Personal Music Collections Research Articles

Music Player Box

Abstract: In the realm of digital media, music players have emerged as indispensable tools for organizing, managing, and enjoying personal music collections. This project aims to develop a comprehensive music player application that caters to the diverse needs of modern music enthusiasts. The proposed application will encompass a wide range of functionalities, including seamless music playback, efficient music organization, and personalized user experience. The proposed music player application will be developed using a modern software development framework, ensuring crossplatform compatibility and adherence to industry best practices. The application's architecture will be designed to handle large music libraries efficiently and provide a responsive user experience. The primary objective of this project is to develop a comprehensive music player application that caters to the diverse needs of modern music enthusiasts. The application will provide users with a seamless and enjoyable experience for organizing, managing, and playing their personal music collections. It will encompass a wide range of functionalities. The development of a versatile and user-friendly music player application holds significant value in the realm of digital media. By providing seamless music playback, efficient music organization, and a personalized user experience, this application will empower users to enjoy their music collections to the fullest.

Said the Hooker to the Thief

Said the Hooker to the Thief

Intelligent User Interfaces for Music Discovery

Assisting the user in finding music is one of the original motivations that led to the establishment of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) as a research field. This encompasses classic Information Retrieval inspired access to music repositories that aims at meeting an information need of an expert user. Beyond this, however, music as a cultural art form is also connected to an entertainment need of potential listeners, requiring more intuitive and engaging means for music discovery. A central aspect in this process is the user interface. In this article, we reflect on the evolution of MIR-driven intelligent user interfaces for music browsing and discovery over the past two decades. We argue that three major developments have transformed and shaped user interfaces during this period, each connected to a phase of new listening practices. Phase 1 has seen the development of content-based music retrieval interfaces built upon audio processing and content description algorithms facilitating the automatic organization of repositories and finding music according to sound qualities. These interfaces are primarily connected to personal music collections or (still) small commercial catalogs. Phase 2 comprises interfaces incorporating collaborative and automatic semantic description of music, exploiting knowledge captured in user-generated metadata. These interfaces are connected to collective web platforms. Phase 3 is dominated by recommender systems built upon the collection of online music interaction traces on a large scale. These interfaces are connected to streaming services. We review and contextualize work from all three phases and extrapolate current developments to outline possible scenarios of music recommendation and listening interfaces of the future.

SKIPPING DISCOVERY? MUSIC DISCOVERY AND PERSONAL MUSIC COLLECTIONS IN THE STREAMING ERA

In this paper, I use Spotify as a case study to investigate user experiences of music exploration and discovery using streaming services and recommendation algorithms. Following the framing of music discovery as an affective response which allows for the categorization and definition of music, I draw upon qualitative data from Spotify users regarding their ephemeral experiences when exploring music using streaming services. I identify user practices of music archiving and collecting as a strategy to mitigate these transient encounters by slowing down the pace of their music consumption and creating enduring connections between music and their individual histories. In this way, personal music collections were found to support instances of music discovery as they created a listening context and user mindset which was sympathetic the affective definition and categorization of new music content. This investigation of collecting practice also revealed longitudinal perspectives on music discoveries which emerge through sustained listening over time, drawing attention to listener’s social surroundings, friends and online communities as the impetus for choosing to give particular music content time to grow towards being discovered. The paper concludes with implications of the use of algorithmic recommendation systems in the delivery and consumption of music and other cultural forms.

Texture selection for automatic music genre classification

Music Genre Classification is the problem of associating genre-related labels to digitised music tracks. It has applications in the organisation of commercial and personal music collections. Often, music tracks are described as a set of timbre-inspired sound textures. A subset of the sound textures is often selected to represent the entire track. In this paper, we evaluate the impact of texture selection on automatic music genre classification. Although previous work has selected textures by linear downsampling, no extensive work has been done to evaluate how texture selection benefits music genre classification. We also present a novel texture selector based on K-Means aimed to identify diverse sound textures within each track. Our results show that capturing texture diversity within tracks is important towards improving classification performance. Our results also indicate that our K-Means based texture selector is able to achieve significant improvements over the baseline with fewer textures per track than the other texture selectors evaluated. We also show that using multiple texture representations allows further opportunities for feature selection to improve classification performance.

Users' music information needs and behaviors: Design implications for music information retrieval systems

User studies in the music information retrieval (MIR) domain tend to be exploratory and qualitative in nature, involving a small number of users, which makes it difficult to derive broader implications for system design. In order to fill this gap, we conducted a large‐scale user survey questioning various aspects of people's music information needs and behaviors. In particular, we investigated if general music users' needs and behaviors have significantly changed over time by comparing our current survey results with a similar survey conducted in 2004. In this paper, we present the key findings from the survey data and discuss 4 emergent themes—(a) the shift in access and use of personal music collections; (b) the growing need for tools to support collaborative music seeking, listening, and sharing; (c) the importance of “visual” music experiences; and (d) the need for ontologies for providing rich contextual information. We conclude by making specific recommendations for improving the design of MIR systems and services.

37.: Lombard effect revisited: A different approach to hypophonia in Parkinson’s disease

This study measured changes in voice quality and volume due to the Lombard effect in patients with Parkinson’s disease (PD) using voice analysis software and assessed its tolerability and impact on quality of life of PD patients and their carers. Nine patients with PD and hypophonia were provided with a portable digital music player and in-ear bud headphones pre-loaded with “loud” music from the two authors’ personal music collection. Magnitude of Lombard effect was documented by recording each patient reading a standard passage with no music then with music playing in one ear in a standard medical consulting room using a headset microphone. These patients were followed up over the phone at monthly intervals for 3 months, as well as during routine clinic appointments to see whether they continued using the headsets. Six patients demonstrated significant increase in voice volume of more than 5 dB in the office. At 1 month, five patients reported continued use with improved communication reported by patients and caregivers. Three patients were not using it frequently due to difficulty operating the music player although they experienced noticeable benefits and only one patient had found that the music did not make any difference in their communication. The study follow up is scheduled to be completed by April 2014. Lombard effect can be induced cheaply and in a tolerable manner in PD patients by using music rather than masking noise and this may improve voice and quality of life of PD patients.

Music-listening in everyday life: Devices and choice

Utilizing the Experience Sampling Method, this research investigated how individuals encounter music in everyday life. Responding to two text messages sent at random times between 8:00 and 23:00 daily for one week, 177 participants completed self-reports online regarding their experience with any music heard within a two-hour period prior to receipt of the message. Overall, the radio, mobile MP3 players, and computers featured prominently. Detailed analyses revealed significant patterns in device usage based on time of day; ratings of the music in terms of choice, liking, arousal, and attention; mood; and the perceived consequences of the music. While feeling lethargic associated with recorded music broadcasted in public, in contrast personal music collections promoted contentment. Similarly, devices allowing for personal input were met with positive consequences, like motivation. The current findings imply that the greater control that technology affords leads to complex patterns of everyday music usage, and that listeners are active consumers rather than passive listeners.

'The famous and new Italian taste': The Dissemination of Italian Sacred Music in the Southern Netherlands, 1675-1755

The seventeenth- and eighteenth-century diaspora of Italian music and musicians in Europe has been widely investigated, yet only fragmentary attention has been paid to the dissemination of Italian sacred music in the Southern Netherlands. By combining data from music inventories made between 1675 and 1755 and the remains of historical music collections, the present article constitutes a systematic inquiry into the circulation of Italian sacred music within this region. Questions are raised about the repertory that may have been available at a typical church, the proportion of Italian music within ecclesiastical music collections, and the extent to which the sacred repertory was renewed. The channels through which Italian sacred music circulated are mapped, with attention paid to the role of the local music presses, the mobility of musicians, and private donations to churches. Finally, closer consideration of the differences in character between the collections at different institutions clarifies the evolving availability of Italian sacred music within the southern Netherlands and demonstrates how extensive personal music collections, such as those of Vanden Boom and van den Branden de Reeth, influenced the repertories of local churches.

Understanding personal digital music collections

In this paper we present preliminary results from a study to understand how people use and manage personal digital music collections. We conducted a survey of a cross-section of a university community including students, faculty, and staff. Our preliminary findings show that the music collections in our sample follow an exponential distribution curve both in terms of number of songs and collection size in gigabytes. Over 50% of the participants in our survey owned more than one portable music player and many of these were Apple iPods (68%). A majority of respondents (82%) listened to music on their mobile player 2--3 times per week or more, but the frequency of synchronizing mobile devices was more evenly distributed across time.

New Light on Haydn's Invocation of Neptune

Haydn scholarship has long been aware that Joseph Haydn was not the first to set Marchimont Nedham's Invocation of Neptune text. The libretto of Friedrich Hartmann Graf's ode even survived in the British Library, but further settings by Johann Christian Fischer and Ignaz Pleyel remained in complete obscurity. An anonymous Invocation composition from Haydn's personal music collection (now in the National Széchényi Library, Budapest) inspires reconsideration of this problem. The work was probably performed on 23 May 1792 in the Hanover Square Rooms at 'Mr. Fischer's Night' and may well be Fischer's composition (if not one in fact co-written by Fischer and Pleyel, which could explain our complete lack of information about the performance of a third pre-Haydn Invocation setting). Apart from clarifying some details of the genesis of Haydn's Invocation, comparison with the anonymous setting also allows us to better appreciate the sensitive relationship between text and music in Haydn's work.