Towards the disintermediation of creative music search: Analysing queries to determine important facets

Purpose: Creative professionals search for music to accompany moving images in films, advertising, television. Some larger music rights holders (record companies and music publishers) organise their catalogues to allow online searching. These digital libraries are organised by various subjective musical facets as well as by artist and title metadata. The purpose of this paper is to present an analysis of written queries relating to creative music search, contextualised and discussed within the findings of text analyses of a larger research project whose aim is to investigate meaning making in this search process. Method: A facet analysis of a collection of written music queries is discussed in relation to the organisation of the music in a selection of bespoke search engines. Results: Subjective facets, in particular Mood, are found to be highly important in query formation. Unusually, detailed Music Structural aspects are also key. Conclusions: These findings are discussed in relation to disintermediation of this process. It is suggested that there are barriers to this, both in terms of classification and also commercial / legal factors

Upbeat and quirky with a bit of a build: Interpretive repertories in creative music search

Pre-existing commercial music is widely used to accom-pany moving images in films, TV commercials and com-puter games. This process is known as music synchronisa-tion. Professionals are employed by rights holders and film makers to perform creative music searches on large catalogues to find appropriate pieces of music for syn-chronisation. This paper discusses a Discourse Analysis of thirty interview texts related to the process. Coded ex-amples are presented and discussed. Four interpretive repertoires are identified: the Musical Repertoire, the Soundtrack Repertoire, the Business Repertoire and the Cultural Repertoire. These ways of talking about music are adopted by all of the community regardless of their interest as Music Owner or Music User. Music is shown to have multi-variate and sometimes conflicting meanings within this community which are dynamic and negotiated. This is related to a theoretical feedback model of communication and meaning making which proposes that Owners and Users employ their own and shared ways of talking and thinking about music and its context to determine musical meaning. The value to the music information retrieval community is to inform system design from a user information needs perspective

Organising music for movies

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to examine and discuss the classification of commercial popular music when large digital collections are organised for use in films. Design/methodology/approach - A range of systems are investigated and their organization is discussed, focusing on an analysis of the metadata used by the systems and choices given to the end-user to construct a query. The indexing of the music is compared to a checklist of music facets which has been derived from recent musicological literature on semiotic analysis of popular music. These facets include aspects of communication, cultural and musical expression, codes and competences. Findings -In addition to bibliographic detail, descriptive metadata is used to organise music in these systems. Genre, subject and mood are used widely; some musical facets also appear. The extent to which attempts are being made to reflect these facets in the organization of these systems is discussed. A number of recommendations are made which may help to improve this process. Originality/value - This paper discusses an area of creative music search which has not previously been investigated in any depth and makes recommendations based on findings and the literature which may be used in the development of commercial systems as well as making a contribution to the literature

Music, movies and meaning: communication in film-markers' search for pre-existing music, and the implications for music information retrieval

While the use of music to accompany moving images is widespread, the information behaviour, communicative practice and decision making by creative professionals within this area of the music industry is an under-researched area. This investigation discusses the use of music in films and advertising focusing on communication and meaning of the music and introduces a reflexive communication model. The model is discussed in relation to interviews with a sample of music professionals who search for and use music for their work. Key factors in this process include stakeholders, briefs, product knowledge and relevance. Searching by both content and context is important, although the final decision when matching music to picture is partly intuitive and determined by a range of stakeholders

Content or context? Searching for musical meaning in task-based interactive information retrieval

Creative professionals search for digital music to accompany moving images using interactive information retrieval systems run by music publishers and record companies. This research investigates the creative professionals and the intermediaries communication processes and information seeking and use behaviour with a view to making recommendations to information retrieval systems builders as to the extent of relative importance of content and contextual factors. A communications model is used to suggest that the meaning of music is determined by its listener and use context, as well as cultural codes and competences. The research is framed by a holistic approach based on Ingwersen and Jarvelin’s Interactive Information Seeking, Retrieval and Behavioral processes model

Music in the Movies: an investigation into Creative Music Search

Music is widely used to accompany moving images. Just turn on the television and shut your eyes to experience this. Movie soundtracks enhance the viewers experience, TV commercials use music to communicate brand values and attract the attention of the viewer, and TV programs feature a wide range of music throughout. Much of this music is not composed specifically for this purpose but has another life in the commercial market place. The owners of these recordings and compositions are making great efforts to secure a place for their music in these media and employ expert intermediaries to ‘place’ music in films and TV. Some collections are organised into B2B digital libraries specifically for this purpose, which is known as music synchronisation. Naturally, the collections are organised by traditional metadata such as Artist, Title, Album and Genre. However as users don’t always know exactly what they are looking for, but know what it should sound like, additional facets such as Mood, Tempo and Subject are also employed. In this presentation Charlie Inskip will discuss how creative search is facilitated by these search engines and whether they may be improved

Practitioner and LIS Student Perspectives on Information Literacy for Librarians

This paper considers recent findings of ongoing research exploring how Library and Information Studies education can most effectively support students in developing their information literacy instruction practices. Practicing librarians in the UK were interviewed in order to gather their insights on the development of their information literacy instruction skills. The analysis identified key concepts and issues which may help to inform curriculum development in information literacy in LIS education, which is a growth area in the UK

Upbeat and Quirky, With a Bit of a Build: Communicating Meaning and Meeting Information Needs in the Music Industry

Music is widely used to accompany moving images, in films, advertising, television programmes and computer games. The process of choosing and using a piece of pre-existing commercial music for this purpose is known as synchronisation. The addition of music to a piece of film enhances the final work with cultural meaning, and generates additional income for the rights holders. This research examines the information needs of professionals involved in the selection of music, including Users from the advertising and film communities and Owners from the recording and publishing industries. A tentative communications model is developed and proposed from musicological, semiotic and communications literature. Interviews, knowledge organisation systems, queries and observations are identified as rich potential sources of textual data relating to the communications process around satisfying the Users’ information needs. The content of these texts is analysed to identify key musical facets. Mood is found to be an important factor when searching for unknown musical items. Using a Discourse Analytic approach to the interview texts, four discourses, or interpretive repertoires, are identified. These repertoires carry conflicting meanings of music and are employed throughout the community, although relative emphases vary according to the viewpoint of the stakeholder. This is supported by an analysis of the written texts of both the Owners (music search engines) and the Users (written queries, or briefs). A comparison is drawn between the emphasis of the repertoires and the precision of the search engines. The repertoires are applied to the theoretical communications model, which is revised to reflect the findings of the analyses. This is used to make recommendations on how to improve the disintermediated communications process, by emphasising the repertoires employed by the Users rather than those of the Owners