New music discovery

The majority of users at SIGGRAPH 2008 were interested in ways of finding new music. In order to test vast quantities of music files, an agreement was reached with AWAL - 'Artists Without A Label' - who authorised the use or their 62,000 track library for research purposes, and with copyright clearance of up to 30 second segments per track, for public demonstrations. AWAL was particularly appropriate for this research as it mostly filters new artists to iTunes and other major digital music companies, and therefore most of the artists are unknown to the general public. This enables discovery of new material without any prior knowledge of the metadata, and therefore a search based solely on navigating through sound: a good user test scenario.

TEST

A random shingle from the AWAL library proved to be a piece of 'industrial noise' - a very loud 3 seconds of music with a distorted vocal, and without an easily detectable melody - by Rexor. This three-second burst of industrial noise appears to find more instances of similar industrial noise, performed by the same band and in virtually identical style. Fragments by other industrial noise bands appear on the result list, enabling discovery of new artists.

-- MichelaMagas - 31 Oct 2008

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