Downie delivers keynote at ISMIR

Stephen Downie
J. Stephen Downie, Professor, Associate Dean for Research, and Co-Director of the HathiTrust Research Center

J. Stephen Downie, GSLIS professor and associate director for research, gave a keynote at the 16th International Society for Music Information Retrieval Conference (ISMIR) held in Malaga, Spain, this fall.

Downie reflected on how far music information retrieval (MIR) research has come in making access to music resources quick and simple over the last three decades.

“I am constantly surprised by the totally groovy and jaw-droppingly spiffy new music applications developed by my fellow MIR researchers. This represents the extraordinary vibrancy of the MIR community,” said Downie.

This year marked the eleventh running of MIREX, the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange, which was held in conjunction with the ISMIR conference. MIREX is an evaluation campaign of music information retrieval systems and algorithms that takes place annually at the conference. Nearly 100 researchers from 24 countries participated this year, and to date over 2,700 algorithms have been evaluated.

Papers presented at the conference included:

Modified Perceptual Linear Prediction Liftered Cepstrum (MPLPLC) Model for Pop Cover Song Recognition
Ning Chen, J. Stephen Downie, Haidong Xiao, Yu Zhu, Jie Zhu

MIREX Grand Challenge 2014 User Experience: Qualitative Analysis of User Feedback
Jin Ha Lee, Xiao Hu, Kahyun Choi, J. Stephen Downie

Downie is the Illinois co-director of the HathiTrust Research Center (HTRC). He is also director of the International Music Information Retrieval Systems Evaluation Laboratory (IMIRSEL) and founder and ongoing director of the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX). He has been very active in the establishment of the MIR community through his ongoing work with ISMIR conferences. He was ISMIR's founding president and now serves on the ISMIR Board.

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