SOLVING SEARCH PROBLEMS WITH THE YMUSIC SEARCH ENGINE: MOVING FROM CULTURAL DATA TO MUSICAL KNOWLEDGE
I. A two-sided problem statement in music (re)search
A. What do listeners do, when they search for music online?
When listeners search for music in a streaming service, they are forced to introduce a query which is basically a cultural query, rather than a musical one. In fact, they use words. And these words are, most of the time, deprived of musical meaning.
When they have a specific composer’s name or a title in mind, they navigate in their cultural field, they are in what we could call their ‘musical comfort zone’. They are in a musical place that they already know and want to remember or examine in details. When they insert a random word in the search box, they just want to be surprised.
B. What do researchers do?
Specific categories of music industry professionals are trained and paid off to analyze and comment music, like musical analysts, teachers and critics. Each of these profiles use specific tools to understand one or several aspects of music and to present the results of their research. To lead and share a research, music researchers follow guidelines shared by researchers in all fields, not only music, at least for academic and semi-academic papers. It means that they use a very strict writing methodology to provide high quality papers.
This can prevent them to reach a broader audience, made of curious listeners who are listening with attention and would welcome researchers’ explanations with gratitude. We understand it easily: two groups of music lovers, (casual) listeners and (professional) researchers both have a problem of musical knowledge: the first ones lack of consistent musical knowledge and the second ones do not have the opportunity or the time to communicate the fruit of their research in a simple language.
II. The YMusic search engine, a meeting point reuniting music researchers and casual listeners
Listening to oldies or searching for random music may be gratifying, but this is not a serious search and even less a research. Even casual listeners are often interested in knowing more, though. Most of them do not master the musical vocabulary and they cannot read a sheet music, but they know the meaning of words like "tempo" or "pitch".
For such a simple reason, researchers could present the data contained in a sheet music could be presented to them in easy ways. How? Sheet music, or any file format containing the information present in a sheet music, can be shared with all listeners and commented in easy ways in front of a broad audience, if researchers can get the benefits of a tool which presents sheet music data in form of readable double-entry tables, like those generated by the YMusic search engine. These tables can also contribute to stimulate researchers’ thoughts, and they can help them to present the fruit of their research to potentiel fundraisers and institutions, in order to pursue their research and spread their results.
To get introduced to these tables, register. Whoever you are, (professional) listener or (casual) researcher, you will receive exclusive music visualizations with search questions tackling specific musical features.