Music Browser
Question: How to find “interesting” music in large and unknown music collections? How to structure and index automatically music collections?
The intentionally ambiguous expression “Popular Music Browser” reflects the two main goals of this project, which started in 1998, at Sony CSL laboratory. First, we are interested in human-centered issues related to browsing “Popular Music”. Popular here means that the music accessed to is widely distributed, and known to many listeners. Second, we consider “popular browsing” of music, i.e. making music accessible to non specialists (music lovers), and allowing sharing of musical tastes and information within communities, departing from the usual, single user view of digital libraries.
The MusicBrowser is the first music content management tool able to handle large music catalogues, and offer users many novel content-based access methods in an integrated environment. It integrates all aspects of the music-to-listener chain, from music description - descriptor extraction from the music signal, or data mining techniques -, similarity based access and novel music retrieval methods such as automatic sequence generation, and user interface issues.
We are currently conducting a series of user-studies, first a workshop at University of Bologna in May 2004, then a week-long user study at Cité des Sciences, Paris in June 2004, and finally a 2-week “atelier” at Cité des Sciences during the “Villette Numérique” biennale in Septembre 2004, where communities of 20+ people extensively use the Browser, to validate existing descriptors, and design their own descriptors, using the automatic learning from EDS. To this effect we have introduced the notion of “music game”, in which users have to localize a particular song they hear, using the various search methods at their disposal.
Media
- Music Browser demo: Music Browser demo movie
- Music Browser interface:
- Pictures of a 3-day seminar at the Facolta di Scienze della Formazione, University of Bologna, Italy:
- Pictures of a week-long public workshop at the Multimedia Library, Cité des Sciences, Paris.
Participants: François Pachet, Jean-Julien Aucouturier, Anthony Beurivé
References
Content Management for Electronic Music Distribution: The Real Issues. Communications of the ACM, 46(4):71-75 April 2003.
The Cuidado Music Browser : an end-to-end Electronic Music Distribution System. Multimedia Tools and Applications, 30(3):331-349 2006. Special Issue on the CBMI03 Conference
