Note: This bibliographic page is archived and will no longer be updated. For an up-to-date list of publications from the Music Technology Group see the Publications list .

The Quest for Musical Genres: Do the Experts and the Wisdom of Crowds Agree?

Title The Quest for Musical Genres: Do the Experts and the Wisdom of Crowds Agree?
Publication Type Conference Paper
Year of Publication 2008
Conference Name 9th International Conference on Music Information Retrieval
Authors Sordo, M. , Celma Ò. , Blech M. , & Guaus E.
Conference Start Date 14/09/2008
Conference Location Philadelphia, USA
Abstract This paper presents some findings around musical genres. The main goal is to analyse whether there is any agreement between a group of experts and a community, when defining a set of genres and their relationships. For this purpose, three different experiments are conducted using two datasets: the MP3.com expert taxonomy, and last.fm tags at artist level. The experimental results show a clear agreement for some components of the taxonomy (Blues, Hip-Hop), whilst in other cases (e.g. Rock) there is no correlations. Interestingly enough, the same results are found in the MIREX2007 results for audio genre classification task. Therefore, a multi–faceted approach for musical genre using expert based classifications, dynamic associations derived from the wisdom of crowds, and content–based analysis can improve genre classification, as well as other relevant MIR tasks such as music similarity or music recommendation.