4 ms·

My problem is that I like a song from one artist but not his other songs, because that one song is different than the others. I kind of hoped this site maps so

My problem is that I like a song from one artist but not his other songs, because that one song is different than the others. I kind of hoped this site maps songs and not artists :/

djbusby 3y ago
Yes. Somgs-like-this-song is the thing I wanna find.
- at_a_remove 3y ago
  I have found this to be terrifically difficult. I went to the trouble of going through Tom Waits' discography to find something similar to "Alice," without luck. Some of my best mixes take years to create. The problem, to me, breaks down into three separate difficulties, perhaps three and a half: First, if the Music Genome people are correct, the number of variables (if you will) is quite large, creating an enormous search space. I grant an extra half to the concept that portions of that search space would be sparsely populated. We are getting pretty good at searching these kinds of spaces (something I would like to know more about). Second, each person has a different idea of what similarity entails. For some it is instrumentation. Others, production value. Some are looking for lyrical subject similarity. And so forth. And most people are very much "I'll know it when I hear it," unable to really qualify that similarity function. It requires quite a bit of introspection, meta-cognition, and a good vocabulary to really describe what that target is. Right now, we're bad at that and have a bad habit of just throwing everything in a bucket. As an example, I might like some music with a fast tempo for some mood, but I might also like "darkjazz" (a microgenre which more or less collapsed about seven or so years back). Most recommender systems would then pick out some fast, "hot" jazz, which I absolutely do not want, but it has the tempo of some things I do like and the genre of something else I like. Third, the process of assigning values to said variables was quite labor intensive when they were doing it, as well as subjective. Highly trained musicians spending half an hour on each song (which means that, with that many variables, while the time seems long, the examination must be cursory). It would really be something to make progress in this area and I think it might be the most fruitful. However, I think any real progress in this area might mean you would need a corpus of at least a hundred thousand songs human-rated, each by multiple evaluators, then programs written for each of the, say 450 genes (if we are to use the Music Genome Project). Finally, the programs would be tweaked until they aligned with the ratings given by humans. It's one of those things I would fund if I were an eccentric billionaire.
  - _sys49152 3y ago
    350 genes for rap music? LOL please. what would that even entail? music genome project is the equivalent to the AI images with eyes everywhere in the photo from years ago. ancient tech that just does not work.
autoexec 3y ago
There are bands that change their sound so much from one song/album to the next that this is sure to be hit and miss for a lot of artists.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Everything but the girl is one of those. Every time they'd ship a new album I'd run out and buy it only to think 'bleh'. But four weeks later after it had grown on me I'd usually consider it their best work. So much for consistency :)
jacquesm 3y ago
Yes, that's a good point. For instance 'We do what we can' by Sheryl Crow is one of those. It stands out so much for me that I find it hard to recognize it as her work compared to the other tracks.

My problem is that I like a song from one artist but not his other songs, because that one song is different than the others. I kind of hoped this site maps songs and not artists :/

djbusby 3y ago

Yes. Somgs-like-this-song is the thing I wanna find.

at_a_remove 3y ago
I have found this to be terrifically difficult. I went to the trouble of going through Tom Waits' discography to find something similar to "Alice," without luck. Some of my best mixes take years to create. The problem, to me, breaks down into three separate difficulties, perhaps three and a half: First, if the Music Genome people are correct, the number of variables (if you will) is quite large, creating an enormous search space. I grant an extra half to the concept that portions of that search space would be sparsely populated. We are getting pretty good at searching these kinds of spaces (something I would like to know more about). Second, each person has a different idea of what similarity entails. For some it is instrumentation. Others, production value. Some are looking for lyrical subject similarity. And so forth. And most people are very much "I'll know it when I hear it," unable to really qualify that similarity function. It requires quite a bit of introspection, meta-cognition, and a good vocabulary to really describe what that target is. Right now, we're bad at that and have a bad habit of just throwing everything in a bucket. As an example, I might like some music with a fast tempo for some mood, but I might also like "darkjazz" (a microgenre which more or less collapsed about seven or so years back). Most recommender systems would then pick out some fast, "hot" jazz, which I absolutely do not want, but it has the tempo of some things I do like and the genre of something else I like. Third, the process of assigning values to said variables was quite labor intensive when they were doing it, as well as subjective. Highly trained musicians spending half an hour on each song (which means that, with that many variables, while the time seems long, the examination must be cursory). It would really be something to make progress in this area and I think it might be the most fruitful. However, I think any real progress in this area might mean you would need a corpus of at least a hundred thousand songs human-rated, each by multiple evaluators, then programs written for each of the, say 450 genes (if we are to use the Music Genome Project). Finally, the programs would be tweaked until they aligned with the ratings given by humans. It's one of those things I would fund if I were an eccentric billionaire.
- _sys49152 3y ago
  350 genes for rap music? LOL please. what would that even entail? music genome project is the equivalent to the AI images with eyes everywhere in the photo from years ago. ancient tech that just does not work.

autoexec 3y ago

There are bands that change their sound so much from one song/album to the next that this is sure to be hit and miss for a lot of artists.

jacquesm 3y ago
Everything but the girl is one of those. Every time they'd ship a new album I'd run out and buy it only to think 'bleh'. But four weeks later after it had grown on me I'd usually consider it their best work. So much for consistency :)

jacquesm 3y ago

Yes, that's a good point. For instance 'We do what we can' by Sheryl Crow is one of those. It stands out so much for me that I find it hard to recognize it as her work compared to the other tracks.