Hooked on Music Information Retrieval

Abstract

This article provides a reply to 'Lure(d) into listening: The potential of cognition-based music information retrieval,' in which Henkjan Honing discusses the potential impact of his proposed Listen, Lure & Locate project on Music Information Retrieval (MIR). Honing presents some critical remarks on data-oriented approaches in MIR, which we endorse. To place these remarks in context, we first give a brief overview of the state of the art of MIR research. Then we present a series of arguments that show why purely data-oriented approaches are unlikely to take MIR research and applications to a more advanced level. Next, we propose our view on MIR research, in which the modelling of musical knowledge has a central role. Finally, we elaborate on the ideas in Honing's paper from a MIR perspective in this paper and propose some additions to the Listen, Lure & Locate project.