Showing papers by "J. Stephen Downie published in 2006"

Everyday life music information-seeking behaviour of young adults

Abstract: This poster presents the preliminary results of an ongoing qualitative study on the everyday-life music informationseeking behaviour of young adults. The data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed following a grounded theory approach. The analysis showed a strong penchant for informal channels (e.g., friends, relative) and, conversely, a distrust of experts. It also emerged that music seeking was mostly motivated by curiosity rather than by actual information needs, which in turn explains why browsing is such a popular strategy.

Exploiting recommended usage metadata: Exploratory analyses

Abstract: In this paper, we conduct a series of exploratory analyses on the user-recommended usages of music as generated by 1,042 reviewers who have posted to www.epinions.com. Using hierarchical clustering methods on data derived from the co-occurrence analyses of usage and genre, usage and artist, and usage and album, we are able to conclude that further investigation of user-recommended usage metadata is warranted, especially with regard to its implications for future iterations of the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX).

Learning by building digital libraries

Abstract: The implications of using digital library software in educational contexts, for both students and software developers, are discussed using two case studies of students building digital libraries.

Beyond error tolerance: finding thematic similarities in music digital libraries

Abstract: Current Music Information Retrieval (MIR) systems focus on melody based retrieval with some tolerance for user errors in the melody specification. The system described here presents a novel method for theme retrieval: A theme is described as a list of musical events, containing melody and harmony features, which must be presented in a given order and within a given time frame. The system retrieves musical phrases that fit the description. A system of this type could serve musicians and listeners who wish to discover thematically similar phrases in music digital libraries. The prototype and underlying model have been tested on midi sequences of music by W.A. Mozart and have shown good performance results.

Factors affecting response rates for real-life MIR queries

Abstract: In this poster we present preliminary findings of an exploratory study of natural language music information queries posted to the Google Answers web site. We discuss the proportion of queries answered as a function of time and attempt to identify factors which affect the probability of a query being answered.