Your personal music search space.
Augment your understanding of music.
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YMUSIC SEARCH ENGINE
Since antiquity, human beings have been conscious of themselves and wanted to fix knowledge to ensure that future generations can also benefit from it. For its part, musical knowledge was first kept on stones: precursors to sheet music include antique cuneiform tablets and medieval manuscripts. Music printing appeared during the 15th century. Today, sheet music can be read and even played on a computer screen. As the ways to keep music changed, the ways to retrieve it changed through time. Besides libraries, musical knowledge can now be acquired on the internet. What is musical knowledge? How can music listeners increase their musical knowledge? What can a music search engine bring to the modern music listener? Know more about these topics by reading the following essays.
MUSIC, KNOWLEDGE ACQUISITION AND SEARCH ENGINE TECHNOLOGY
To acquire new musical knowledge, try YMusic. YMusic is a prototype of a music search engine which relies on a new music theory; it is designed for all music listeners who are searching for music that is new for them and who are trying to develop their knowledge, be they casual listeners or not.
To acquire new musical knowledge, try YMusic. YMusic is a prototype of a music search engine which relies on a new music theory; it is designed for all music listeners who are searching for music that is new for them and who are trying to develop their knowledge, be they casual listeners or not.
A MUSIC SEARCH ENGINE WITH RELEVANT FEATURES TO EXPLORE THE EXTENSIVE NATURE OF MUSIC
Music is, by nature, multi-faceted and abstract. Yet at the moment, online music services do not take that reality into account. Streaming platforms are important, as they give access to millions of music titles. Yet they do not let users create multidimensional queries, they do not offer any feature that can help music listeners to express their objectives and expectations, in terms of music listening. Listeners may feel that there is a gap between their information needs and the input queries. What about search engines? Do real music search engines exist? In fact, streaming platforms provide music listeners with pieces of music based on cultural metadata like age, gender or location. An effective music search engine would do more: it would help listeners to focus on what particular area of knowledge music is, in relation to a specific theoretical interpretation of the true nature of music in its different aspects, and such an engine would provide an exhaustive explanation of how musical similarities appear.
The good news is that such a prototype now exists: it is the YMusic search engine, based on a new music theory. The algorithmic development of YMusic is intrinsically linked to musical criteria and that is why it does not provide music listeners with random results when they are doing searches. In YMusic, it is not about finding music haphazardly, and it is not about social recommendation. Listening after listening, listeners can play with the features of the search engine, features that let them explore the main facets of music and thus find out why they love the music they love: with a little time, it gets easier for them to find more of what they can probably love. With YMusic, listeners control the search process and judge the results: they do not depend anymore on social sharing and automatic recommendation based on metadata.
Music listeners are much more than their gender or their age: their individual music listening tastes are the fruit of all the music they have found, all the encounters they have made and all the experiences they have had. Their understanding of music may vary depending on their musical backgrounds, so, not all listeners are equal in the face of music analysis. But it is precisely for that reason that the YMusic search engine is here: to bring the understanding of music within the reach of all music listeners, whatever their musical and personal environment is. A true understanding of music can replace passive music listening, which is often associated with the view of music as a commodity and with the consumption of numerous music titles, but without being really attentive to each one individually. In contrast, YMusic is useful to explore each piece of music individually and to input queries related to the main dimensions of music and that is why the findings are more relevant to the ears of listeners, musically speaking. Currently including thousands of titles, YMusic’s database can suggest matched tracks to listeners once they enter their queries.
SEARCH TECHNOLOGIES, MUSIC AND SIMILARITY
Music has always progressed along the way of new possibilities. From the harmonic ratios found by Plato in Ancient Greece to the conception of the internet during recent decades. In 1957, computer music appeared in New York. A lot of calculations had to be made to represent he simplest sounds. During the 1980s, the arrival of home PCs combined with the creation of commercial software brought computer music to a certain number of musicians. On the internet, when did the digital music transformation begin? In 1993, with the standardization of the audio compression technique known as MP3. From that time, all types of internet platforms dedicated to the creation and distribution of digital music have been created. Online music distribution is in some ways efficient: using cultural criteria like music listeners’ age, gender or location, streaming services provide millions of listeners with millions of music titles. However, except in the case of complete albums, it is not easy for them to make suggestions that are very relevant, musically speaking. This is because measuring similarity between two arbitrary music pieces is a challenging exercise, as the idea of similarity in music is a very subjective concept.
The concept of similarity is linked to the idea of matching music: two pieces of music which match present generally a certain level of similarity, from the perspective of at least one aspect of music. Similarity, matching: the YMusic search engine, based on a new music theory and currently under prototyping, depends on such ideas. It offers to all music listeners opportunities to acquire a real musical knowledge and find why they like the music they like. Search after search, using YMusic’s features, listeners become more used to identifying specific musical elements and making queries that bring results which correspond better to their listening preferences. A process of continuous understanding through listening may begin. It is not some illusion of being smart that is given to listeners, but concepts, names of musical aspects and, above all, search results. Hearing and looking at the content of the YMusic database, listeners can go from one end to the other, being guided both by the search engine’s features and their musical intuition. At the elementary level, they become familiar with musical analysis. YMusic is not restricted by genres, as it may help to find two pieces of music belonging to different genres but having aspects in common. About similarity, let us notice that for some researchers, two pieces of music can be described as similar when they belong to the same period, when they are performed by identical instruments or are written by the same composer. That view is limited: the concept of similarity is important in the framework of music consumption, but it is now interactive, being a real dialog between music itself and its various audiences, via platforms or venues that can combine music, images and the human body in a sort of multimedia art which offers a complete experience of music, rather than a lesson of music history.
To broaden your musical knowledge, try YMusic. YMusic is a prototype of a music search engine which relies on a new music theory; it is designed for all music listeners who are searching for music that is new for them and who are trying to develop their knowledge, be they casual listeners or not.
A MUSIC SEARCH ENGINE TO RETHINK THE CONCEPT OF MUSIC AUDIENCES AND ENHANCE LISTENERS' EXPERIENCE
From vinyl records to digital format, technology has completely reshaped music consumption and broadened the scope of music listening opportunities. Business practices have changed: revenue now comes from music festivals and brick-and-mortar resellers have disappeared in favor of online music aggregators. Yet fundamental things do not change: time for music listening is missing and music listeners do not change their listening habits so easily, be it about discovering a new music genre or about developing active listening practices. Most of the time, the name of a foreign composer or unfamiliar chord sequences found in the different varieties of world music do not inspire casual music listeners, who do not want to abandon their comfort zone and their cultural benchmarks.
Actually, music has two faces: for the young music listener who has no possibility to acquire a solid musical education, it could be a sort of mystical material that cannot be touched and that flies into the ears. For the sound engineer, it is a group of vibrations propagating as an ensemble of mechanical waves through channels like air or water. Which one of these facets reflects the true nature of music? Or is it another one? And what efforts are under way to help music listeners to discern their individual music listening tastes, independent of trends? Actually, a new music theory has now been released to explain the true nature of music. With that theory, the YMusic music search engine, currently under prototyping, is associated. A new technology that could be helpful to distribute music in more efficient ways, YMusic analyzes pieces of music according to musical criteria rather than cultural ones like composers’ names or music genres. A brand new tool, it appears during an era where mass media have actually become personalized and thus less ‘mass’, helping the listener to acquire more musical knowledge in an easy way. It corresponds to real needs, as music is an area of personal research for many people online. YMusic can certainly claim to rethink the concept of music audiences and help a huge part of them to find what music is suitable for them.
Each time a new technology appears, the majority of consumers use it to reflect on lifestyles. Internet and the digital nomadism era are no exception and most of music listening experiences are at the crossroads of mass media transformation and the enhancement of the individual search. For some types of online music business websites, the YMusic search engine could be critical, helping them to increase traffic and reinforce value creation, as well as advertising processes. In fact, music listeners who know better their personal listening tastes will be more satisfied when they pay to acquire or to listen to music. And as they will lose less time during their searches or will do more searches giving more relevant results in the same amount of time, their satisfaction will be enhanced too.
Do you want to acquire new musical knowledge? Try YMusic. YMusic is a prototype of a music search engine which relies on a new music theory; it is designed for all music listeners who are searching for music that is new for them and who are trying to develop their listening skills!
ARE MUSIC SERVICES AND CURATION WEBSITES SUFFICIENT TO DISCOVER NEW MUSIC?
The similarities between various pieces of music are more or less important, musically speaking. For that reason, when music listeners search for new music via the YMusic search engine, they can play with different parameters that help them to move from a group of pieces that present specific characteristics to another collection, more or less distant, according to their individual tastes and mood. YMusic, launched as a prototype and based on a new music theory, answers the queries that listeners have and search a database that currently contains thousands of titles, which are complex objects: as musical objects, they present different facets that are analyzed by YMusic’s algorithm in order to present the best matches to music listeners when they do a search. Also, listeners, manipulating YMusic’s features, can gain insights related to the structure of a piece of music, and to some extent understand how the composer wrote it. Insisting on a particular feature, they can conceive an appropriate representation of the corresponding musical content.
But why a music search engine? Over time, various music formats have been developed to conserve music, first physical, then digital, and now digital music is accessible everywhere. Aren’t music streaming services and music curation websites enough to find new music? Yes and no: music streaming services contain millions of songs and curation websites give advice related to music niches. That is useful: both types of services help to discover new music more or less easily, according to the latest music industry trends and social sharing. However, music that is less recent is not directly available to younger listeners because they do not know old titles, while older listeners can be a little confused faced with new genres they cannot name. And the result of that situation is that each generation stays in a sort of musical ghetto. And younger listeners, more influenced by the media and by their peers, do not automatically see the point of exploring more.
That is why the YMusic search engine is helpful, most music listeners being conservative when it comes to music listening: it extracts musical information from music itself and breaks down cultural barriers linked to a listener’s gender, age and location as well as those related to music genres, which are a useful way to classify music but which prevent serendipitous music discovery. Yet serendipity, that kind of regulated chance which leads from one find to another, is good: it can help music listeners to escape from nostalgia and from restrictive)value judgments linked to music genres. Furthermore, freed from the tyranny of external advice via automatic recommendation or social sharing, music listeners can finally dedicate their music listening time to an exploration of their own needs. Because if music is a common space, it is also very subjective and all listeners deserve to get the chance to know more about the styles of music they love and to learn about themselves through music. To find once again the latest music heard during a music festival, music streaming services and curation websites are efficient: festivals and other online music services are often partners in order to optimize customer acquisition and retention. To get more musical knowledge and deepen individual tastes, YMusic is more suitable.
To extend your musical knowledge, try YMusic. YMusic is a prototype of a music search engine which relies on a new music theory and it is designed for all music listeners who are searching for new music.
CULTURAL DISCOVERY IN THE FIELD OF MUSIC: A SEARCH ENGINE TO EXPLORE WORLD MUSIC FOLLOWING MUSICAL CRITERIA?
When human beings discover elements of another culture, musical items, for instance, a cultural shock may happen and they generally go through different states. The first one is a sort of honeymoon with the new object of interest and a fascination for its culture of origin. After that, it no longer feels so new. Later, if similar objects of the same culture are assimilated, a stage called bicultural stage may appear. Expatriates and foreign students, naturally, know that very well. For instance, they will want to discover the music of another country. Yet these expats and students are limited in number, even at the global level. Do more ordinary listeners take the time to discover foreign music? Do they have real ways to adjust their usual listening habits in order to know better new styles of music? With the development of the internet, everything got easier, yet foreign music production is partially hidden because it is not always so easy to take reference points in a culture that is totally unknown. However music is a universal language and we are convinced that ears can enjoy all styles of music when listeners can understand the true nature of music in its various facets. It is to meet such a target and other ones that the YMusic search engine, launched as a prototype and based on a new music theory, was designed. With YMusic, listeners may explore genres such as world music from different countries as well as pop music from various lands, like C-Pop or Chinese Pop, J-Pop or Japanese Pop, and K-Pop or Korean Pop. When they select an entry point, YMusic leads them to new titles that share specific musical characteristics with them, listeners choosing to explore one or several of these characteristics. YMusic includes a database containing thousands of musical pieces in all genres.
Now is a search engine necessary to discover new music? Music streaming services offer vast amounts of titles and music critics help listeners to know more about niches. However, music retrieval on music services is mainly dependent on cultural criteria like the age or the gender of the listener and metadata like the names of music composers and performers. That is why a music search engine like YMusic can be useful: its algorithm can optimize the control of a music search at the musical level itself and, when music listeners are doing a search, they can examine music with tools that help them to understand the main elements of music and thus get access to elementary music analysis. Otherwise, an algorithm is completing a task and is made up of mathematical equations. Thus the core technology of a search engine is an abstract and a visible or invisible (in the case of YMusic) aid which is helpful to get new likeable music without searching for hours to get only one interesting result. Search after search, music listeners can understand better why they like the music they like and increase their chances of finding music that is more relevant to their ears.
CULTURAL DISCOVERY IN THE FIELD OF MUSIC: A SEARCH ENGINE TO EXPLORE WORLD MUSIC FOLLOWING MUSICAL CRITERIA?