Musical Training Helps The Cocktail Party Problem?

There has be a lot of press about a recent article in Ear & Hearing, but I found a good bit of it misinformed, sometimes grossly. For example, here are some disturbing misinterpretations:

1) "After years of Mom telling you to turn off the music to protect your ears, there’s finally scientific evidence that music can be good for your hearing."

2) "Music training can help reorder nervous system"

3) "The findings strongly support the potential therapeutic and rehabilitation use of music training to address auditory processing and communication disorders throughout the life span."


In actuality, the paper discusses none of these. I'll take these in turn:

1) This is actually two different statements: that there is benefit to listening to music loudly and that just passively listening to music can help. The most irresponsible is the former. While I'll admit that the statement does not directly say that increasing volume is beneficial, their slight attempt at humor implies it. The study did not discuss any possible benefit about listening to music loudly. As for the later ("passive listening to music can help") is definitely not within the paper. In fact, the study compared people with extensive musical training versus those with no musical training. The amount of time listening to music passively was not a variable within the study. Further, the so called "Mozart effect" has repeatedly been shown to be false (for a some references click here; for a funny discussion, one can check Penn & Teller's Bullshit!), despite the rather silly product market. The distinction between passively learning and actively learning is significant because it is true that research indicates the musical training may increase cognitive abilities in non-musical areas (see the "article" link above), but this cannot be said for passive listening.

2) The paper does not specifically address anything about the brain being rewired. In fact, since all musicians started practicing an instrument before the age of seven, it is likely that the brain wasn't being "rewired," but rather being "developed" in a different environment. This gets into (3) because...

3) The authors do not say anything about the potential for therapeutic products. Again, since the musicians had extensive training and started before the age of seven this study cannot answer the question about whether the effect can occur if someone begins training at a later age.

So just what did the study say?

I encourage you to read it first hand, but this is effectively what it says:

1) When presented with noise from the same source, people who have received life-long musical training performed better in remembering and processing oral sentences in four-talker babble.

2) When the noise is presented from coming from the same source (i.e., loud speaker), there was no difference.

3) The processing part is important because it signifies that working memory is the determining factor.

The authors then hypothesize that because musicians are better able to pick up on low-level auditory cues, they have more resources for working memory, and, therefore, able to process oral information more efficiently.

This is yet another call to caution whenever research is being presented by the media. It's important to ask to read the final article, including the headline, before you agree to give your consent.

Last.fm Radio Station? Say it ain't so!

I'm a huge fan of last.fm and the work they do, but I've always been a little curious as to their role with CBS. Apparently, CBS has decided to use the online radio station for something that it is not: a terrestrial, non-personalized radio station. While it might be "neat" to use this tool to see what's popular among the specific demographic of the online station, by no means is this a great tool for recommendation - which is at the heart and core of last.fm's mission. What would such a station play anyway? Depends a lot on the type of "chart" they are using, but suffice it to stay, most plays will fairly bland in terms of their novelty factor. For example, let's look at the current Top Ten artists: (Note: This was written around September 8th and published later, so the current artists are different, but concepts are the same).

1) Radiohead
2) Beatles
3) Coldplay
4) Muse
5) Michael Jackson
6) The Killers
7) Metallica
8) Kings of Leon
9) Red Hot Chili Peppers
10) Artic Monkeys

Besides the obvious British bias, we can see that the most common artists are not exactly "strange." They are all (at least) decent, respected bands. Some have been around a while (Radiohead, Coldplay, Metallica, Red Hot Chili Peppers) and some are staples of any music list (Beatles, Michael Jackson). However, I wouldn't exactly say that these bands are strange to radio play (yes, to some degree, Kings of Leon and Artic Monkeys are not as common, but I would hardly say that they get almost no radio play, at least in the US). (As an update, on today, September 18th, the Beatles passed Radiohead, which came out September 9th. While this does show the power of Last.fm's "buzz meter," it is hardly unforseen. Further, this is an example of already popular, known bands simply trading places.)

Also, these two bands are really in the list due to recent releases, as evident from the current Top 10 tracks:

1) Kings of Leon - "Sex on Fire"
2) Kings of Leon - "Use Somebody"
3) MGMT - "Kids"
4) Arctic Monkeys - "Crying Lightning"
5) Coldplay - "Viva La Vida"
6) Lady GaGa - "Poker Face"
7) Muse - "Supermassive Black Hole"
8) MGMT - "Time to Pretend"
9) Black Eyed Peas - "I Gotta Feeling"
10) MGMT - "Electric Feel"

Yeah, these are all very rare indeed. Hint: If the artist is being asked to play at the MTV Music awards, then it is a safe bet that the artist is not a rare find. What if I contiue farther? Well, #14 is "Wonderwall" by Oasis and thank God because I haven't heard that about a bajillion times.

About the only good list would be the "Hyped List," but this is more than likely just following new releases. Truth is that a station that would be that eclectic probably won't fair well since users would be hearing a high degree of music they don't like (i.e., people probably will not like bouncing from niche to niche).

The truth is that this violates the very nature of last.fm - personalized music discovery. Will the radio station fail? No, of course not. It will actually be interesting to see how well the record companies try to follow the Wisdom of the Crowds. This is, after all, capitalism. It was always believed that record companies tried to make people like certain bands, but in truth, the record companies just knew what most people either liked or, at least, could listen to without running from the room screaming. Truth be told, Nickelback and Creed suck, but most people can listen to them because it isn't so awful that I can't either tune it out or stop myself from sticking pencils in my ear . It's just boring rock template music. People didn't buy millions of Spice Girls albums because they had a bunch of money in their pocket, found themselves in a record store, and didn't know what else to buy. They bought it because they wanted to (and you know who you are and should be ashamed of yourself - if my sister had a webpage, I'd link to it here).

I fear this radio station will just be yet another radio stations which focuses on the rather narrow "head" of the long tail and never really gets into the niche markets. The reason? Radio execs focus on what's popular and what will be popular. They are still successful in this, but what they lack is the ability to tailor distribution channels to individual needs and wants. It is not the price of songs that is destroying the music business. If that were true, then as online marketers slashed prices, sales would increase. But this hasn't happened because, despite what Napster fans would have you believe, it was never about prices, but about finding the music that you, and only you, wanted. This is the market that sites like Last.fm are designed to infiltrate - but a radio station broadcast to millions cannot capture this ability. On the other hand, one can hope that I will be pleasantly surprised.

Cool

If true.

Bobby McFerrin on the Pentatonic Scale

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Awesome

Spotify in the US by this fall? Like I said, awesome!

Context and song appeal

Yesterday, I mentioned that it is a bit early to state that the success of Pandora and Last.fm is purely based on the strengths of their recommender algorithms. The newest copy of Psychology of Music contains an article by Silva and Silva on how successful various methods of increasing a unknown song compare. I should caution this is a preliminary study and all conclusions should be taken in this light.

Anyway, the authors had students listen and judge an unknown song in various contexts. Their findings were that the students gave the unknown song higher ratings if the students read an article about the artist of the unknown song, if a well-known and positively liked song followed the unknown song, or if a music critic praised the song prior to its playing. The authors also argue that repeated exposure to a song does not increase a song's appeal, which is a stark contrast to the most common method employed by radio stations (ahem, Payola). However, I think the argument is a little weak, since (as the authors note), they repeated the song six times in a row. Their premise behind the "repeated exposure is beneficial" hypothesis was based on the Pavlovian condition, but I disagree. The Pavlovian effect works by associating an emotional neutral action (ringing a bell around a dog) to a positive or negative association by pairing the two together (ringing a bell around a dog and then feeding him). Done correctly, the subject will associate the neutral action positively (dog salivates when the bell is rung, regardless if food is around). For starters, they did not test the premise since they gave repeated exposure without any pairing of a positive or negative stimulus.

However, we can ask what if some these are true? How does this change how we view recommenders like Pandora and Last.fm? First, comparing radio stations is problematic if done in series because if there is a truly positive song, then songs around it would be viewed positively. In other words, the rich get richer. In order to remove the music critic affect, one needs to establish "placebos" so that users cannot infer a playlist is better than another for reasons other than the audio. For example, if users know that their ratings are taken into consideration (Last.fm) or that experts labeled the music (Pandora), the users may rate the playlist higher than it would under neutral conditions. Also, user should know little about the bands, which is difficult to ensure. Finding an unknown jam band might be difficult to accomplish for that frat guy sitting in class with an old set of Bercinstocks, Grateful Dead T-shirt, and messed-up hair.

This is not to say that previous approaches to compare playlists are worthless - it's just that they need to be considered knowing all the above factors.

Pandora's Profit

Wired had a little blurb about Pandora finally turning a profit in 2010. This can be attributed to many things, such as the growing fan base, the iPhone application, and the addition of commercials. What's more interesting is that Pandora is essentially becoming the same thing as radio in doing so with a small quirk. First, the addition of audio commercials was a major step, not just in the profitability, but also in the precedent. If viewers continue to listen, it's very likely ads will increase in frequency. It appears that listeners are not against advertisements in general, but no one has come up with a limit before users turn away en mass.

Also, the iPhone application is essentially the same in functionality as a personal portable radio. The only real difference is that you are streaming radio from the web to your phone. However, you have marginal control over the content. Yes, you pick the artist and you can assign "thumbs up" and "thumbs down," but I would not say that this radio is truly personal. You have no direct control on novelty, artist frequency, repeats, etc.

I think what has worked best for Pandora is the perceived personalization. Essentially, users do not want to be dictated listening habits. There's also an inherit confirmation bias in any recommender system. I'll remember the hits and forget the misses or explain it away. Also, people tend to respond positively when someone says, "you'll like this." It's incredibly hard to come up with a controled test to measure effectiveness. Some researchers have tried, such as comparing lists of recommendations and asking which is man-made or machine-made. However, the goal of a recommendation engine is to build the one with the best recommendations, not to mimick humans. At best, we can compare how two engines perform by comparing the number of skips.

For example, we could compare Pandora and Last.fm in a large-scale listening test. Again, we need controls. Pandora and Last.fm differ in the amount of perceived control. Both Pandora and Last.fm do not give a lot of control on how music is played, but Last.fm allows more feedback. Both Pandora and Last.fm have access to a positive/negative vote for each song and initial seed song selection. However, Last.fm also allows for tagging individual songs in an effort to improve selection. Of course, this is legitiatimate; however, a real test would let users tag songs for Pandora, but then Pandora would just ignore the tags. In addition, users need to be blinded on how the process works. It's not a fair comparison if someone tells you that a system is based on machine interpretations of expert or wisdom-of-the-crowd ratings.

I'm glad that Internet radio stations that thrive on "personalized" recommendations are beginning to make a profit. However, it's a bit early to say that a new dawn of music has emerged. Promising, absolutely; but more research is needed.

Life's a little sadder in Asia...

Well, at least Last.fm allows a brief free trial. One can only hope it's temporary and international copyright issues get resolved. It's a good thing I have only one more day! But this leaves an interesting question: if I were to stay here, how would I get my multimedia needs fulfilled?




Spotify? Nope.

Pandora? Nope.

iTunes? NOPE! See the picture to the left.

Last.fm? For a price. But will that stay?



I even went to a couple brick and mortar store in Taipei. My choices in the developed parts of the city were the Christinas and the Justins of Western music or I could get the Tawainese version. In the undeveloped area, I could find music I might want to listen to - on cassette tapes! I haven't been able to play a cassette since 1998! So I ask, what legal means can I get music? Maybe we need to let the Far East actually be able to get the music they want before we criticize them for downloading music illegaly...

British Music Experience

When is ISMIR going back to London?

EchoNest pulling an April Fool's joke!

It's amazing how being a "day ahead" the rest of the world can completely catch you off-guard. This morning, I found articles about the Echo Nest's new "goodness" measure API. I'm in Japan, so it's April 2, so it took me a couple minutes to realize this whole thing was a joke (I actually got started to get angry). Anyway, fun with the system (higher score is better):

Twisted Sister 0.81
N-sync: 0.74
The Raconteurs 0.42
Bob Dylan 0.31
Nickelback: 0.13
Rush: 0.09 (Them's fighten' words)
Coldplay 0.02
Warrant 0.01 (Actually, this makes sense)

Great joke guys!

Those Crazy Beatles

I have not used this blog to criticize many of the worthless or harmful causes of musical artists, actors, and other celebrities because, well, I would never get any work done. However, I could not resist this. That's right, The Bee-At-els have decided that a worthwhile cause is to teach meditation to stressful children through transcendental meditation with the help of the David Lynch Foundation. On the surface, this seems harmless enough. How can one be against teaching stressed-out kids a way to relax?

The problem is that transcendental meditation (TM) is pure pseudo-scientific nonsense. I want to distinguish it against the regular idea of meditation, which is basically a "deep" form of relaxation. Transcendental meditation is supposedly hundreds of years old, but there is little evidence to support this. It was "introduced" to the Western world about 50 years ago by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. It has spawned many ridiculous and unfounded claims such as levitation and The Maharishi Effect, where it said that if just 1% of a population is practicing TM, then crops will improve, the area will become a haven from crime, and automobile accidents will decrease to abnormally low levels. Further, this effect is supposed to be scientifically proven. However, all of these claims have been debunked by James Randi in his book, Flim-Flam! Further, the evidence of this effect comes from the most dubious of source - The Maharishi International University and these claims have been further disproven or found to be poor science. My favorite example in the link is the study that did not have a control group because "not one person was willing to be part of the control group." The whole point of the control group is to account for the placebo effect where people will believe they are better just because they feel they have gotten treatment.

Simply put, TM reduces stress as much as any other relaxing activity and is by no means special. Again, I have no problem with teaching children ways to cope with stress, but let's be honest, that's not what the David Lynch foundation is really doing. The reality is that they are using the "think of the children" argument to indoctrinate children into an illogical belief and promoting bad science. If it's stress reduction they are after, then they should be open to any types - sports, reading, talking, going for a walk, etc. My problem with this is the same as if Creed taught religion and prayer behind the disguise that this would prevent kids from hanging out on the streets and developing drug habits. It might, but so would an afterschool basketball league.

Note: Creed is an example since they are the most famous religious group I can think of. As far as I know, their humanitarian efforts are as successful and spirited as their music.

Just beginning to mourn

My new fiancee's first words to me this morning: "You look like someone just died."

Not someone, but something.  My iPod is no longer for this world.  Won't turn on, won't charge.  It's a poor excuse for a paperweight now.  Hmm, what's my next mp3 player?

Digital Music Leads the Way

Total music sales grew 10% this year, which is a positive trend the music industry has not seen in a long time.  More interesting is that digital sales led the way, with a 27% increase in digital track sold and a 32% increase in digital album sales.  However, the number of physical albums sold is down 14%, including an 8.6% decrease in physical albums sold by e-commerce sites.  I'm sure that many will point to the irony of this being revealed around the same time the RIAA announced it was going to stop sueing their constumers for digital file sharing.  Before anyone does this, I will disagree since the RIAA was never against digital downloads, but illegal digital downloads since they receive no profit.

Rather, I want to comment on the idea that people still prefer albums over singles.  While it's true that album sales are still growing faster than digital tracks, it would be wrong to conclude that people still prefer albums.  All that we can say is that it is plausible.  However, some necessary controls need to be accounted for before this conclusion can be drawn.  For example, the success of AC/DC's Black Ice suffers from the same problem as In Rainbows by Radiohead.  Both are by very successful bands and would do well regardless of format and distribution.  That's like drowning a salad in ranch dressing and claiming you are being health-conscious since you are having a lot of veggies.  One trumps the other.

Second, it is not really fair to compare albums to a group of singles, since their cost structure is different.  Most online retailers charge a standard cost to a single track (e.g., $0.99) and then a standard cost to an album (e.g., $9.99).  The problem is that the album cost is regardless of the number of tracks.  This changes the worth of an individual track.  For example, say there are 15 songs on the album and I really like 7 songs.  The real cost of the remaining songs is not eight dollars, but $3.  While I would never buy one of these songs for $0.99, they might be worth $0.38.  This is a variable that needs to be accounted for.

Third, a more important point is that iPod is the place where music dies since 64% of songs are never played.  It would be unwise of the music industry to ignore this problem, since they need satisified customers to continue buying music.  Two possible ways to increase the "playrate" is through a new pricing strucutre and recommendation technology.  The former can be solved by bundle rates.  As I mentioned above, one possible reason for the continued success of digital albums sales is the different pricing structure of an album vs. a  set of singles.  This leads to a lot of songs being bought, but never really played.  By allowing users to mix and match to make their own "album bundle" could greatly increase customer satisification.  For example, 1 song for $0.99, 10 songs for $8.99, 15 songs for $10.99, etc.  There would be no requirements on which songs are selected in the bundle.  Related is the need to improve and implement recommendation technology.  Often ignored in economic analysis is the cost of time spent on the consumer.  Searching for music is a laborious task without recommendation and discovery tools.  Even iTunes only recently launched Genius.

In conclusion, the claim from artists (especially) that people still prefer albums is still undecided.  There is reason to believe this is plausible, but there are still some questions that need to be addressed.

Pandora Video Series

Even after laying off a significant portion of its workforce, Pandora is continuing to look for ways to expand their business.  One such avenue is the start of video series format of their musicology podcast series (another favorite).  Personally, I love this and wonder if Pandora might one day expand or split off a business into the area of popular music education.  One can only hope this (and other music-based educational technologies) might be a way to offer music education to public and private schools under the threat of budget cuts.

The First Sound

Professor Whittle at the University of Virginia has put together the first sound every created: that of the Big Bang.  The sound file and a very full and insightful description can be found here.

YouTube and New Music: Not a Solution

I did not blog too much after the first day at ISMIR because Paul Lamere was doing a very good job, so you can check out his details here.  However, there was one article I saw on CNN during the conference on YouTube being the next showcase for new music.  Personally, I hope not.  True, millions of people use the site daily and it is a great resource in trying to find music if you know exactly what you are looking for.  However, try using YouTube to discover new music, especially if you are also discovering new bands.  Currently, you'll have to enter in the artist name or song title to find anything.  But what if I want to find something that's like something else, but that I've never heard before?

The difference between the two concepts is ultimately the difference between retrieval, recommendation, and discovery.  The old "Google search bar" paradigm is great for retrieving something if I have a general idea of what I'd like.  However, it's still very object based.  By this, I mean that I need to know the thing I am looking for.  In recommendation, the focus is on the idea of what I might like.  For example, collaborative filtering notices that I've bought Carl Sagin's A Demon-Haunted World and will recommend James Randi's Flim-Flam! since people that buy Sagin's book also buy Randi's.  Currently, YouTube does have both, but their discovery technology is a lacking.  A great quick look at the difference between discovery and recommendation can be gained here, but ultimately discovery is learning why I like something, which is actually much harder to do.  What is it that I like Sagan's book?  Is it because he's a great science writer?  Is it his research?  Is it his involvement in the skeptical movement?  The three have dramatically different answers.  If it's writing,  then I'll probably want Dawkin's book on scientific writing.  If it's his research, then I'll probably want another book by Sagan about astronomy.  If it's the skeptical movement, then Randi's just one of many great selections.

Currently, YouTube does not really support discovery and would probably need to be redesigned to get it right.  I've literally listened to hundreds of artists on YouTube since I use it to play guitar.  However, there is no recommendations for new music based on what I've listened to in the past.  If I want something, I've got to first find an artist I know, and then continue to click "related" videos until I finally find something cool.  The process is long and there is a good chance that I'll get stuck in a cycle or worse, get way off target.  For the artist, this means that generating new listeners will be difficult and still have to come by word-of-mouth rather than automatic recommendation.

More Cowbell!!!

While waiting for final simulations to run before I write up a paper, I saw the most awesomest website ever: Cowbell.dj.  Sounds like they are using some kind of beat tracking and music segmentation program.  Not sure what algorithm they use, but it does a fairly good job.  The transitions are very good.  I have included a couple songs below:

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

	Make your own at MoreCowbell.dj

Radio killed the radio star

One of my favorite Internet radio stations, Pandora, may finally be shutting down thanks to the recent hike in royalty fees. I think the only way that people may start to notice is if an Internet radio giant takes the fall. No one ever notices a problem until a staple goes down. One wonders just how record companies plan on making a profit in the future. CDs are not selling and everyone is praying for its demise. Digital distributers of music are closing shop, causing people to fear downloading anything having to do with DRM.

I guess this quote signifies how little record companies understand capitalism: "SoundExchange officials argue that because different media have different profit margins, it is appropriate to set different royalty rates." Really? Do record companies pay more for the raw materials to make CDs? If Jack White and I walk into a guitar store and purchase the same guitar, does he pay more? Surely, he will make a lot more money with that guitar than I will ever make. If I'm not mistaken, isn't charging two different people for the same product illegal when it results in decreasing competition?

How labels could profit from Radiohead and NIN 'experiment'

I just got done reading an interesting economic article by Will Page and Eric Garland on whether Radiohead's "pay what you want" experiment was successful in attracting usual torrent users to the band's website. I'm a little cautious of the conclusions by Page and Garland of "yes, but with a twist" because ultimately, this is a very small sample size and because the novelty might have changed user behavior.

But the author's have a fantastic analysis in the form of a table comparing InRainbows.com, theslip.nin.com, and torrent sites. The author make note of the various invisible costs to the users such as "attention costs", "privacy costs", and "quality of product". What if record labels viewed torrent sites, not as competition, but rather as base designs that could be improved upon?

As the authors' note, a large number of people still went to torrent sites for illegal downloads even though InRainbows.com offered the same thing, but free and legal. They conclude this is because people will ultimately keep their buying habits steady unless they have a benefit to gain from switching (clearly, legality alone is not enough). Why can't labels cash in on this?

Why could labels not offer similar sites and offer additional content? Imagine a completely different type of business model: instead of collecting money from consumers, collect them from the artists. One of the problems with a future like the one InRainbows.com advocates is that I would have to go to a bunch of different sites (one for each artist) to obtain music. Labels could offer an "online free supermarket" of music. In addition, targeted advertisement could be done in a similar way as iLike and Amazon (e.g., "we've noticed that you like Band X, did you know that Band X has a show scheduled near you? Here are some T-shirts you can buy"). Artists would pay to have their music on these sites, sell shirts, etc. Recommendations would be made in addition. One day, oh one day, we'll have iToogle.fm.

Absolute pitch

I'm sure that a few of the readers have seen Yoo Ye Eun. From what I can tell, this does not appear to be a fraud.



Of course, David Huron points out in his book, Sweet Anticipation, that absolute pitch has its disadvantages such as difficulty in judging intervals.

Still, very cool.