Towards Improved Music Recommendation: Using Blogs and Micro-Blogs

With the explosive growth of the World Wide Web and the rise of social media, new approaches in Music Recommendation evolve. The current study investigates how blogs and micro-blogs can improve the perceived quality of music recommendation. A literature review and expert interviews are conducted to identify important topics regarding (micro-) blogs and Music Recommendation. Subsequently, the prototype Songdice is built and tested in a user-evaluation. Songdice uses music blogs to recommend songs and rationalize those recommendations. The authors’ results show that (micro-) blogs can improve the perceived quality of recommendations by creating trust, using personalization and exploiting the quality of music in the long tail. Additional research is required to determine the most effective way to use information from blogs and micro-blogs. The authors’ research explores a new area in music recommendation literature and provides a starting point for further research concerning the combination of (micro-) blogs and music recommendation. Towards Improved Music Recommendation: Using Blogs and Micro-Blogs