Music Rec
RT @tricil: @threv also, extensionfm!!! I feel like I just discovered winamp or lastfm for the first...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Sat, 07/31/2010 - 18:05
RT @tricil: @threv also, extensionfm!!! I feel like I just discovered winamp or lastfm for the first time.
Categories: Music Rec
RT @majman: SoHo seriously needs a combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 19:56
RT @majman: SoHo seriously needs a combination Pizza Hut & Taco Bell
Categories: Music Rec
This is great - http://www.openappmkt.com
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 19:56
This is great - http://www.openappmkt.com
Categories: Music Rec
Do you use Smart Playlists?
Music Machinery - Paul Lamere - Echonest - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 13:41
iTunes Smart Playlists allow for very flexible creation of dynamic playlists based on a whole boat-load of parameters. But I wonder how often people use this feature. Is it too complicated? Let’s find out. I’ve created a poll that will take you about 20 seconds to complete. Go to iTunes, count up how many smart playlists you have. You can tell which playlists are smart playlists because they have the little gear icon:Don’t count the pre-fab smart playlists that come with iTunes (like 90′s music, Recently Added, My Top Rated, etc.). Once you’ve counted up your playlists, take the poll:
Categories: Music Rec
I’m at Sushi Yasuda (204 E. 43rd St, at 3rd Ave, New York). http://4sq.com/5VMFI2
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 02:32
I’m at Sushi Yasuda (204 E. 43rd St, at 3rd Ave, New York). http://4sq.com/5VMFI2
Categories: Music Rec
Music Recommendation through Expert-based Collaborative Filtering
Xamat - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 00:07
In September I will be presenting the paper entitled "Towards Fully Distributed and Privacy-preserving Recommendations via Expert Collaborative Filtering and RESTful Linked Data" in the 2010 International Conference on Web Intelligence in Toronto. You can read the full paper here, but in this post I will try to give you a taste of what is hidden behind such a long title.
This paper should be understood as a continuation of my research on Expert Based Collaborative Filtering -- the so-called Wisdom of the Few. I recommend you take a look at my previous post on this issue before moving on.
So the basic idea from our previous work was to use domain experts as the only asset for creating neighborhood and predicting item utility in a similar way as is done in standard kNN collaborative filtering. We made some claims of how that method provided many practical advantages over standard approaches. We also claimed that the approach was scalable and flexible enough to be used in many domains. Unfortunately, at that point, we did not have time to implement and prove all that.
The current work presents a practical full-fledged implementation of the approach in the music domain. Our goal is to prove some of the previous claims as well as to stablish an architectural framework for expert collaborative filtering providing, among other things, 100% privacy protection.
The following screenshot will give you an idea of the application. In the client side, it is a Flex/Air stand-alone application that can work in most operating systems. You can rate music albums, see the ratings from the experts, and get personalized recommendations based on that. We also provide access to extended information for albums via links to lastfm as well as access to Linked Data resources from MusicBrainz and others.
The key architectural differences between standard and expert Collaborative Filtering are illustrated in the figure below. Note that in our expert CF, user ratings are kept in the client machine. On the other hand, expert ratings are downloaded into the local machine and the computation for the predictions is performed there avoiding any privacy breach.
The next figure gives some more details of how we implemented the solution in our case. Again, note that the server is only used to crawl and store expert ratings publically available on the web. Those ratings are then queried from the client through a REST-style web api. The computation of neighbors and predictions is then performed in the local machine.
You might be wondering where we got our expert ratings from. If in our previous work, we crawled our movie ratings from rottetomatoes, we now turned to metacritics. The figure below illustrates the number of ratings per critic. In the top positions, we can see AllMusicGuide with over 3500 ratings, or Pitchfork, Uncut, and Mojo, with over 3000.
I believe that expert collaborative filtering is a very flexible and valid paradigm in many domains. It can offer better results than other kinds of recommendations while solving many of the shortcomings such as scalability, privacy, or cold-start. We are currently working in other deployments in the mobile space, for example. But I will explain that in a future post.
Categories: Music Rec
I went from the first generation iPhone to the iPhone4. I saved...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Fri, 07/30/2010 - 00:06
I went from the first generation iPhone to the iPhone4. I saved something like 2 hours a day added up :)
Categories: Music Rec
The next music tastemakers – the computer programmers
Music Machinery - Paul Lamere - Echonest - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 16:32
There’s an interesting piece in the New Yorker about the future of listening. The article focuses on Pandora and MOG and the challenges of making the online listening experience. Author Sasha Frere-Jones concludes with this:
While using these services, I kept thinking about an early-eighties drum machine called the Roland TR-808, which has seduced generations of musicians with its heavy kick-drum sound and the oddly human swing of its clock. Whoever programmed this box had more impact on dance music than the hundreds of better-known musicians who used the device. Similarly, the anonymous programmers who write the algorithms that control the series of songs in these streaming services may end up having a huge effect on the way that people think of musical narrative—what follows what, and who sounds best with whom. Sometimes we will be the d.j.s, and sometimes the machines will be, and we may be surprised by which we prefer.
Read the article:
You, the D.J. Online music moves to the cloud.
Categories: Music Rec
Help researchers understand earworms
Music Machinery - Paul Lamere - Echonest - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 14:20
Researchers at Goldsmiths, University of London, in a collaboration with the BBC 6 and the British Academy, are conducting research to find out about the music in people’s heads, sometimes called ’musical imagery’. They want to know what songs are the most common, whether people like it or don’t, what triggers it, and if some people have music in their head all the time, etc.
To help researchers understand this phenomenon, take part in a questionnaire (and you could win £150 too). I took the survey, it took about 10 minutes. They do ask some rather personal questions that seem related to one’s tendency towards compulsive behavior. (yes, I do sometimes count the stairs that I’m walking up).
It looks to be an interesting research project. More details about it are here: The Earwomery.com
Categories: Music Rec
Best sliders in the city. w/ @gregory80 (@ Mark) http://4sq.com/4EKlwx
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Thu, 07/29/2010 - 00:49
Best sliders in the city. w/ @gregory80 (@ Mark) http://4sq.com/4EKlwx
Categories: Music Rec
staff: Borked ID3 tags got you down? Now you can edit your...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Wed, 07/28/2010 - 22:57
Borked ID3 tags got you down? Now you can edit your Audio post’s track info and album art! Sweet.
Categories: Music Rec
Visual Music
Music Machinery - Paul Lamere - Echonest - Wed, 07/28/2010 - 10:47
The week long Visual Music Collaborative Workshop held at the Eyebeam just finished up. This was an invite-only event where participants did a deep dive into sound analysis techniques, openGL programming, and interfacing with mobile control devices.
Here’s one project built during the week that uses The Echo Nest analysis output:
(Via Aaron Meyers)
Categories: Music Rec
RT @extensionfm: New Release: SoundCloud Support! http://bit.ly/bXszh3
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Tue, 07/27/2010 - 23:44
RT @extensionfm: New Release: SoundCloud Support! http://bit.ly/bXszh3
Categories: Music Rec
I don’t care what Foursquare says. @majman is definitely the mayor here (@ Gimme! Coffee)...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Tue, 07/27/2010 - 23:44
I don’t care what Foursquare says. @majman is definitely the mayor here (@ Gimme! Coffee) http://4sq.com/2VjgFT
Categories: Music Rec
New Release: SoundCloud Support
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Tue, 07/27/2010 - 20:48
We just released 1.5.2 to the Chrome extension gallery. This new release adds support for SoundCloud!
In their own words - “SoundCloud is a new online audio platform that lets music professionals receive, send & distribute their music”. In our words - SoundCloud has a ton of amazing music that you need to to listen to right now!
Support for SoundCloud works both on soundcloud.com as well as any site that has a SoundCloud widget embedded (like this one).
SoundCloud support is really exciting because it opens up a direct link from the artist’s studio into the listener’s music library. If we think back to when bands used to record music for ten’s of thousands of dollars in a studio, then produce millions of plastic discs, then ship those discs to thousands of stores, then have listeners spend 20 minutes trying to open the plastic surrounding those plastic discs, well anyway you get the point. Now artists can make music for the cost of a computer, upload it to SoundCloud and within seconds it’s inside their fans’ music libraries. Pretty incredible!
In addition to SoundCloud, this release also adds Tumblr oAuth support. Previously, logging into Tumblr meant giving us your username and password. With oAuth, you now just tell Tumblr you trust us and they give us a token to use on your behalf. You can untrust us (don’t know why you’d ever want to do that!) any time you want and the token will stop working. It’s a lot more secure this way. If you are already logged in to Tumblr inside the extension, you may want to consider logging out and then logging back in with oAuth.
We’d love to hear what you think about these new features. Leave us a comment here or on our UserVoice page.
Categories: Music Rec
I want the Magic Trackpad. And the Magic Rechargeable Batteries.
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Tue, 07/27/2010 - 17:12
I want the Magic Trackpad. And the Magic Rechargeable Batteries.
Categories: Music Rec
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-25)
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Tue, 07/27/2010 - 00:22
My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-7-25):
Imported from Last.fm Tumblr by JoeLaz
Categories: Music Rec
RT @j2labs: I vowch for @majman: he designs my favorite music player and plays tasteful jams in the...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 23:36
RT @j2labs: I vowch for @majman: he designs my favorite music player and plays tasteful jams in the office. http://vow.ch/2ef
Categories: Music Rec
RT @jonaswoost: Blogged: Three music services I love...
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 23:36
RT @jonaswoost: Blogged: Three music services I love http://www.heutepopmorgen.com/2010/07/26/three-music-services-i-love/
Categories: Music Rec
Dinner with family. 13 of us from Romania to Israel (@ Serafina at Time Hotel) http://4sq.com/aGAiD3
Dan Kantor - AOL Music - Mon, 07/26/2010 - 06:32
Dinner with family. 13 of us from Romania to Israel (@ Serafina at Time Hotel) http://4sq.com/aGAiD3
Categories: Music Rec
