Toward a theory of music information retrieval queries: System design implications

This paper analyzes a set of 161 music-related information requests posted to the rec.music.country.old-time newsgroup. These postings are categorized by the types of detail used to characterize the poster's information need, the type of music information requested, the intended use for the information, and additional social and contextual elements present in the postings. The results of this analysis suggest that similar studies of 'native' music information requests can be used to inform the design of effective, usable music information retrieval interfaces

The impact of MIREX on scholarly research (2005-2010)

This paper explores the impact of the MIREX (Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange) evaluation initiative on scholarly research. Impact is assessed through a bibliometric evaluation of both the MIREX extended abstracts and the papers citing the MIREX results, the trial framework and methodology, or MIREX datasets. Impact is examined through number of publications and citation analysis. We further explore the primary publication venues for MIREX results, the geographic distribution of both MIREX contributors and researchers citing MIREX results, and the spread of MIREX-based research beyond the MIREX contributor teams. This analysis indicates that research in this area is highly collaborative, has achieved an international dissemination, and has grown to have a significant profile in the research literature

Greenstone as a music digital library toolkit

Greenstone is an open source digital library system that has developed and matured since its inception in 1995. Today it is used in over 60 countries, with a strong emphasis on humanitarian aid. The software is also used as a framework for research in other fields such has human computer interaction, text-mining, and ethnography. This article provides a summary of Greenstone's uses to date with music documents. First we discuss incorporating musical formats into the Greenstone system; then we describe provision for searching and browsing in a music collection

"The pain, the pain": Modelling music information behavior and the songs we hate

The paper presents a grounded theory analysis of 395 user responses to the survey question, "What is the worst song ever?" Important factors uncovered include: lyric quality, the "earworm" effect, voice quality, the influence of associated music videos, over-exposure, perceptions of pretentiousness, and associations with unpleasant personal experiences

Visual collaging of music in a digital library

This article explores the role visual browsing can play within a digital music library. The context to the work is provided through a review of related techniques drawn from the fields of digital libraries and human computer interaction. Implemented within the open source digital library toolkit Greenstone, a prototype system is described that combines images located through textual metadata with a visualisation technique known as collaging to provide a leisurely, undirected interaction with a music collection. Emphasis in the article is given to the augmentations of the basic technique to work in the musical domain

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

Music interaction research in HCI

The ubiquity of music consumption is overarching. Statistics for digital music sales, streaming video videos, computer games, and illegal sharing all speak of a huge interest. At the same, an incredible amount of data about every day interactions (sales and use) with music is accumulating through new cloud services. However, there is an amazing lack of public knowledge about everyday music interaction. This panel discusses the state of music interaction as a part of digital media research. We consider why music interaction research has become so marginal in HCI and discuss how to revive it. Our two discussion themes are: orientation towards design vs. research in music related R&D, and the question if and how private, big data on music interactions could enlighten our understanding of ubiquitous media culture

TECHNICAL PROGRESS IN THE SETE TRAWL FISHERY, 1985-1999

Fisheries throughout the world have long been subject to overfishing and excess capacity, which has generated substantial and increasing concern about biological and economic performance ramifications. These problems in part stem from substantial investment in technical improvements to boats and equipment in fishing fleets. Such technical change exacerbates the extent of excess fishing capacity, as well as low returns to fishing effort and investment due to catch limitations from both regulatory constraints and overfished stocks. However, economists have not yet attempted to quantify the extent or effects of technical change in fisheries. In this paper we use detailed data on innovation patterns for 19 vessels in the Sete trawl fleet of Southern France to evaluate the contributions of embodied and disembodied technical change to catch rates. We find that embodied technical change enhanced productivity by approximately 1 percent per year between 1985-99, but that external (disembodied) events counteracted this by causing a net output decline of about 3 percent per year. Neither efficiency nor output composition changes appear to have had a substantive effect on observed performance levels.Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Ten years of MIREX: reflections, challenges and opportunities

The Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) has been run annually since 2005, with the October 2014 plenary marking its tenth iteration. By 2013, MIREX has evaluated approximately 2000 individual music information retrieval (MIR) algorithms for a wide range of tasks over 37 different test collections. MIREX has involved researchers from over 29 different contrives with a median of 109 individual participants per year. This pater summarizes the history of MIREX form its earliest planning meeting in 2001 to the present. It reflects upon the administrative, financial, and technological challenges MIREX has faced and describes how those challenges have been surmounted. We propose new funding models, a distributed evaluation framework, and more holistic user experience evaluation tasks-some evolutionary, some revolutionary-for the continued success of MIREX. We hope that this paper will inspire MIR community members to contribute their ideas so MIREX can have many more successful years to come