I want to organize my MP3's by genre these days. Organizing by artist is becoming impractical, mainly due to the number of one-hit wonders I've collected. Maybe I should just have an 'other' group, but that would get messy too for sharing.

The trouble is, there are no limits to genre descriptions that people have entered. There is a lack of standardization there that would require me to re-classify them anyway after downloading, or else have 32,000 genre classifications and a completely ineffective structure.

The first thought was to simply create a fixed drop-down list that couldn't be expanded upon, but I thought that might be annoying to the user in its obvious limitations. So instead, music would be genre-categorized by selecting a point that best defines it in a multi-dimensional visual matrix rendered on the screen, where its proximity to specific nodes, each of which defined a particular genre standard, would represent its influence from that particular style.

(Yes, I know an array of simple sliders would be much easier to program and allow for an indefinite amount of variables to be included, but 3-dimsional graphics combined with color defining a 4th are so much more interesting).

Perhaps a few more dimension could be represented by the size and shape of the point, cloud, or blob. The program would then divide the space into a more simpified and manageable genre set, and classify the music accordingly, ready for sorting.

Instead of storing the genre type with the file header, the MP3 would simply store a few numbers representing the music's genre score in those several dimensions, so the data isn't completely lost. Why that's actually important I'm not really sure. I just don't like to let go of data.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2002

Mood Logic http://www.halfbake...a/www.moodlogic.com
Creates Playlists sorted by mood, genre, tempo, year... very cool. [Mad Scientist, Jun 24 2002, last modified Oct 05 2004]

musical signals mapped into visual display www.csis.ul.ie/dafx...s/papers/unjung.pdf
automated, but early days yet.. [pfperry, Aug 25 2002]

musical signals mapped into visual display www.csis.ul.ie/dafx...s/papers/unjung.pdf
automated, but early days yet.. [pfperry, Oct 04 2004, last modified Oct 21 2004]

Mood Logic http://www.halfbake.../idea/www.moodlogic
Creates Playlists sorted by mood, genre, tempo, year... very cool. [Mad Scientist, Oct 21 2004]

Lemme get this straight: at the most basic level, you are advocating the classification of music based on the visualizations that each song generates in the MP3 player visualization window?
-- polartomato, Jun 21 2002


Uh no, missed by a mile. This would have nothing to do with the current vizualization window, but would just be a static plot of the many variables in music style.

Although I suppose a super-smart person could take a stab at programming something to 'read' the music file and try and figure out at what it was just from the content.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 21 2002


He's tired of people making up their own genre / descriptions on all his downloaded music. ("The trouble is, there are no limits to genre descriptions that people have entered. There is a lack of standardization")

Instead, he proposes a new classification system where the genre can be described by a point in three-space and "the size and shape of the point, cloud, or blob".

However, since the descriptive data points are being entered by humans, I don't see how the situation is remedied.
-- phoenix, Jun 21 2002


I agree the lack of standardization is annoying. For example, I'll download a song that is ROCK, and another that is rock. These are placed in separate categories. And it gets worse: alternative, metal, etc.

The situation is remedied precisely because you are the one entering the genre: previously, the genre had been given to you by the music distributor.
-- polartomato, Jun 21 2002


phoenix, you missed the last part of the idea, where the program takes all that region data and assigns the songs into standardized genres.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 22 2002


"So instead, music would be genre-categorized by selecting a point that best defines it in a multi-dimensional visual matrix rendered on the screen..."
I don't think I missed anything. What part of that is done without human intervention?
-- phoenix, Jun 24 2002


OK, so what would these dimensions be then?
-- hippo, Jun 24 2002


Who defines the genre? You or the computer?

AFTER the genres are defined, who puts the songs into the genres?
-- polartomato, Jun 24 2002


It's not the human intervention that's the issue; it's simply the lack of standard.

What would the dimensions be? I dunno. Tempo, for starters. Year written. Average age of audience at first release. Demographic complexity and style, ie city hiphop / on one end, grand symphony orchestras on the other. You can see that multi-polar coordinate systems would be necessary, as there are few ways to linearize a grouping of styles in simply one dimension.

I suppose the programmer would define the categories, and the song-writer would map the song. Or perhaps the record label.
-- RayfordSteele, Jun 24 2002


Many years ago, a local record shop filed the first Wombles LP in 'Children' and shifted one copy in a month. They moved it to 'Rock/Pop' and sold fifty in a week.
-- angel, Jun 25 2002


You are a complex person. I too read your idea as something that would read the same mathematical information that a visualizer would read and would classify it as such (based on tempo, bass, treble, notes held, silences, beats, notes aranged in predifined areas of music theory...etc.). That would be great by the way, if it didn't require a lot of processing power or time. Visualization developers comments?? But I still like your idea as I understand it (Classification made by a combination of certain tag fields entered, tempo, year written, etc) if it were a seperate way to classify music rather then a replacement.

I'd like a color chatagorizing system more then a number system. I'd love to be able to select red through orange as reggae, jam, and road traveling southern rock or shades of black through purple as death metal to industrial to gangster rap.

Oh, your idea gave me this fantastic idea to automatically adjust the equilizer to the file selected according to your classification system.
-- dreamquixote, Aug 25 2002


However done, the problem with creating a dimensional space for asthetic attributes is that the dimensionality depends on the person analysing. So it is unlikely that any system will suit all.
-- pfperry, Aug 25 2002



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