AI Recommendations are Helping Heavy Metal Music
AI Recommendations are Helping Heavy Metal Music
The driving force behind music streaming isn’t just the extensive user base or the huge music library. A lot of this success comes down to its utilization of AI recommendations. With heavy metal being so underground, it’s one of the genres that has benefitted the most from this.
AI Suggestions are Helping New Bands to be Found
You might play Hell on Earth by Iron Maiden, and then go on to listen to Master of Puppets by Metallica. If you don’t put on another song after this, the AI algorithm will use your previous choices as a foundation for the next track. The algorithm may decide to play Vultures of the North by Orbit Culture or Stranded by Gojira.
Both bands take influence from Metallica, and Gojira has even opened for Metallica in the past. This paves the way for fans to discover new music, from bands they might not have known about previously. It’s not just happening in the music industry either, casino sites often make AI recommendations. When you play live casino games, you will notice that a lot of the time, you are suggested other options in a similar vein. These could be games that relate to the theme of what you have just played, or other games from the same developer. AI is a powerful force in the world of entertainment, and it is helping people across the world to get more from it.
New Subgenres and Unusual Finds
The great thing about this algorithm is that it can gradually move you onto new subgenres. You might be listening to thrash and if the next song suggestion is heavier, but you keep playing it, then the next one may be heavier yet. As the songs go by, you may find that you cross over into new and more underground genres, such as death metal or even black metal. On the contrary, if you skip the heavier songs, the algorithm will take note of this, and play songs that are lighter, or more related to the choices that came before.
So how does streaming AI help users to find songs that haven’t been streamed before? Raw audio can be difficult to analyze, so a spectrogram is used. They process the raw audio by changing it into a mel spectrogram, before passing it through a CNN, or convolutional neural network. Characteristics of the song can then be pulled, such as the tempo, loudness, key mode and time signature. Spotify is then able to suggest music based on that, which is very useful in the genre of heavy metal, as time signatures are often similar, and loudness is a key characteristic of the genre. By taking into account data such as key and modes, however, it’s possible to filter out different genres of loud and heavy music while providing a much more personalized experience to listeners. AI has been a powerful tool in the world of music streaming, but it has also had a major impact on other forms of entertainment too. By embracing collaborative filtering, Music streaming services have been a driving force behind new bands, and new music genres, helping them to emerge into the spotlight without any input from the band themselves.
Since you’re here …
… we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading Side-Line Magazine than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can - and we refuse to add annoying advertising. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.
Side-Line’s independent journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. But we do it because we want to push the artists we like and who are equally fighting to survive.
If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps fund it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as 5 US$, you can support Side-Line Magazine – and it only takes a minute. Thank you.
The donations are safely powered by Paypal.
