"More of an art than a science": Supporting the creation of playlists and mixes

This paper presents an analysis of how people construct playlists and mixes. Interviews with practitioners and postings made to a web site are analyzed using a grounded theory approach to extract themes and categorizations. The information sought is often encapsulated as music information retrieval tasks, albeit not as the traditional "known item search" paradigm. The collated data is analyzed and trends identified and discussed in relation to music information retrieval algorithms that could help support such activity

Problems and opportunities of applying data-& audio-mining techniques to ethnic music

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Automatic Personalized Playlist Generation

Käesolevas magistritöös on esitatud automaatse personaliseeritud pleilisti tekitaja probleemi lähenemisviiside uuring. Lisaks teoreetilise tausta lühiülevaatele me dokumenteerisime oma lähenemist: meie poolt tehtud katsed ning nende tulemused. Meie algoritm koosneb kahest põhiosast: pleilisti hindamisfunktsiooni konstrueerimine ning pleilisti genereerimisstrateegia valik. Esimese ülesande lahendamiseks on valitud Naive Bayes klassifitseerija ning 5-elemendiline MIRtoolbox tööristakasti poolt kavandatud audio sisupõhiste attribuutide vektor, mis klassiitseerivad pleilisti heaks või halvaks 82% täpsusega - palju parem kui juhuslik klassifitseerija (50%). Teise probleemi lahendamiseks proovisime kolm genereerimisalgoritmi: lohistus (Shuffle), randomiseeritud otsing (Randomized Search) ning geneetiline algoritm (Genetic Algorithm). Vastavalt katsete tulemustele kõige paremini ja kiiremini töötab randomiseeritud otsingu algoritm. Kõik katsed on tehtud 5 ning 10 elemendilistel pleilistidel. Kokkuvõttes, oleme arendanud automatiseeritud personaliseeritud pleilisti tekitaja algoritmi, mis vastavalt meie hinnangutele vastab ka kasutaja ootustele rohkem, kui juhuslikud lohistajad. Algoritmi võib kasutada keerulisema pleilistide konstrueerimiseks

Developing a context-aware automatic playlist generator (CAAPG)

Thesis submitted to the Department of Computer Science, Ashesi University College, in partial fulfillment of Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science, April 2014The current digitization of music and the sheer volume of the musical content available to listeners on local devices, such as mobile phones and IPod has been revolutionary. This trend has changed the way humans interact and experience their music. Music listeners can listen to their songs on the move. The most recent trend in the music industry is that users can organize and search for their songs based on emotions. However, most users have to manually create their playlists for particular situations. The work that this entails is cumbersome and sometimes negates the experience of the listener. The intuitive response to this problem is developing an automatic playlist generating (APG) system. Research on APG mostly focuses on using traditional metadata and audio similarity methods to create a playlist. In addition APG is seen as a static problem [1]. This means that APG is seen as a problem that does not change, however music listeners are always changing their listening habits. This thesis supports and follows from the argument made in Chi chung-yi’s work - that the APG problem is a continuous optimization problem. Additionally, in this paper I also argue that the best way to give users a good listening experience is to understand the user’s preference(s) depending on the context. Context here simply mean the features that make up the environmental space in which the system is being used. The main idea in this paper is to show the importance of emotional categorization in the generation of playlist content, while simultaneously mapping those categories to the user’s context based on the users past activities on the system. Reinforcement learning is the method used in this thesis to generate a personalized playlist, based on the context of use and the user’s emotional preference. After implementing the system we use two hypothetical users to simulate the use of our system. Various metrics are defined to measure the performance of this approach.Ashesi University Colleg

A Content-Aware Interactive Explorer of Digital Music Collections: The Phonos Music Explorer

La tesi si propone di utilizzare le più recenti tecnologie del Music Information Retrieval (MIR) al fine di creare un esploratore interattivo di cataloghi musicali. Il software utilizza tecniche avanzate quali riduzione di dimensionalità  mediante FastMap, generazione e streaming over-the-network di contenuto audio, segmentazione e estrazione di descrittori da segnali audio. Inoltre, il software è in grado di adattare in real-time il proprio output sulla base di interazioni dell'utent

PlayRightNow - Designing a media player experience for PlayNow arena

This paper discusses the process of designing a media player tailored for PlayNowTM arena with the purpose of enhancing the user experience of this media portal. The design process is divided into two main stages, the first consisting on gathering information to inform the design of a media player and the second stage involving a low-fidelity prototype of a media player. In the first stage, three main activities are carried out to inform the design of the interface: a literary review of relevant research and studies related to the way people use digital media and its effect on society; an evaluation of the interfaces and features offered by some of the existing popular media players in the market today from an interaction design point of view; and user observations and interviews on people’s relation to digital media. Based on the information and data collected from the first stage, an iterative process of design of interfaces was adapted, whereby potential users and design experts were consulted with their opinions and suggestions that influenced the sketching of various possible interfaces. Finally, a design of a media player for PlayNowTM arena is proposed, which is believed to have the potential of providing its users with a better experience in relation to digital content, as well as attracting new customers and increasing the revenue of this media portal

Exploratory Browsing

In recent years the digital media has influenced many areas of our life. The transition from analogue to digital has substantially changed our ways of dealing with media collections. Today‟s interfaces for managing digital media mainly offer fixed linear models corresponding to the underlying technical concepts (folders, events, albums, etc.), or the metaphors borrowed from the analogue counterparts (e.g., stacks, film rolls). However, people‟s mental interpretations of their media collections often go beyond the scope of linear scan. Besides explicit search with specific goals, current interfaces can not sufficiently support the explorative and often non-linear behavior. This dissertation presents an exploration of interface design to enhance the browsing experience with media collections. The main outcome of this thesis is a new model of Exploratory Browsing to guide the design of interfaces to support the full range of browsing activities, especially the Exploratory Browsing. We define Exploratory Browsing as the behavior when the user is uncertain about her or his targets and needs to discover areas of interest (exploratory), in which she or he can explore in detail and possibly find some acceptable items (browsing). According to the browsing objectives, we group browsing activities into three categories: Search Browsing, General Purpose Browsing and Serendipitous Browsing. In the context of this thesis, Exploratory Browsing refers to the latter two browsing activities, which goes beyond explicit search with specific objectives. We systematically explore the design space of interfaces to support the Exploratory Browsing experience. Applying the methodology of User-Centered Design, we develop eight prototypes, covering two main usage contexts of browsing with personal collections and in online communities. The main studied media types are photographs and music. The main contribution of this thesis lies in deepening the understanding of how people‟s exploratory behavior has an impact on the interface design. This thesis contributes to the field of interface design for media collections in several aspects. With the goal to inform the interface design to support the Exploratory Browsing experience with media collections, we present a model of Exploratory Browsing, covering the full range of exploratory activities around media collections. We investigate this model in different usage contexts and develop eight prototypes. The substantial implications gathered during the development and evaluation of these prototypes inform the further refinement of our model: We uncover the underlying transitional relations between browsing activities and discover several stimulators to encourage a fluid and effective activity transition. Based on this model, we propose a catalogue of general interface characteristics, and employ this catalogue as criteria to analyze the effectiveness of our prototypes. We also present several general suggestions for designing interfaces for media collections

How Visualization Supports the Daily Work in Traditional Humanities on the Example of Visual Analysis Case Studies

Attempts to convince humanities scholars of digital approaches are met with resistance, often. The so-called Digitization Anxiety is the phenomenon that describes the fear of many traditional scientists of being replaced by digital processes. This hinders not only the progress of the scientific domains themselves – since a lot of digital potential is missing – but also makes the everyday work of researchers unnecessarily difficult. Over the past eight years, we have made various attempts to walk the tightrope between 'How can we help traditional humanities to exploit their digital potential?' and 'How can we make them understand that their expertise is not replaced by digital means, but complemented?' We will present our successful interdisciplinary collaborations: How they came about, how they developed, and the problems we encountered. In the first step, we will look at the theoretical basics, which paint a comprehensive picture of the digital humanities and introduces us to the topic of visualization. The field of visualization has shown a special ability: It manages to walk the tightrope and thus keeps digitization anxiety at bay, while not only making it easier for scholars to access their data, but also enabling entirely new research questions. After an introduction to our interdisciplinary collaborations with the Musical Instrument Museum of Leipzig University, as well as with the Bergen-Belsen Memorial, we will present a series of user scenarios that we have collected in the course of 13 publications. These show our cooperation partners solving different research tasks, which we classify using Brehmer and Munzner’s Task Classification. In this way, we show that we provide researchers with a wide range of opportunities: They can answer their traditional research questions – and in some cases verify long-standing hypotheses about the data for the first time – but also develop their own interest in previously impossible, new research questions and approaches. Finally, we conclude our insights on individual collaborative ideas with perspectives on our newest projects. These have risen from the growing interest of collaborators in the methods we deliver. For example, we get insights into the music of real virtuosos of the 20th century. The necessary music storage media can be heard for the first time through digital tools without risking damage to the old material. In addition, we can provide computer-aided analysis capabilities that help musicologists in their work. In the course of the visualization project at the Bergen-Belsen memorial, we will see that what was once a small diary project has grown into a multimodal and international project with institutions of culture and science from eight countries. This is dedicated not only to the question of preserving cultural objects from Nazi persecution contexts but also to modern ways of disseminating and processing knowledge around this context. Finally, we will compile our experience and accumulated knowledge in the form of problems and challenges at the border between computer science and traditional humanities. These will serve as preparation and assistance for future and current interested parties of such interdisciplinary collaborative project

Novel music discovery concepts: user experience and design implications

Current music consumers are facing an almost endless selection of music in online services to be accessed on-demand with a variety of devices. The focus has now shifted from providing on-demand access to massive music catalogs towards improving the user experience of the music services, providing new ways of finding relevant music from the massive online catalogs, and making music consumption a pleasurable experience. The key differentiation aspects for music services come largely from the user interface and the ways that music can be found or consumed. This thesis belongs to the fields of human-computer interation (HCI) and music information retrieval (MIR). HCI is concerned with the design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing systems and MIR targets to broaden the understanding and usage of musical data through research, applications and tools. This thesis studies novel concepts for music discovery that are based on strong visual metaphors and stereotypes. The goal is to research the user experience (UX) of novel music discovery services and to formulate key design implications to support service development for music discovery. The research of music discovery prototypes consisted of three main phases: initial concept design phase, playful concept exploration phase, and iterative concept design phase. The thesis introduces, in total, ten prototype implementations of these novel concepts for music discovery. User evaluations of the implemented prototypes were conducted with Finnish active music listeners with both qualitative and quantitative research methods. This thesis contributes to both academic research on HCI in MIR and commercial music discovery service development. The results provide insights to user experience with different types of novel music discovery services. Five novel music discovery services using the same content-based music recommendation back-end were compared and the comparison results are reported including both first impressions and longer-term usage. Additionally, the results of the studies introduce a wide set of future directions for each music discovery approach. These future directions enable service developers to further enhance the music discovery experience within these fields. All but one of the proposed music discovery concepts work well for music discovery. The use of avatar characters and mood pictures for music discovery are the most promising ones. The results show that visual music discovery services have the potential to replace traditional music discovery services in different types of music discovery practices. The final contribution of the thesis is a set of 16 design implications for music discovery service developers

Visualizing Music Collections Based on Metadata: Concepts, User Studies and Design Implications

Modern digital music services and applications enable easy access to vast online and local music collections. To differentiate from their competitors, software developers should aim to design novel, interesting, entertaining, and easy-to-use user interfaces (UIs) and interaction methods for accessing the music collections. One potential approach is to replace or complement the textual lists with static, dynamic, adaptive, and/or interactive visualizations of selected musical attributes. A well-designed visualization has the potential to make interaction with a service or an application an entertaining and intuitive experience, and it can also improve the usability and efficiency of the system. This doctoral thesis belongs to the intersection of the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), music information retrieval (MIR), and information visualization (Infovis). HCI studies the design, implementation and evaluation of interactive computing systems; MIR focuses on the different strategies for helping users seek music or music-related information; and Infovis studies the use of visual representations of abstract data to amplify cognition. The purpose of the thesis is to explore the feasibility of visualizing music collections based on three types of musical metadata: musical genre, tempo, and the release year of the music. More specifically, the research goal is to study which visual variables and structures are best suitable for representing the metadata, and how the visualizations can be used in the design of novel UIs for music player applications, including music recommendation systems. The research takes a user- centered and constructive design-science approach, and covers all the different aspects of interaction design: understanding the users, the prototype design, and the evaluation. The performance of the different visualizations from the user perspective was studied in a series of online surveys with 51-104 (mostly Finnish) participants. In addition to tempo and release year, five different visualization methods (colors, icons, fonts, emoticons and avatars) for representing musical genres were investigated. Based on the results, promising ways to represent tempo include the number of objects, shapes with a varying number of corners, and y-axis location combined with some other visual variable or clear labeling. Promising ways to represent the release year include lightness and the perceived location on the z- or x-axis. In the case of genres, the most successful method was the avatars, which used elements from the other methods and required the most screen estate. In the second part of the thesis, three interactive prototype applications (avatars, potentiometers and a virtual world) focusing on visualizing musical genres were designed and evaluated with 40-41 Finnish participants. While the concepts had great potential for complementing traditional text-based music applications, they were too simple and restricted to replace them in longer-term use. Especially the lack of textual search functionality was seen as a major shortcoming. Based on the results of the thesis, it is possible to design recognizable, acceptable, entertaining, and easy-to-use (especially genre) visualizations with certain limitations. Important factors include, e.g., the used metadata vocabulary (e.g., set of musical genres) and visual variables/structures; preferred music discovery mode; available screen estate; and the target culture of the visualizations