Organising music for movies

Abstract

This is the unspecified version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link City Research OnlineThis paper is a pre-print version presented at the ISKO UK 2009 conference, 22-23 June, prior to peer review and editing. For published proceedings see special issue of Aslib Proceedings journal. Organising music for movies Charles Inskip and Andy MacFarlaneCity University London Pauline RaffertyUniversity of Aberystwyth AbstractPurpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine and discuss the classification of commercial popular music when large digital collections are organised for use in films. Design/methodology/approach -A range of systems are investigated and their organization is discussed, focusing on an analysis of the metadata used by the systems and choices given to the end-user to construct a query. The indexing of the music is compared to a checklist of music facets which has been derived from recent musicological literature on semiotic analysis of popular music. These facets include aspects of communication, cultural and musical expression, codes and competences.Findings -In addition to bibliographic detail, descriptive metadata is used to organise music in these systems. Genre, subject and mood are used widely; some musical facets also appear. The extent to which attempts are being made to reflect these facets in the organization of these systems is discussed. A number of recommendations are made which may help to improve this process. Originality/value -This paper discusses an area of creative music search which has not previously been investigated in any depth and makes recommendations based on findings and the literature which may be used in the development of commercial systems as well as making a contribution to the literature.

Towards the disintermediation of creative music search: analysing queries to determine important facets

“…It appears that although the Music Owners are designing search tools for Users who wish to search online (Inskip et al 2009) the possible mismatch between the Users" approach and that of the Owners must be considered. If successful disintermediation of these services is to take place then the Users and their contexts have to be considered in detail.…”

“…The metadata used by a selection of MSEs had been examined previously (Inskip et al 2009). The facets by which these systems are organised is divided according to whether it is bibliographic (eg Artist, Writer, Title) or descriptive (eg Mood, Subject, Genre).…”

“…Granted, some of the bibliographic facets can be dealt with by applying suitable metadata fields, but these have to be accurate if they are to be of any value. Songs are often classified by inexperienced humans leading to inconsistent and unreliable metadata (Inskip et al 2009). With regard to the bibliographic facets this is a solvable problem.…”

“…It is interesting to note that by far the most frequent tempo descriptor is "upbeat", a term indicating a positive mood as well as a faster than average tempo. This particular combination here of affective and structural facets into one descriptor is very effective shorthand which appears so frequently in interviews on the subject as to become a cliché (Inskip et al 2009). Users also mention key instruments (piano, guitar, strings, percussion) they wish to appear in the selected music.…”

“…The metadata used by these bespoke Music Search Engines (MSEs) (Nanopoulos et al, 2009) was investigated and it was shown that they employ both bibliographic and descriptive terms in their music classification schemes, some of which are outside the traditional music classification paradigm, such as Subject and Mood (Inskip et al 2009).…”