Towards the Disintermediation of Creative Music Search: analysing Queries To Determine Important Facets

Abstract

Creative professionals search for music to accompany moving images in films, advertising, television. Some larger music rights holders (record companies and music publishers) organise their catalogues to allow online searching. These digital libraries are organised by various subjective musical facets as well as by artist and title metadata. A facet analysis of a number of queries is discussed in relation to the organisation of the music in these bespoke search engines. Subjective facets such as Mood and Genre are found to be highly important in query formation. These findings are discussed in relation to disintermediation of this process. It is suggested that there are a number of barriers to this, both in terms of classification approaches and also commercial / legal factors.