There are different things that make a set of songs similar to one another. One of the things that we believe is important to song similarity is the context of the song. There are a few songs that remind you of something ("the songs I heard on spring break" or "stuff I listen to when I study").
Sometimes the relationships are hidden in the music, the lyrics, or a memory.
Sometimes it's even deeper.
Our goal at One Llama is to understand these relationships, by automatically analyzing the acoustic qualities of the music, the social "contextual" qualities of the music, and how music relates to each user differently.
Here's an example I often talk about to further explain the above point: Let's look for the opening theme for the TV show Scrubs (Superman by Lazlo Bane) on One Llama. Here's the playlist our recommendation engine generates. All the songs on this list have been featured in the show (Scrubs fans, enjoy!). Now all those songs together make a great playlist, but the common factor is not necessarily their sound features or lyrics. The common factor is the fact that those songs have been featured on the same TV show.
What factors do you think are important in deciding whether songs are similar are not? Is there a factor that you think is important (maybe not the most important, but deserves mention) and is normally ignored by recommendation engines? As usual, feel free to leave some comments!
Nikhil Pandit
One Llama Media, Inc.
http://www.onellama.com
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