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RECO.ENGINE.04
Music recommendation systems compete
Looking for music for a romantic evening? Or maybe for dancing instead? How can I find music that I might like, even by artists I haven’t heard of before? Answers to these questions will be presented as part of the Reco.Engine.04 project. Reco-engines are music recommendation systems: users can express their music preferences in various ways, and the system creates a matching “my-taste-in-music” profile and suggests pieces of music the user may have not heard before but will like. Music recommendation systems support the discovery of new artists and new music.
Starting on 30.09.04 at 3 p.m., music fans can try out different music recommendation systems at www.musicline.de as part of a unique technology contest. The competition will officially start with a demonstration of functionality and initial testing by a group of well-known personalities at the Popkomm trade fair at the PhonoNet exhibition booth (hall 17, booth 101). Currently there are four systems that have been developed and are ready to be launched on the market: "Soundslike" (Fraunhofer Institut Ilmenau), "Hifind" (Hifind), "MusicLens" (DDD System, in hall 18, booth 171) and "Soundprofiler" (PhonoNet). They are competing against each other in the RECO.ENGINE.04 contest.
All internet users are invited to evaluate the systems. In the assessment, user behaviour will be taken into consideration. Additionally, an expert jury of experienced journalists (Spiegel, WDR, NDR, c’t) will examine the very heart of the systems. The system with the best results will become official partner to PhonoLine, the download platform for the German music industry.
The areas where this technology can be put into operation are obvious – online retailers can enhance their own search engines with this revolutionary function: searching according to matters of taste. In so doing, consumers will get to know artists and pieces of music they would never have come across otherwise. These systems’ functionality is mostly based on the categorisation of hundreds of thousands of songs according to various characteristics (e.g. genre, emotion, occasion, etc.) and the subsequent matching of titles to the user’s musical profile.
Bent Stroehmann, General Manager of PhonoNet GmbH commented on the competition: “Reco-engines are a milestone not just for music fans but for the music industry as a whole. The internet offers many exciting opportunities to get to know new music – I am convinced that music recommendation systems could play an important role here. Everyone is invited to try out the systems and venture on a journey of discovery. We are very much looking forward to the results.”
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