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

Inskip, C.

MacFarlane, A.

Rafferty, P.

English

Creative professionals search for digital music to accompany moving images using interactive information retrieval systems run by music publishers and record companies. This research-in-progress investigates creative professionals and intermediaries communication processes and information seeking and use behaviour with a view to making recommendations to information retrieval systems builders about the 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. Copyright 2008 ACM

Inskip, C

MacFarlane, A

Rafferty, P

UCL Discovery

Content or context? Searching for musical meaning in task-based interactive information retrieval. Charlie Inskip Dept of Information Science City University London c.inskip@city.ac.uk Andy Macfarlane Dept of Information Science City University London andym@soi.city.ac.ukPauline Rafferty Dept of Information Studies University of Aberystwyth pmr@aber.ac.uk  ABSTRACT Creative professionals search for digital music to accompany moving images using interactive information retrieval systems run by music publishers and record companies. This research-in-progress investigates creative professionals and intermediaries communication processes and information seeking and use behaviour with a view to making recommendations to information retrieval systems builders about the 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.  Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Search Process; H.3.7 [Digital Libraries]: User issues General Terms Human Factors Keywords Music information retrieval, users, communication, meaning, relevance. 1. INTRODUCTION In recent years there has been a discussion in the Information Retrieval (IR) literature about the meaning of ‘context’ and its relationship to information seeking behaviour, with more interest in users. This recognises the interactive nature of IR which is affected by the contexts in which it takes place [2]. These interactions and contexts are summed up by Ingwersen and Jarvelin [3], who illustrate the interdependent elements of an interactive IR system, and suggest that research into these systems should take a more holistic approach. Closer examination of context – from both ‘system’ and ‘user’ points of view – will inform research about tasks, relevance, queries and focus includes information environment, information seeking, IR interaction and query level [2]. We investigate information seeking by creative professionals within the music industry, and focus on their search for music, specifically when music accompanies moving images. There are various levels of context in this process, known as synchronisation, which affect the nature of the retrieval: the intended meaning of the music in its filmic context and how this relates to query formation; systemic context, or how the query matches; IR mechanisms that are used and organization of the collections that are searched; user context or work role; the music’s relationship with the wider cultural contexts, impacting on the relevance decisions of users and the eventual music use. This paper presents early results of an ongoing study of information behaviour, and concentrates on users and use contexts, which are found to be predominantly affective. Section 2 describes the approach taken, involving the use of a reflexive communications model, and discusses the methodology, while Section 3 discusses early findings, focusing on meaning, context and relevance and how these relate to the search process and relevance decisions in use of music in films, television and commercials. Section 4 summarises the paper and discusses the levels of importance of content and context in music search.   2. APPROACH TAKEN FOR RESEARCH The music industry is a network involved in exploiting compositions and recordings by manufacture, distribution, sales and marketing of CDs and, increasingly, downloads but also by ‘secondary exploitation’ which involves encouraging the use of material in films, commercials and on radio and television as well as in clubs, internet and live. Record companies, music publishers and outside organisations are Music Owners, controlling the use of material. Music Users consist of film companies, broadcasters, clubs and others who use music and present it to the Music Consumer. The communication process between the Music Users and the Music Owners is the focus of this research. A snowball sample of eleven experienced Owners and Users took part in face-to-face semi-structured interviews lasting up to one hour. This technique allowed access to a specialist group of professionals by peer-recommendation [8]. The interviews were designed to elicit information about the participants’ information seeking behaviour and the processes used when they were searching for music to accompany moving images. Using subject guidelines rather than strict questionnaires allowed the researcher to follow up themes arising during the research process and allowed a flexible and informal approach reflecting the nature of communication in the industry under examination. Interviewees included five music supervisors and one film editor (Music Users) who source music for films, four employees of record companies and music publishers directly involved in exploitation of music (Music Owners). Additionally one independent music searcher, whose role lies between the Users and the Owners was also interviewed. We suggest that the organizational, social and cultural contexts [3] of the actors give rise to Codes and Competences, which affect the interpretation of musical-meaning. Semiotic codes are agreed by the community and enable an understanding of the link between the sound and the context [1]. Competences are based on the individual’s background, interest and experiences [9]. Although Owner and User may have their own codes and competences, based on their organizational, social and cultural contexts, some will intersect (Fig 1).         Codes   Competences       Music Owner       Music User   Encoding  Decoding  Decoding  Encoding  Owner  competences     User competences        Owner codes     User codes Figure 1 Reflexive communications model [4] In [4] we propose that the meaning-making process between Owner and User is reflexive, depending on their relative codes and competences, which are cultural, organizational and social. It is likely that systems designed to assist communication between User and Owner need to incorporate methods to facilitate the encoding/decoding process, which is determined by how much the participants in the process share codes and competences. For the purposes of this paper the texts of the interviews were listened to and transcribed. Broad themes of discussion, Meaning, Context and Relevance, arose from careful reading of the texts, relating to music seeking, retrieval and behaviour.  3. FINDINGS 3.1 Meaning When starting a search, Music Users have to extract meanings from a script, brief or images and translate these into a query that results in successful retrieval of material that matches the meaning that they wish to present to the viewer. Communicating this meaning clearly depends on all parties involved sharing cultural codes and competences:  ‘I need a track […] that it’s quite slow to begin with but has a real good build at the end, that’s emotional but quite driven’ (010SUP, TV promos supervisor)  is a typical example of a query that incorporates a range of affective meanings (emotional, driven) and content requirements (slow, build at the end) that require mutual understanding for a successful result.  In order to accommodate the range of meanings encompassed by this type of query, a selection is offered to the User, who will try these against the images and discuss with stakeholders, who may not share the same understandings. They will then either accept one of these offers or go back to the Owner with a revised query, which may be based on similarity with a piece in the first offering or an ‘ideal’ piece. Gradually the reflexive communication of the meaning of the music (Fig 1), which can also change during the process due to outside influences, is refined by matching codes and competences, trial and error, input from other stakeholders, and ‘gut instinct’ until the query is satisfied.  3.2 Context The use context, how the music ‘fits’ the picture and its intended audience, is key in the process [7] and although interpretation of musical meaning is subjective, meanings do converge within an audience [10]. Frequently a visual (film clip) is emailed to Owners with a written brief to communicate the use context. The Owners then try to match music with the visual and return a rough edit to the User:  ‘if it’s a classical, uplifting, anthemic piece, then you know, there’s thousands and but also the same time it’s finding the right song, and it is just – I mean it’s best when we have the visuals, it’s a lot easier.’(007SYN, Record company)   In advertising, the cultural context of the product and how it is marketed indicates the type of music that will be suitable:  ‘Because if you’re dealing with a brand, it could be Heinz or Lucozade, or .. they don’t want necessarily anything too clever. They just want something that is going to help sell their product. And be a nice accompaniment to the film. Whereas maybe somebody like – obviously I’m generalizing – but someone like 02 or Orange, they’ll want a staggering piece of music that people are going to sit up and sort of pay attention to.’ (007SYN)  The search process needs to be able to reflect these affective context criteria, which are related to cultural values contained within the music [6]. The targeted consumer will need to relate to the music in a positive way, and this relates to facets such as cultural attitudes, codes and competences and the content of the music signal.  3.3 Relevance Contextual factors such as budgets and whether rights holders will allow the use help improve precision. Relevance is also affected by affective context issues such as audience metrics and the tastes of the various stakeholders. There is no scientific way of agreeing on the right piece of music, and many pieces of music will satisfy a query:  ‘But then you can find ten other things that are the right tempo, that are the right style, and the right mood, and which one works? Well, all of them, potentially.’ (004SUP Independent music supervisor)  Relevance is based on higher-order relevance [5] affective criteria such as ‘gut instinct’ or familiarity, as well as more objective facets such as budget, novelty, time availability, legal and business issues, and content factors such as tempo and style.  4. CONCLUSION: CONTENT OR CONTEXT? While it initially appears that it is the content of the music itself that determines use, the context of the music within the final film clip as well as the wider contextual significance of the music in society, the organization and culture [3] also have major impact on music search. Users rarely search for works by named artists or titles, instead focusing on genre, periods, instrumentation, affective facets, and content such as tempo and timbre. While some search criteria are more clearly defined, such as tempo, budget and recognisability (by chart position), other higher-level or affective criteria, such as uplifting or anthemic, or whether the music ‘fits’, are less rigid and cause problems in establishing relevance. As has been illustrated in a range of existing research, relevance judgements are strongly affected by context [3] and here, the impact of affective context requires further investigation as it will have significant impact on systems development. It is therefore likely that the systems which are designed for music retrieval for these purposes would more effectively meet the needs of their users by recognizing the need to accommodate searches by content and context. Future research will widen the sample to include broadcasters, computer games designers and those directly involved in the music composition, recording and performance processes, analysing these and the discourses of accompanying texts as well as evaluating existing systems. 5. References [1] Brackett, D. (2000). Interpreting Popular Music.   University of California Press, Berkeley [2] Cool, C. and Spink, A. (2002). Issues of context in information retrieval (IR): an introduction to the special issue. Information Processing and Management, 38 pp 605-611 [3] Ingwersen, P. and Jarvelin, K. (2005). The Turn. Springer, Dordrecht. [4] Inskip, C., Macfarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008) Meaning, communication, music: towards a revised communication model. Journal of Documentation, in press. [5] Kekalainen, J. & Jarvelin, K. (2002) Evaluating information retrieval systems under the challenges of interaction and multidimensional dynamic relevance  in Bruce, H., Fidel R., Ingwersen, P. and Vakkari, P. (Eds.) Proceedings of the 4th CoLIS Conference. Greenwood Village, CO: Libraries Unlimited, pp. 253-270. [6] Middleton, R. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Open University Press, Buckingham. [7] Neumeyer, D. and Buhler, J. (2001). Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music (I): Analysing the Music. In Donnelly, K.J. ed (2001). Film Music – Critical Approaches. Continuum International Publishing Group, London. Ch 1, pp 16-38. [8] Patton, M. (1990) Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California [9] Stefani, G. (1987) A Theory of Musical Competence Semiotica 66:1-3, pp7-22 [10] Tagg, P. and Clarida, B. (2003). Ten Little Title Tunes. Mass Media Scholars’ Press, New York and Montreal  

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

City Research Online

Inskip, C., MacFarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008). Content or context? Searching for musical meaning in task-based interactive information retrieval. IIiX'08: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Information Interaction in Context, 72 - 74.City Research OnlineOriginal citation: Inskip, C., MacFarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008). Content or context? Searching for musical meaning in task-based interactive information retrieval. IIiX'08: Proceedings of the 2nd International Symposium on Information Interaction in Context, 72 - 74.Permanent City Research Online URL: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/1714/ Copyright & reuseCity  University  London has developed City  Research Online  so that  its  users  may access the research outputs of City University London's staff. Copyright © and Moral Rights for this paper are retained by the individual author(s) and/ or other copyright holders.  All material in City Research Online is checked for eligibility for copyright before being made available in the live archive. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to from other web pages. Versions of researchThe version in City Research Online may differ from the final published version. Users are advised to check the Permanent City Research Online URL above for the status of the paper.EnquiriesIf you have any enquiries about any aspect of City Research Online, or if you wish to make contact  with the author(s) of this paper, please email the team at publications@city.ac.uk.Content or context? Searching for musical meaning in task-based interactive information retrieval. Charlie Inskip Dept of Information Science City University London  c.inskip@city.ac.uk Andy Macfarlane Dept of Information Science City University London  andym@soi.city.ac.ukPauline Rafferty Dept of Information Studies University of Aberystwyth  pmr@aber.ac.uk  ABSTRACT 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.   Categories and Subject Descriptors H.3.3 [Information Search and Retrieval]: Search Process; H.3.7 [Digital Libraries]: User issues General Terms Human Factors Keywords Music information retrieval, users, communication, meaning, relevance. 1. INTRODUCTION Over the last ten years there has been an ongoing discussion in the Information Retrieval (IR) literature about the meaning of ‘context’ (initially known as ‘situation’) and how it may impinge on information seeking behaviour, as part of a turn towards users. This recognises the interactive nature of IR which is affected by the contexts in which it takes place [1]. These interactions and contexts are summed up by Ingwersen and Jarvelin’s [2] model (Fig 1), which illustrates how the various elements of an interactive IR system are interdependent, and suggests that research into these systems should take a more holistic approach.                        Org           Social        Context              Cultural   Information    objects     Cognitive  Actors     Interface     IT:E ngines ,   Logics,   Algorithms    Figure 1 Interactive Information Seeking, Retrieval and Behavioral processes [2]  Closer examination of context – from both the system and the user point of view – will inform research about, particularly, tasks, relevance and queries. Areas of focus include information environment, information seeking, IR interaction and query level [1]. Our research investigates information seeking by creative professionals within the music industry, and focuses on their search for music for work purposes, specifically when music is to be included in films, advertising or television programmes. There are various levels of context in this process which affect the nature of the retrieval: the intended meaning of the music in its role and how this relates to the query formation; how the query matches the IR mechanisms that are used and organization of the collections that are being searched; the user context or work role; the music’s contextual relationship with the visuals and wider cultural contexts; and the relevance decisions of the users relating to the eventual use of the music. This paper presents early results of an ongoing study of information behaviour, and concentrates on users and use contexts. It is planned to investigate and evaluate systems as part of this research, which attempts to reflect a holistic approach [2], in order to present an overview of music search behaviour of a currently under-researched community of specialist creative professionals.  2. APPROACH The music industry is a network which is involved in exploiting existing compositions and recordings by manufacture, distribution, sales and marketing of CDs and, increasingly, downloads to the consumer but also by ‘secondary exploitation’ which involves encouraging the use of material in films, commercials and on radio and television as well as in clubs, over the internet and live (Figure 2).   This area left blank for copyright notice            MILLIONS OF USES MILLIONS OF SONGS  Artists   Managers   Record company Publishing company  Film companies Live and other public performance Internet  Clubs  Broadcasters   Outside organisations  MILLIONS OF CONSUMERS        Figure 2 Music Industry Owners, Users and Consumers There is constant communication between the Music Users and the Music Owners relating to this exploitation and major record companies and publishers employ departments of specialists concentrating on this area, which is known as synchronisation. This communication process is the focus of this research. A snowball sample [6] of experienced Owners and Users took part in face-to-face semi-structured interviews lasting up to one hour. This sampling technique allowed access to a specialist group of professionals by means of peer-recommendation. The interviews were designed to elicit information about the participants’ information seeking behaviour and the processes used when they were searching for music, in this case to accompany moving images. Using subject guidelines rather than strict questionnaires allowed the researcher to follow up themes arising during the research process and allowed a flexible and informal approach which reflected the nature of the industry under examination. Interviewees included music supervisors (Music Users), who are employed to source music for films, and employees of record companies and music publishers directly involved in exploitation of music (Music Owners).         Codes   Competences       Music Owner       Music User   Encoding  Decoding  Decoding  Encoding  Owner  competences     User competences        Owner codes     User codes Figure 3 Reflexive communications model [3] It is proposed in [3] that the meaning-making process between Owner and User is reflexive, depending on their relative codes and competences, which are cultural, organizational and social, and it is likely that this will relate to how successfully the systems used in the process are able to encode and decode these meanings. For the purposes of this paper a preliminary reading of the texts of the interviews has been used to draw out broad themes relating to the importance of context in music seeking, retrieval and behaviour processes. It is planned to examine these and other related texts using Discourse Analysis, which will reveal interpretive repertoires [9] used within this special group, which may be used to inform development of systems for retrieval in this area. 3. FINDINGS 3.1 Meaning When starting a search, Music Users have to extract meanings from a script, brief or images and translate those meanings into a query that will result in successful retrieval of a selection of material that matches the meaning that the creatives wish to put forward to the viewer of the final product. Communicating this meaning clearly depends on all parties involved sharing the same, or similar, cultural codes and competences [3, 4, 7]. However as there are various stakeholders involved in this process, and as these stakeholders do not always share the same understandings of music, this can cause problems. For example:  ‘I need a track that’s going to make people that it’s quite slow to begin with but has a real good build at the end, that’s emotional but quite driven’  is a typical example of a query that incorporates a range of affective meanings (emotional, driven) and content requirements (slow, build at the end). In order to accommodate the range of meanings encompassed by this type of query, a selection of pieces of music are generally offered to the User, who will try these against the images and discuss with their stakeholders They will then either accept one of these offers or go back to the Owner with a revised query, which is generally based on similarity with one of the pieces in the first offering or an ‘ideal’ (not affordable or otherwise available) piece. Gradually the reflexive communication of the meaning of the music, which can also change during the process due to outside influences, is refined by matching codes and competences, trial and error, input from other stakeholders, and ‘gut instinct’ until the query is satisfied.  3.2 Context The use context, how the music ‘fits’ the picture and its intended audience, is key in the process [5] and although interpretation of musical meaning is subjective, meanings do converge within an audience [8]. Frequently, particularly in the case of advertising, a visual (film clip) is emailed to Owners along with a written brief in order to communicate the use context as clearly as possible. The Owners then try to match a selection of pieces of music with the visual and return a rough edit to the User for their consideration.  ‘if it’s a classical, uplifting, anthemic piece, then you know, there’s thousands and but also the same time it’s finding the right song, and it is just – I mean it’s best when we have the- visuals, it’s a lot easier.’   In advertising, the product will also determine the type of music that is chosen by the Owner, as the cultural context of that product and how it is marketed indicates the type of music that will be suitable:  ‘Because if you’re dealing with a brand, it could be Heinz or Lucozade, or .. they don’t want necessarily anything too clever. They just want something that is going to help sell their product. And be a nice accompaniment to the film. Whereas maybe somebody like – obviously I’m generalizing – but someone like 02 or Orange, they’ll want a staggering piece of music that people are going to sit up and sort of pay attention to.’  This means that the search process needs to be able reflect these criteria, which are more related to cultural values contained within the music [4]. The targeted consumer will need to relate to the music in a positive way, and this relates more to facets such as cultural attitudes, codes and competences [3, 4, 7] rather than the content of the music signal itself.  3.3 Relevance Once a selection of music has been offered to the User a decision has to be made on the final piece. There can be numerous iterations of queries between Users and a range of Owners. Other contextual factors such as budgets and whether rights holders will allow the use of the material help improve precision. Relevance is also affected by audience metrics and the tastes of the various stakeholders. However it came across very strongly in the research that there is no scientific way of agreeing on the right piece of music to accompany a clip, and that many pieces of music will satisfy the same query:  ‘..music is so subjective, it’s like if you put five people in a room all trying to get them to make a decision on a piece of music, you’ll never get five people to agree. It’s personal taste. What one person likes another person dislikes. I think the public decide what’s right and I think if you can watch stuff and see what does jar, that just does not work, wrong tempo, wrong emotion, wrong style. But then you can find ten other things that are the right tempo, that are the right style, and the right mood, and which one works? Well, all of them, potentially.’  The relevance is therefore based on subjective criteria but also on more objective facets such as budget, novelty (whether the piece has been used before in a similar context) or familiarity (whether it sound similar to a piece used successfully in a similar context), time availability, whether the artist will allow the use, and content factors such as tempo and style.  4. CONTENT OR CONTEXT? While it initially appears that it is the content of the music itself that determines its use, we have shown that the context of the music within the final film clip as well as the contextual significance of the music in society, the organization and culture also have major impact on the seeking, retrieval and behavioral processes. It was very noticeable throughout the research that Users rarely search for works by particular named artists or titles, the traditional ways of organizing music in music libraries, instead focusing on genre, periods, instrumentation as well as affective facets and content such as tempo and timbre. This indicates, therefore, that it is likely that systems which are designed for music retrieval for these purposes would more effectively meet the needs of their users by incorporating both content and context in their functionality. Future research will widen the sample to include broadcasters, computer games designers and those directly involved in the music composition, recording and performance processes, analysing these and the discourses of accompanying texts such as cd sleeves and user interfaces as well as evaluating existing systems with the aim of presenting a detailed study of the music search process within the music industry. 5. References [1] Cool, C. and Spink, A. (2002). Issues of context in information retrieval (IR): an introduction to the special issue. Information Processing and Management, 38 pp 605-611 [2] Ingwersen, P. and Jarvelin, K. (2005). The Turn. Springer, Dordrecht. [3] Inskip, C., Macfarlane, A. & Rafferty, P. (2008) Meaning, communication, music: towards a revised communication model. Journal of Documentation, in press. [4] Middleton, R. (1990). Studying Popular Music. Open University Press, Buckingham. [5] Neumeyer, D. and Buhler, J. (2001). Analytical and Interpretive Approaches to Film Music (I): Analysing the Music. In Donnelly, K.J. ed (2001). Film Music – Critical Approaches. Continuum International Publishing Group, London. Ch 1, pp 16-38. [6] Patton, M. (1990) Qualitative evaluation and research methods. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, California [7] Stefani, G. (1987) A Theory of Musical Competence Semiotica 66:1-3, pp7-22 [8] Tagg, P. and Clarida, B. (2003). Ten Little Title Tunes. Mass Media Scholars’ Press, New York and Montreal. [9] Talja, S. (2001). Music, Culture and the Library – an analysis of discourses. Scarecrow Press, Lanham.   

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

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