ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we introduce the concept of a semantic music discovery engine. We refer to such a system as discovery engine (as opposed to a search engine) because it is designed to help people discover novel music, as well as
uncover new connections between familiar songs and artists. The term semantic refers to the fact that our system is built around a query-by-text description paradigm where a person can make use of a large, diverse set of musically relevant tags to specify the type of music that he or she wishes to hear. For example, a semantic music discovery engine lets one find music by asking for “mellow classic rock featuring slide guitar.” From this query phrase, the system first identifies tags like “mellow,” “classic rock,” and “slide guitar” and then retrieves songs that are semantically associated with these tags. Finally, the engine presents the most relevant music as a streamable playlist of songs.
