Demo Slovak Music Database
We are finalizing our first local recommendation system, Listen Local Slovakia, and the accompanying Demo Slovak Music Database. Our aim is
- Show how the Slovak repertoire is seen by media and streaming platforms
- What are the possibilities to give greater visibility to the Slovak repertoire in radio and streaming platforms
- What are the specific problems why certain artists and music is almost invisible.
In the next year, we would like to create a modern, comprehensive national music database that serves music promotion in radio, streaming, live music within Slovakia and abroad.
To train our locally relevant, alternative recommendation system, we filled the Demo Slovak Music Database from two sources. In the opt-in process we asked artists to participate in Listen Local, and we selected those artists who opted in from Slovakia, or whose language is Slovak. In the write-in process we collected publicly available data from other artists that our musicology team considered to be Slovak, mainly on the basis of their language use, residence, and other public biographical information. The following artists form the basis of our experiment. (If you want to be excluded from the write-in list, write to us, or you want to be included, please, fill out this form.)
Click here to view the table on a separate page
Modern recommendation systems usually rely on data provided by artists or their representatives, data on who and how is listening to their music, and what music is listened to by the audience of the artists, and certain musicological features of the music. Usually they collect data from various data sources, but these data sources are mainly English language sources.
The problem with these recommendation systems is that they do not help music discovery, and make starting new acts very difficult. Recommendation systems tend to help already established artists, and artists whose work is well described in the English language.
Our alternative recommendation system is a utility-based system that gives a user-defined priority to artists released in Slovakia, or artists identified as Slovak, or both. The system can be extended for lyrics language priorities, too. Currently, our app is demonstration to provide a more comprehensive database-driven tool that can support various music discovery, recommendation or music export tools. Our Feasibility Study to build such tools and our Demo App is currently under consultation with Slovak stakeholders.
Listen Local is developing transparent algorithms and open source solutions to find new audiences for independent music. We want to correct the injustice and inherent bias of market leading big data algorithms. If you want your music and audience to be analysed in Listen Local, fill this form in. We will include you in our demo application for local music recommendations and our analysis to be revealed in December.