their practice. It was found that music therapy is professional counseling, music therapy is goal based and individualized, and music therapy is often misunderstood in the general public. A comparison of these findings with results from previous studies was addressed. Limitations and suggestions for further study within the realm of utilizing music as a therapeutic tool were discussed

Advanced recommendations in a mobile tourist information system

An advanced tourist information provider system delivers information regarding sights and events on their users' travel route. In order to give sophisticated personalized information about tourist attractions to their users, the system is required to consider base data which are user preferences defined in their user profiles, user context, sights context, user travel history as well as their feedback given to the sighs they have visited. In addition to sights information, recommendation on sights to the user could also be provided. This project concentrates on combinations of knowledge on recommendation systems and base information given by the users to build a recommendation component in the Tourist Information Provider or TIP system. To accomplish our goal, we not only examine several tourist information systems but also conduct the investigation on recommendation systems. We propose a number of approaches for advanced recommendation models in a tourist information system and select a subset of these for implementation to prove the concept

Discourse Analysis as Potential for Re-Visioning Music Education

Discourse analysis holds great potential for re-visioning the field of music education. This paper explores works from Foucault, Blommaert, Scollon and Scollon, as well as others, to suggest a theoretical and methodological approach to analyzing discourse in settings of music transmission that takes into consideration who we are, what we do, and how we do it. Discourse is defined in this paper as meaningful, mediated language-in-place. By analyzing acts of speech as well as cultural objects (such as instruments, mallets, and bows) and concepts (such as a conducting gestures or solfege syllables) used as mediational means in situ, we can reveal how discursive sources of power dominance, inequality, and bias are initiated, perpetuated, (re)produced, and transformed in sites of music transmission. Analyzing such models may help develop a more flexible way of understanding and visioning music education—one that blurs boundaries between musics, ways of knowing music, and spaces where musicking takes place