Well, it's with deep regret that I post my last class related message :-( I must admit that I'm going to miss sharing my thoughts on the net...i've never been much of a "blogger" but there is a certain intriguing freedom about discussing in this manner that I rather enjoy.
Throughout the course of the semester, I managed to listen to an impressive 341 songs. Well, maybe its not so impressive but I was surprised to learn the count was that high. Of the 341, there were 221 that I overwhemingly enjoyed, 2 of them I used to like but Ive heard one too many times and 17 of them I liked somewhat or were at least tolerable. Aggregating a positive pile of counts, 240 of the 341 were positive (loosely defined in some areas but positive nonetheless) providing a 70% rating.
In addition, I only created 6 playlists during the semester. Five of which were artists and 1 was based on a song title. The Mary J Blige playlists, which is an artist, boasted a 82.96% success ratio. I listened to a total of 135 songs on that particular playlist and throughout the testing period I felt this station improve and as a result I listened to it more often because it seemed more reliable. I also had a John Legend, another artist, playlist and it generated a 73.33% success rate after listening to 90 songs. I tried creating a playlist based on a song title rather than an artist but it only generated a 36.36% success rating after 11 songs and I quickly lost trust in the recommendations provided.
During each session, I captured the day, time of day and mood that I was in. I realized that mood is an extremely important factor but rather hard to qualify. For instance, I initially detailed combined mood characteristics such as Awake, Eager to Work; Content, Peaceful; Inspired, Motivated; Upbeat-Energetic, Winding Down, Relaxed, etc... When attempting to perform the analysis its rather hard to qualify exactly how I felt from the combined descriptions and it would require a large matrix to even attempt to quantify where each rating belongs. With that said, I condensed the emotion or mood previously captured to a one word description in hopes of performing some type of analysis. Interestingly enough, when I was extremely tired I listened to 16 songs with a 100% success rate and when I was "pleasant" I listened to 6 songs with a 100% success rate. The two seem to be on opposite ends of the spectrum so perhaps because of the state I was in, I was either less critical or more open to accepting the songs that were played. When I was energetic and eager to work the success rate was between 46% and 58%. When I was motivated and content the success rate was between 67% and 76%. When I was relaxed, I did obtain a 89.77% success rate which is pretty good. These numbers show that the more focused or energetic I was, the lower the success rate....probably because I preconceived notions about the type of music I wanted to hear and not having those songs played probably didn't bode well for my listening experience!! Not hearing certain songs made me more critical of those I heard.
Towards the end of the semester, I listened primarily to the Mary J Blige playlist because it seemed to offer more accurate recommendations. Looking backing on its progress throughout the semester, when I started providing feedback the songs played were hit or miss. However, towards the latter part of the course, the suggestions became better and better. Again, mood played a critical part in my listening experience and if there is a way to account for this facet I think my sessions would improve drastically. On the other hand, I realize how difficult and challenging it is to capture "moods". It is extremely subjective and will require a great deal of knowledge engineering to best assign mood labels to songs as it is user dependent. Songs that may relax me may depress or excite others.....and vice versa.
Overall, removing the mood element, Pandora performs exceptionally!! I have recommended it to several friends and co-workers and absolutely plan on using it in the future! Pandora thanks for all you do!! It's been a trying semester at times and thanks for bearing with my and my "mood swings". I've enjoyed it ;-)
Sincerely yours!
Remi
Monday, May 5, 2008
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