DOCSLIB.ORG

Exploring Customer Reviews for Music Genre Classification and Evolutionary Studies

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Exploring Customer Reviews for Music Genre Classification and Evolutionary Studies EXPLORING CUSTOMER REVIEWS FOR MUSIC GENRE CLASSIFICATION AND EVOLUTIONARY STUDIES Sergio Oramas1, Luis Espinosa-Anke2, Aonghus Lawlor3, Xavier Serra1, Horacio Saggion2 1Music Technology Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra 2TALN Group, Universitat Pompeu Fabra 3Insight Centre for Data Analytics, University College of Dublin sergio.oramas, luis.espinosa, xavier.serra, horacio.saggion @upf.edu, [email protected] { } ABSTRACT dataset of Amazon customer reviews [18,19], with seman- tic and acoustic metadata obtained from MusicBrainz 1 In this paper, we explore a large multimodal dataset of and AcousticBrainz 2 , respectively. MusicBrainz (MB) is about 65k albums constructed from a combination of Ama- a large open music encyclopedia of music metadata, whist zon customer reviews, MusicBrainz metadata and Acous- AcousticBrainz (AB) is a database of music and audio de- ticBrainz audio descriptors. Review texts are further en- scriptors, computed from audio recordings via state-of-the- riched with named entity disambiguation along with po- art Music Information Retrieval algorithms [26]. In addi- larity information derived from an aspect-based sentiment tion, we further extend the semantics of the textual content analysis framework. This dataset constitutes the corner- from two standpoints. First, we apply an aspect-based sen- stone of two main contributions: First, we perform ex- timent analysis framework [7] which provides specific sen- periments on music genre classification, exploring a va- timent scores for different aspects present in the text, e.g. riety of feature types, including semantic, sentimental and album cover, guitar, voice or lyrics. Second, we perform acoustic features. These experiments show that modeling Entity Linking (EL), so that mentions to named entities semantic information contributes to outperforming strong such as Artist Names or Record Labels are linked to their bag-of-words baselines. Second, we provide a diachronic corresponding Wikipedia entry [24]. study of the criticism of music genres via a quantitative This enriched dataset, henceforth referred to as Multi- analysis of the polarity associated to musical aspects over modal Album Reviews Dataset (MARD), includes affec- time. Our analysis hints at a potential correlation between tive, semantic, acoustic and metadata features. We benefit key cultural and geopolitical events and the language and from this multidimensional information to carry out two evolving sentiments found in music reviews. experiments. First, we explore the contribution of such features to the Music Genre classification task, consisting in, given a song or album review, predict the genre it be- 1. INTRODUCTION longs to. Second, we use the substantial amount of infor- With the democratisation of Internet access, vast amounts mation at our disposal for performing a diachronic analysis of information are generated and stored in online sources, of music criticism. Specifically, we combine the metadata and thus there is great interest in developing techniques retrieved for each review with their associated sentiment for processing this information effectively [27]. The Mu- information, and generate visualizations to help us investi- sic Information Retrieval (MIR) community is sensible to gate any potential trends in diachronic music appreciation this reality, as music consumption has undergone signifi- and criticism. Based on this evidence, and since music cant changes recently, especially since users are today just evokes emotions through mechanisms that are not unique one click away from millions of songs [4]. This context re- to music [16], we may go as far as using musical infor- sults in the existence of large repositories of unstructured mation as means for a better understanding of global af- knowledge, which have great potential for musicological fairs. Previous studies argue that national confidence may studies or tasks within MIR such as music recommenda- be expressed in any form of art, including music [20], and tion. in fact, there is strong evidence suggesting that our emo- In this paper, we put forward an integration proce- tional reactions to music have important and far-reaching dure for enriching with music-related information a large implications for our beliefs, goals and actions, as members of social and cultural groups [1]. Our analysis hints at a potential correlation between the language used in music c Sergio Oramas1, Luis Espinosa-Anke2, Aonghus reviews and major geopolitical events or economic fluctu- Lawlor3, Xavier Serra1, Horacio Saggion2. Licensed under a Creative ations. Finally, we argue that applying sentiment analysis Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). Attribu- to music corpora may be useful for diachronic musicolog- tion: Sergio Oramas1, Luis Espinosa-Anke2, Aonghus Lawlor3, Xavier Serra1, Horacio Saggion2. “Exploring Customer Reviews for Music ical studies. Genre Classification and Evolutionary Studies”, 17th International So- 1 http://musicbrainz.org/ ciety for Music Information Retrieval Conference, 2016. 2 http://acousticbrainz.org 150 Proceedings of the 17th ISMIR Conference, New York City, USA, August 7-11, 2016 151 2. RELATED WORK 3. MULTIMODAL ALBUM REVIEWS DATASET MARD contains texts and accompanying metadata origi- One of the earliest attempts on review genre classification nally obtained from a much larger dataset of Amazon cus- is described in [15], where experiments on multiclass genre tomer reviews [18, 19]. The original dataset provides mil- classification and star rating prediction are described. Sim- lions of review texts together with additional information ilarly, [14] extend these experiments with a novel approach such as overall rating (between 0 to 5), date of publica- for predicting usages of music via agglomerative cluster- tion, or creator id. Each review is associated to a product ing, and conclude that bigram features are more infor- and, for each product, additional metadata is also provided, mative than unigram features. Moroever, part-of-speech namely Amazon product id, list of similar products, price, (POS) tags along pattern mining techniques are applied sell rank and genre categories. From this initial dataset, in [8] to extract descriptive patterns for distinguishing neg- we selected the subset of products categorized as CDs & ative from positive reviews. Additional textual evidence is Vinyls, which also fulfill the following criteria. First, con- leveraged in [5], who consider lyrics as well as texts re- sidering that the Amazon taxonomy of music genres con- ferring to the meaning of the song, and used for training a tains 27 labels in the first hierarchy level, and about 500 kNN classifier for predicting song subjects (e.g. war, sex in total, we obtain a music-relevant subset and select 16 of or drugs). the 27 which really define a music style and discard for in- stance region categories (e.g. World Music) and other cate- In [23], a dataset of music reviews is used for album gories non specifically related to a music style (e.g. Sound- rating prediction by exploiting features derived from sen- track, Miscellaneous, Special Interest), function-oriented timent analysis. First, music-related topics are extracted categories (Karaoke, Holiday & Wedding) or categories (e.g. artist or music work), and this topic information is whose albums might also be found under other categories further used as features for classification. One of the most (e.g. Opera & Classical Vocal, Broadway & Vocalists). thorough works on music reviews is described in [28]. We compiled albums belonging only to one of the 16 se- It applies Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques lected categories, i.e. no multiclass. Note that the original such as named entity recognition, text segmentation and dataset contains not only reviews about CDs and Vinyls, sentiment analysis to music reviews for generating texts but also about music DVDs and VHSs. Since these are not explaining good aspects of songs in recommender systems. strictly speaking music audio products, we filter out those In the line of review generation, [9] combine text analysis products also classified as ”Movies & TV”. Finally, since with acoustic descriptors in order to generate new reviews products classified as Classical and Pop are substantially from the audio signal. Finally, semantic music information more frequent in the original dataset, we compensate this is used in [29] to improve topic-wise classification (album, unbalance by limiting the number of albums of any genre artist, melody, lyrics, etc.) of music reviews using Sup- to 10,000. After this preprocessing, MARD amounts to a port Vector Machines. This last approach differs from ours total of 65,566 albums and 263,525 customer reviews. A in that it enriches feature vectors by taking advantage of breakdown of the number of albums per genre is provided ad-hoc music dictionaries, while in our case we take ad- in Table 1. vantage of Semantic Web resources. Genre Amazon MusicBrainz AcousticBrainz Alternative Rock 2,674 1,696 564 As for sentiment classification of text, there is abundant Reggae 509 260 79 Classical 10,000 2,197 587 literature on the matter [21], including opinions, reviews R&B 2,114 2,950 982 and blog posts classification as positive or negative. How- Country 2,771 1,032 424 Jazz 6,890 2,990 863 ever, the impact of emotions has received considerably less Metal 1,785 1,294 500 attention in genre-wise text classification. We aim at bridg- Pop 10,000 4,422 1701 New Age 2,656 638 155 ing this gap by exploring aspect-level sentiment analysis Dance & Electronic 5,106 899 367 features. Rap & Hip-Hop 1,679 768 207 Latin Music 7,924 3,237 425 Rock 7,315 4,100 1482 Finally, concerning studies on the evolution of music Gospel 900 274 33 genres, these have traditionally focused on variation in au- Blues 1,158 448 135 Folk 2,085 848 179 dio descriptors, e.g. [17], where acoustic descriptors of Total 66,566 28,053 8,683 17,000 recordings between 1960 and 2010 are analyzed. Descriptors are discretized and redefined as descriptive Table 1: Number of albums by genre with information words derived from several lexicons, which are subse- from the different sources in MARD quently used for topic modeling.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Art to Commerce: the Trajectory of Popular Music Criticism
    Art to Commerce: The Trajectory of Popular Music Criticism Thomas Conner and Steve Jones University of Illinois at Chicago [email protected] / [email protected] Abstract This article reports the results of a content and textual analysis of popular music criticism from the 1960s to the 2000s to discern the extent to which criticism has shifted focus from matters of music to matters of business. In part, we believe such a shift to be due likely to increased awareness among journalists and fans of the industrial nature of popular music production, distribution and consumption, and to the disruption of the music industry that began in the late 1990s with the widespread use of the Internet for file sharing. Searching and sorting the Rock’s Backpages database of over 22,000 pieces of music journalism for keywords associated with the business, economics and commercial aspects of popular music, we found several periods during which popular music criticism’s focus on business-related concerns seemed to have increased. The article discusses possible reasons for the increases as well as methods for analyzing a large corpus of popular music criticism texts. Keywords: music journalism, popular music criticism, rock criticism, Rock’s Backpages Though scant scholarship directly addresses this subject, music journalists and bloggers have identified a trend in recent years toward commerce-specific framing when writing about artists, recording and performance. Most music journalists, according to Willoughby (2011), “are writing quasi shareholder reports that chart the movements of artists’ commercial careers” instead of artistic criticism. While there may be many reasons for such a trend, such as the Internet’s rise to prominence not only as a medium for distribution of music but also as a medium for distribution of information about music, might it be possible to discern such a trend? Our goal with the research reported here was an attempt to empirically determine whether such a trend exists and, if so, the extent to which it does.
    [Show full text]
  • Logy and the Study of Western Music*
    New Musicologies, Old Musicologies: Ethnomusico­ logy and the Study of Western Music* By Jonathan P. J Stock Introduction Ethnomusicology currently engages with the study of Western music in two principal ways. On the one hand, there are specific ethnomusicological studies that focus on aspects of Western musical traditions. Examples in­ clude Paul Berliner's analysis of improvisation in jazz (1994), Philip Bohlman's study of chamber music as ethnic music in contemporary Israel (1991), and the examinations of music schools and conservatories by Bruno Nettl (1995) and Henry Kingsbury (1988). These works, in and of them­ selves, offer explicit and direct indication of what an ethnomusicological approach to Western music involves and what manner of insights can be produced thereby. Second, and more diffusely, ethnomusicological re­ search plays into the study of Western music through musicologists' adop­ tion, adaptation, and application of ethnomusicological techniques and concepts: some musicologists have drawn from specific ethnographies of non-Western musical traditions, and others have made recourse to the standard texts of ethnomusicological theory and practice (such as Merriam 1964 and N ettl 1983). Conference presentations, seminars, conversations, and, especially in the case of younger scholars, courses taken as part of their academic training also provide channels of contact between the rep­ ertory of scholarly ideas and procedures developed primarily for the ex­ planation of non-Western musics and the field of Western musical studies. The titles of such publications as Nicholas Cook's Music, Imagination, and Culture (1990) and Peter jeffery's Re-Envisioning Past Musical Cultures: Ethnomusicology in the Study of Gregorian Chant (1992) are clear in their referencing to this particular field of academic endeavor.
    [Show full text]
  • The Authority of Music Criticism Author(S): Edward T
    The Authority of Music Criticism Author(s): Edward T. Cone Source: Journal of the American Musicological Society , Spring, 1981, Vol. 34, No. 1 (Spring, 1981), pp. 1-18 Published by: University of California Press on behalf of the American Musicological Society Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/831032 JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at https://about.jstor.org/terms American Musicological Society and University of California Press are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the American Musicological Society This content downloaded from 174.92.95.22 on Wed, 03 Feb 2021 15:44:49 UTC All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms The Authority of Music Criticism* BY EDWARD T. CONE W HAT AUTHORITY can the music critic claim for his opinions? That is a question often posed, or implied, by composers and per- formers, and sometimes by critics themselves. Its relevance is not nul- lified by the fact that it is usually asked by one who feels, rightly or wrongly, that he has been misunderstood by the critic and traduced by the expression of his opinion. Rightly or wrongly-for some philosophers, of course, those words are red herrings.
    [Show full text]
  • Pitchfork Media's Textual and Cultural Impact
    CREATING A CULTURE: PITCHFORK MEDIA‘S TEXTUAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT ON ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE A Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School at the University of Missouri- Columbia In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Arts by EMILY BRASHER Dr. Stephanie Craft, Thesis Supervisor DECEMBER 2013 The undersigned, appointed by the Dean of the Graduate School, have examined the thesis entitled CREATING A CULTURE: PITCHFORK MEDIA‘S TEXTUAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT ON ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE Presented by Emily Brasher A candidate for the degree of Master of Arts And hereby certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. Professor Stephanie Craft Professor Mary Kay Blakely Professor Andrew Hoberek Professor Lynda Kraxberger To my family, for always believing in me. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank Dr. Stephanie Craft for all of her support and patience though this process. The road was long—there were a few address changes and even a name change along the way—but Dr. Craft spurred me on until the journey reached a happy end. My deepest thanks also to Dr. Mary Kay Blakely, Dr. Andrew Hoberek, and Dr. Lynda Kraxberger, for bearing with me through it all. Thanks to Dr. Betty Winfield for getting me started, and to Ginny Cowell and Martha Pickens for their invaluable advice and help. ii CREATING A CULTURE: PITCHFORK MEDIA‘S TEXTUAL AND CULTURAL IMPACT ON ROLLING STONE MAGAZINE Emily Brasher Dr. Stephanie Craft, Thesis Supervisor ABSTRACT The main purpose of this research is to demonstrate how cultures and subcultures can be created and disseminated through media, and how newer forms of media such as websites can have a tangible effect on the content of older forms of media such as print magazines.
    [Show full text]
  • The Myth of Classical Music Superiority (Part One) (Not The
    Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music Greg Sandow Chapter 5 – The Myth of Classical Music Superiority (part one) (not the final text, but a riff on what this chapter will say) Once, at least in the west, pretty much everybody thought that classical music (by which of course I mean western classical music) was the best kind of music. Routinely it was called “good music,” “art music,” or “serious music,” reflecting a belief that other kinds of music weren’t artistic, or serious, or even good (or at least not good on any high level). But now times have changed, our culture has shifted, and people who think classical music is superior are now a small minority. Or at least they are in the culture at large. But in the classical music world, they still have some influence, and that causes trouble. If classical music is going to survive, it will have to take its place among all the other kinds of music we’ve got right now, coexisting with them, learning from them, being influenced by them (just as happened in centuries past, when classical music was shaped by all the music around it)—and above all not claiming to be better than they are. (Other musical styles, of course, will continue to be influenced—as they’ve been for decades—by classical music.) People who insist that classical music is superior make it harder for this to happen. So we need to understand why they’re wrong. [2] The first problem with their belief is very simple. It’s easy to argue that any kind of music might be superior, virtually any kind at all.
    [Show full text]
  • Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: a Response to Lawrence Kramer
    Musical Pasts and Postmodern Musicologies: A Response to Lawrence Kramer By Gary Tomlinson Early last summer, not long after I was invited by the editors of Current Musicology to contribute to this special issue, the inaugural issue of an­ other music journal landed in my mail box. This was repercussions, pro­ duced by graduate students at the University of California at Berkeley. It opened with a position piece by Lawrence Kramer entitled 'The Musicol­ ogy of the Future"-a fitting beginning, given that the journal is devoted to fostering "critical & alternative viewpoints on music and scholarship" and that Kramer has ·emerged over the past decade as one of the shrewd­ est and most theoretically savvy of a younger generation of musical schol­ ars. But Kramer's essay, on closer inspection, was disconcerting. 'The Mu­ sicology of the Future" seems to me to linger over old viewpoints more than suggest new ones. It reveals patterns of thought that not only already threaten to harden into new orthodoxies of postmodern musicology but that have, at the deepest level, moved little from the putative truths they aim to leave behind. What follows is a brief rejoinder to Kramer's vision of the new musicology. I should say at the beginning that I do not think Kramer is alone in his difficulty in escaping the old orthodoxies; if he were, my differences with his approach would have no broader resonance than that of a personal disagreement. I sense, instead, that all of us who work in the methodologi­ cal realms he calls postmodern have experienced this difficulty, that we have all felt twinges of an unease that originates in our sense of the persistent proximity of our methods to those we thought we had moved away from.
    [Show full text]
  • Popular Music Journalism As Public Sphere
    UNIVERSITY OF STIRLING PEDRO NUNES Department of Film and Media POPULAR MUSIC AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE: THE CASE OF PORTUGUESE MUSIC JOURNALISM Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January, 2004 i Abstract Music journalism has been acknowledged as an important space of mediation between artists and consumers. Journalists and critics have played an historical role in the creation of discourse on popular music and are acknowledged by the music industry as an important referent in promotion strategies. Research on the subject has been mostly focused either on the relationship between music journalism and the wider music industry in which it operates or on its status as a field of cultural production. Little consideration has been given to the role played by music journalists in articulating popular music with wider political, social and cultural concerns. This thesis will examine the case-study of Portuguese popular music journalism. It will address its historical evolution and current status by taking into consideration some dimensions, namely, the wider institutional contexts that frame the status of music journalism and how they work upon it, the ideologies and values realised in journalistic discourse, the journalists’ relationship to the music industry (as represented by record labels/companies and concert promotion companies) and issues of interactivity with readers. The thesis will draw on theories of the public sphere and, to a lesser extent, on Bourdieu’s notions of field, capital and habitus to assess the possibilities for music journalism to create reasoned discourse on ii popular music and, therefore, contribute to wider debates on the public sphere of culture.
    [Show full text]
  • Investigating Six Album Reviews on Queen's
    An album overshadowed by its predecessor: Investigating six album reviews on Queen’s A Day At The Races Bachelor’s thesis Johanna Savolainen University of Jyväskylä Department of Language and Communication Studies English January 2018 JYVÄSKYLÄN YLIOPISTO Tiedekunta – Faculty Laitos – Department Humanistis-yhteiskuntatieteellinen tiedekunta Kieli-ja viestintätieteiden laitos Tekijä – Author Johanna Savolainen Työn nimi – Title An album overshadowed by its predecessor: Investigating six albums reviews on Queen’s A Day At The Races Oppiaine – Subject Työn laji – Level Englanti Kandidaatin tutkinto Aika – Month and year Sivumäärä – Number of pages Tammikuu 2018 17 Tiivistelmä – Abstract Musiikki on taiteenlaji, joka tarjoaa jotakin lähes jokaiselle. Musiikki on usein läsnä jokapäiväisessä elämässämme ja musiikin kuuntelu onkin suosittu vapaa-ajan harrastus. Moni löytää oman suosikkityylilajinsa nuoruudessaan, mutta musiikkimaku voi myös kehittyä myöhemmin aikuisuudessa. Oman lempimusiikin kuuntelun tiedetään muun muassa aktivoivan aivojen mielihyväkeskusta ja parantavan mielialaa. Kaikki eivät kuitenkaan pidä samanlaisesta musiikista ja musiikki onkin taiteenlaji, joka jakaa vahvasti mielipiteitä. Jokaisella on oikeus omaan mielipiteeseensä ja usein onkin täysin tarpeetonta kiistellä eri musiikkityylilajien paremmuudesta tai yrittää vaikuttaa muiden musiikkimakuun. Ihmisillä, jotka arvioivat musiikkia työkseen, on kuitenkin enemmän tietämystä aiheesta, ja heitä pidetään eräänlaisina mielipidejohtajina siinä mitä tulee ”hyvään” musiikkimakuun.
    [Show full text]
  • Editorial Introduction Music Journalism
    Editorial Introduction Music Journalism Christoph Jacke Paderborn University, Germany [email protected] Martin James Southampton Solent University, UK [email protected] Ed Montano RMIT University, Australia [email protected] With few exceptions (Frith 1996; Jones 2002; Lindberg et al 2005; Negus 1996), the central role of popular music journalism in the construction of meaning out of a musical form has remained a relatively under-studied topic of scholarly discourse. This apparent lack of academic focus has seen a slow repositioning in recent years with the publication of special editions of journals (Popular Music History 2004; Popular Music and Society 2010), subject-focused chapters in critical texts (such as Hearsum 2013) and articles in journals (Atton 2009; Brennan 2007; McLeese 2010). This special issue of IASPM Journal on popular music journalism is intended to add to this growing body of literature. In a British context, this increased interest among a research community resonates with a growth in undergraduate honours degree courses in music journalism. At the time of writing, this amounts to ten programmes of study. In a German, Austrian and Swiss context, there is a similar incorporation of popular music journalism into the academy. On an international scale, music journalism-focused PhDs are increasingly commonplace, while modules of study are emerging as elements of music and journalism courses. Moreover, within such contexts, intellectual music journalism itself has had a crucial influence on the establishment of popular music culture as an academic subject. In addition, outside of the academic realm, the last two years have seen the emergence of music journalism as a serious genre in the UK with the launch of Louder than Words, the first festival of music and words which draws on music journalism in all of its forms as a central axis and offers a platform for the serious consideration of music journalism as a cultural and economic force.
    [Show full text]
  • Music Criticism in Vienna C. 1898-1920
    Music Criticism in Vienna c. 1898-1920 This work is being undertaken on a University of premiered in Vienna in 1907, Puccini is unsurprisingly Queensland Postdoctoral Fellowship. It follows on the most prominent Italian. Such repertory was in the directly from my doctoral work in which I cut a fifteen- forefront of discussion, and the premiere list was domi- month slice of Viennese musical life, from October nated by other works in the 'romantic' vein, such as 1896 to December 1897. Within this period of time, I Elgar's Tlze Dream of Gerontius (1905) and Schmidt's searched out as near to comprehensive a range of Notre Dame (1914); also, one must not forget the Vien- newspapers as possible, in order to make a survey of nese premiere of Pnrsfnl, which was released from the breadth of activity in music journalism. The results embargo, at the beginning of 1914. Thus the first two of this, an improved version of my thesis, will appear decades of the century appear more as a smooth con- in 1996 as Music Criticism in Vienna, 1896-1897: Criti- tinuation of the last than as something self-consciously cally Moving ~0rms.l new, albeit with a stronger tendency towards deca- Motivated by curiosity as to what happened next, I dence. returned to Vienna. Taking another slice, this time Even 1914, a year traditionally and conveniently from 1907, I discovered some things constant, some used to conclude histories of 'nineteenth-century mu- changes, new issues and a few deaths and disappear- sic', does not appear to be much of a watershed.
    [Show full text]
  • Track-By-Track Album Reviews on Billboard.Com
    GENRE OVERVIEW: Track-by-Track Album Reviews on Billboard.com ENGL 3104: Technical Writing Jessica Verba Fall 2014 Heilker Track-by-Track Album Reviews on Billboard.com iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Page !1 of !18 TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction………………………………………………………………………….….…….. 3 Billboard’s Audience……………………………………………………………….…………4 Purpose of Track-By-Track Reviews……………………………………….………….…. 6 Writers of Track-By-Track Reviews………………………………………….…………… 8 Processes that Go into Writing This Document……………………………………….. 9 Characteristics of this Genre…………………..………..……………………………….. 11 Constraints on this Genre…………………………………………………………………..13 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………… 14 Appendix……………………………………………………………………………………… 16 References…………………………………………………………………………………….18 Track-by-Track Album Reviews on Billboard.com iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiHiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii Page !2 of !18 TRACK-BY-TRACK ALBUM REVIEWS ON BILLBOARD.COM Music criticism plays an important role in the promotion of certain music and artists to the general public. Due to the massive volume of albums being released, the music industry needs critics who will help consumers sort through these albums and find the best music in each musical genre. One of the most respected sources of music industry- related information and reviews is Billboard Magazine. Billboard is a highly influential trade magazine which is best known for identifying and categorizing mainstream music using charts that rank albums by their sales, radio plays, and mentions in social media. Billboard’s
    [Show full text]
  • The Complexities of Music Journalism in the 21St Century
    1 University of Colorado, Boulder THEN AND NOW: THE COMPLEXITIES OF MUSIC JOURNALISM IN THE 21ST CENTURY Kylie Ketchner Independent Study Dr. Rolf Norgaard . 2 Music journalism. As a lens through which we see and interpret music, the field has undergone drastic changes to adapt to the digital-age in the past six decades. From its popularization in the mainstream culture at Rolling Stone in the 60’s and 70’s, as well as the ​ ​ sometimes overlooked but no less important voices of The Source, Creem, and Village Voice, ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ ​ music journalism has historically offered a platform for audiences to reach musicians through analysis and interviews. By extension, then, music fans and enthusiasts have found themselves more and more connected to the artists and songs they love. The field’s growth has parallelled that of the entertainment industry, skyrocketing popular journalists to fame and creating a new critical and up-close institution through which to view music. Jann Wenner, Lester Bangs, Hunter S. Thompson come to mind, as well as Nelson George, Jeff Chang, and Jessica Hopper; but the monopoly on music journalism, and criticism, is not limited to the writers living in big cities, and talking to big names. My first music critic was my dad, Buddy. When I was a kid, every night he would sing my brother and me a song before bed, usually “Angels from Montgomery” by John Prine, plucking the guitar chords and tapping his foot along with the rhythm. At the time, I found the whole thing hilarious due to the line “I am an old woman / Named after my mother,” which, of course, my dad is not.
    [Show full text]