Users' Relevance Criteria in Music Retrieval in Everyday Life: An Exploratory Study

The paper presents the findings of a qualitative study on the way young adults make relevance inferences about music items when searching for music for recreational purposes. Data were collected through in-depth interviews and analyzed following the constant comparative method. Content analysis revealed that participants used four types of clues to make relevance inferences: bibliographic metadata (e.g., names of contributors, labels), relational metadata (e.g., genres, similar artists), associative metadata (e.g., cover arts), and recommendations/reviews. Relevance judgments were also found to be influenced by the external context (i.e., the functions music plays in one’s life) and the internal context (i.e., individual tastes and beliefs, state of mind).