Music Information Retrieval

Music Information Retrieval (MIR) involves searching and organising large collections of music, or music information, according to their relevance to specific queries. This is particularly relevant given the vast quantities of musical information available in digital format, and the popularity of music-related digital services. The last four years have seen the introduction of a major conference series on the subject, the International Conference on Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR), as well as numerous symposia and workshops, gathering an expanding community of multidisciplinary researchers including librarians, computer scientists, musicians, electronic engineers and musicologists, amongst others. Furthermore, given its obvious commercial appeal, most media content owners and distributors (e.g. Philips, Sony, Apple) are actively involved in research in the field, while numerous libraries are seeking to incorporate some form of support for MIR in their on-line digital services.