Music-related collective influences, trends and behaviours: Challenges
From MIReS
- Promote formal techniques and methodologies for modelling music-related social and collective behaviour. Conference tutorials, keynotes and promotion of special sessions or workshops should be good vehicles for that.
- Adopt and adapt complex networks and dynamic systems perspectives, techniques and tools. Temporal sequences of descriptors can be considered as spanning a complex network. Semantic descriptors of a given file constitute networks too, so there are some opportunities to reframe existing research with network methodologies (e.g., diffusion models). In addition, decision processes about music items (in playlists or purchases, for example) can be addressed as specific cases of burst models.
- Analyse interaction and activity in social music networks. The roles, functions and activities of peers in digitally-mediated music recommendation and music engagement networks can be formally characterised by using specific analysis techniques. Trends, "infections" and influences in groups can be modelled mathematically and this can provide additional "contextual" information to understand activities related to music information.
- Characterise the interplay between physical space, time, network structures and musical contents and context. This requires a big data perspective where many disparate data sources and huge amounts of data can be integrated and mined (in some cases in real time). As some of these data are only available from business companies providing music, communication or geolocation services, strategic research coalitions with them have to be searched for.
- Develop tools for social gaming and social engagement with music. This will provide a "new" way to experience music and to create new knowledge and awareness about it. Sharing our music learning and experiencing processes may make them more robust and effective. Can we make typical teenage awe for music last until the very end of our lives by taking advantage of engaging activities with family, friends and colleagues? Can we revert the 20th Century trend of making music listening an isolationist activity?
- Develop technologies for collective music-behaviour self-awareness. Collective and simultaneous awareness/sensing is the target here. Personal tools for self-quantification are to be used to track and evidence collective synchronicities (e.g. entrainment, synchronous listening from remote places, sharing mood in a concert). It is easy to see that we, as members of a multitude, are clapping or rocking at the same time, and this has the ability to modify our external and internal states. In order to intensify such modifications we could use other signals than open behaviour, and more contexts than music concerts (e.g., games, tweeting, blogging, listening to music, ...).
