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Tempo and genre are two inter-leaved aspects of music; genres are often associated to rhythm patterns which are played in specific tempo ranges.
 

This years’ Sónar+D Innovation Challenge, with a ‘datathon’ format, has been posed by the music analytics platform FuturePulse. Over the past few weeks, two teams assembled via an open call and with the help of the Music Technology Group de la Universitat Pompeu Fabra were tasked with using the FuturePulse API to investigate how predictive analytics can change the music industry.

 
 

A problem that frequently occurs when mining complex networks, is selecting algorithms with which to rank the relevance of nodes to metadata groups characterized by a small number of examples. The best algorithms are often found through experiments on labeled networks or unsupervised structural community quality measures.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

We are very happy to announce that the FuturePulse platform will be exploited during this year’s Sónar+D Innovation Challenge (SIC)! SIC is an accelerated innovation program based on creative technology and open collaboration between companies and top international talent, which helps companies to quickly innovate in topics that directly impact their business; to find the right talent in the way and to create forward-looking projects. Companies propose challenges to the creative community and collaborate to produce disruptive innovation proposals and present them at the main stage of Sónar+D.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Our newest video about the latest developments applied in the FuturePulse platform is now live! Watch our project’s achievements over the last 3 years.
 
 
 

In the Publication “An Analysis of the Effect of Data Augmentation Methods: Experiments for a Musical Genre Classification Task”, our FuturePulse project partner Rémi Mignot (IRCAM Lab – CNRS – Sorbonne Université, Paris,) and Geoffroy Peeters (LTCI – Télécom Paris – Institut Polytechnique de Paris) provide an in-depth analysis of two data augmentation methods: sound transformations and sound segmentation.
 
 
 
 
 

An emerging problem in network analysis is ranking network nodes based on their relevance to metadata groups that share attributes of interest. The most common example lays on the context of recommender systems or node discovery services.
 
 
 
 
 

Estimating and analyzing the popularity of an entity is an important task for professionals in several areas, including the music industry and social media. As the FuturePulse team points out in our project’s newest paper ‘GAP: Geometric Aggregation of Popularity Metrics’, the abundance of online data should enhance peoples’ insights regarding the collective human behavior.
 

A few weeks ago, BMAT, our FuturePulse partner, released the report ‘WHAT THE FAQ IS GOING ON WITH MUSIC RIGHT NOW? on how COVID-19 is changing the music consumption trends. Through this report, BMAT aims to answer the most Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) that has received about pandemic music trends.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In the deliverable ‘D5.4 – Music Platform pilot report v1, the FuturePulse team presents the results from the first pilot phase for the Background Music Platform (BMP) use case in the FuturePulse project. The first pilot phase is the smallest pilot of the three pilots being conducted, and consists mainly of internal testing of FuturePulse models for use case specific requirements.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

FuturePulse is here to serve the increasingly complex needs of the music ecosystem, by developing and pilot testing a novel close-to-market music platform in three high-impact use cases.

‘D5.3 Live Music pilot report v1’ is the very first pilot report, which focuses on the Live Music Use Case Scenario, and reports on the testing of the initial system targeting our end user Sónar.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

To serve the increasingly complex needs of the music ecosystem, FuturePulse will develop and pilot test a novel close-to-market music platform in three high-impact Use Cases.

In our project’s first pilot report D5.2 Record Label pilot report v1, we analyse the testing of the initial system targeting mostly the end users within the consortium. This report focuses only on the first phase small scale pilot and not on the later stages (medium and large) as these will be addressed in future reports.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Over the last few days, many countries like Switzerland, Japan and China cancelled several live events due to the ongoing spread of the new coronavirus. Our own Daniel Johansson, music industry researcher at Linnaeus University and collaborator in FuturePulse, talked to Georg Cederskog and Hugo Lindkvist of Dagens Nyheter, on the possibility that the coronavirus could have disastrous consequences for the live industry.
 
 
 
 
 

In the deliverable ‘D4.5 – FuturePulse use case applications v2’, Stamatis Rapanakis (ATC) with the help of Gonçal Calvo (BMAT), Eva Jaho (ATC) and Daniel Johansson (Soundtrack Your Brand), provide an overview of FuturePulse’s significant functionalities available to end users, in all three of the project’s applications, Record Labels, Live Music Events and Streaming Platforms.  The three applications have been used and tested during the first pilot phase by the pilot users.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

On the 21st of January 2020, our partners Saki Markovic from Playground Music Scandinavia and Daniel Johansson from Soundtrack Your Brand, were invited to talk about the FuturePulse project, during the biggest conference in Sweden for the live music industry, Sweden Live, at Västerås Konserthus.
 

In the deliverable ‘D3.2 – Predictive analytics and recommendation framework v2, Thomas Lidy, Adrian Lecoutre, Khalil Boulkenafet from Musimap, and Manos Schinas, Christos Koutlis, Symeon Papadopoulos form CERTH, presented the work conducted in our project to meet the requirements related to predictive analytics and recommendations, aiming to produce popularity-oriented results for artists, tracks and genres.
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nowadays, music consumption has become more digital than ever – think YouTube, Spotify, iTunes and many more. As seen in IFPI Global Music Report 2019, last year streaming revenue grew by 34.0% and accounted for almost half of global revenue, driven by a 32.9% increase in paid subscription streaming. Actually, by the end of 2018, there were 255 million users of paid streaming services accounting for 37% of the total recorded music revenue.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

AstraZeneca is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, with 60 000 employees and revenues of 22 billion USD in 2018. On November 20th 2019, our partner Daniel Johansson, from Soundtrack Your Brand, was invited to a closed conference for 60 system architects from all over the world, to talk about how the music industry makes use of statistical analysis, and what FuturePulse aims to do.
 

Numbers and analysis have been powerful tools in the music industry for a long time. However, as today’s music consumption has become more digital, there is an increasing amount of accessible data, which if ‘translated’ properly, can help to better understand an audience, the music trends of the future and ultimately make highly informed business decisions.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Nowadays, each one of us can recognize a song by simply hearing just a few seconds of its tune. Nevertheless, no matter how recognizable a song might initially be, at some point, its recollection level, decays. Based on this ‘decreasing trajectory’, our project partner CERTH proposed a composite recognition model named T-REC, which aims at estimating song recognition levels, based on ‘chart data, YouTube views, Spotify popularity of tracks and forgetting curve dynamics’.
 
 
 
 
 

As we have seen in a previous blog post, in order to serve the increasingly complex needs of the music ecosystem, FuturePulse project will develop and pilot test a novel close-to-market music platform in the Record Label use case.
 

From September 26th to September 28th 2019, our partner Musimap represented FuturePulse at the International Music Conference Waves Music in Vienna!


Back in 2016, the global recorded music market grew by 5.9%, the fastest rate of growth since IFPI began tracking the market in 1997 (IFPI Global Music Report 2017). Streaming has been the clear driver of this growth, with revenues surging by 60.4%. With more than 100 million users of paid subscriptions globally, streaming has passed a crucial milestone. It makes up the majority of digital revenues which now account for 50% of total recorded music revenues.

 
 

Today’s live music industry faces an important problem: finding venues that help expose emerging artists to wider audiences. However, in order to encounter these venues, live music data are needed; something that is quite difficult to be obtained.

 

Nowadays, there is no current service that includes all the necessary insights needed for a record company, live music company or background music company to make well-informed decisions or get the full overview in their area of expertise.Nowadays, there is no current service that includes all the necessary insights needed for a record company, live music company or background music company to make well-informed decisions or get the full overview in their area of expertise.


On July 3rd our partner Musimap represented FuturePulse at the Wallifornia MusicTech conference in Liège, Belgium!


One of the most important metrics digital marketeers rely on when creating campaigns and analyzing the success of them is tracking and conversion data. This data allows you to understand the behavior of a consumer, it also gives you other information such as a demographic and geographical data. The data lets you know if a campaign has generated any results as well as it lets you understand any further needs for your products.
 
 

Music festivals and event promoters are bound to ticket sales and building their events image at the same time.


To promote their events and work on the image of their events, promoters have to juggle with a lot of data over social media, ticket sales data, Google analytics…


The 3rd General Assembly meeting took place in Stockholm on February 19-20, 2019, and was hosted by SYB and PGM. The FuturePulse consortium met in order to discuss the progress made over the second 6-month period of the project and design the next steps to be followed during the next period.
 
 
 
 
 

With Valentine’s Day just around the corner, AI company Musimap has analyzed the evolution of The Meaning of Love in music since the 1950’s.


We selected and analyzed 300 songs with 58 AI detected moods. The selected songs are popular ones and proportionally chosen between 1950 and today.


Since the emergence of Music Streaming Platforms, some companies have built up huge databases with millions of songs, and managing such catalogs is not an easy task. Particularly, it's necessary to have relevant information about each song in order to efficiently organize all titles. Nevertheless, manually annotating millions of songs is a titanic job for humans, and because of the fast changes in music industry, most of these annotations have to be updated every year. To this aim, a scientific field appeared two decades ago. It deals with the automatic analysis of digital signals of music in order to retrieve Musical Information directly from the recordings. Then, with dedicated algorithms, a computer can recognize some attributes; such as: the genre of a song, its mood, the played instruments, the tempo, the key, the chord progression, and many other information. In the context of music recommendation, and especially for FuturePulse, the use of such a technology is highly relevant.


Music is one of the fastest evolving media industries, currently undergoing a transformation at the nexus of music streaming, social media and convergence technologies. As a result, the music industry has become a mixed economy of diverse consumer channels and revenue streams, as well as disruptive innovations based on new services and content distribution models. In this setting, music companies encounter daunting challenges in dealing successfully with the transition to the new field that is shaped by streaming music, social media and media convergence. The availability of huge music catalogues and choices has rendered the problems of recommendation and discovery as key in the competition for audience, while the continuous access to multiple sources of music consumption have resulted in a dynamic audience, characterized by a highly diverse set of tastes and volatility in preferences which also depend on the context of music consumption.


FuturePulse’s 1st Project Review took place in Brussels on the 30th of October 2018 and was hosted in European Commission’s premises.
 
 
 

There was a time when music recommendations were fairly simple. You found out about new music by either reading about it in a physical newspaper, listening to it on the radio, viewing it on a TV, visiting a concert/festival, or following your friends suggestions. That was basically it.

Today, recommendations are almost a whole new business within the music industry. When the economic model changes from being based on copies and units, to listening and usage, the name of the game is to make people consume your music as much as possible, rather than buy it as products.

Recommendation technology is a crucial part of the FuturePulse project, specifically recommendation services for three kinds of stakeholders within the music industry, labels, live actors and background music providers.


One of the very interesting features of FuturePulse is the possibility to estimate, monitor and predict the popularity that different music genres attract. This can support music professionals in anticipating future developments and in making better decisions based on them. For instance, festival organizers are greatly interested in knowing which types of music are trending or are expected to trend next year so that they can create a more exciting line-up. In a similar spirit, record labels are interested in knowing which genres increase in popularity so that they can make better decisions with regard to signing new artists and promoting their existing ones.


The 2nd General Assembly meeting took place in Paris on June 14-15, 2018, and was hosted by IRCAM.
 

About 90% in thirty-three years. That’s what best-selling album record sales have fallen from Michael Jackson’s Thriller (65 million -physical- copies sold in 1984) to Ed Sheeran’s ÷ (6.1 -physical and digital- million copies sold in 2017).
 
Another way to understand the situation: total record industry revenues had their peak eighteen years ago, now the industry celebrates reaching 68.4% of revenue in 1999.

On the other hand, streaming revenues have grown by more than 41.1% last year. This gives us an idea of the magnitude and increasing change that emergence of new forms of music consumption has brought about.


FuturePulse's 1st GA meeting in Athens!
 

The "Musikbranschpodden" is a podcast that interviews stakeholders within the music industry

In order to serve the increasingly complex needs of the music ecosystem, FuturePulse will develop and pilot test a novel close-to-market music platform in 3 high-impact use cases that will help music companies leverage a variety of music data and content, ranging from broadcasters (TV, radio) and music streaming data, to sales statistics and streams of music-focused social media discussions
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

FuturePulse Project attended the  “H2020 Media Projects’ Workshop: Collaboration Towards the Future of Media”, which was held in Brussels on the 17th October 2017, in order to spark collaboration among all H2020 media related projects managed by Unit DG CONNECT-I4.


Oct 25 2017
FuturePulse Project organised its official kick off meting in Barcelona, at 26-27 September 2018


Music is one of the fastest evolving media industries, currently undergoing a transformation at the nexus of music streaming, social media and convergence technologies. The music industry has become a mixed economy of diverse consumer channels and revenue streams, as well as disruptive innovations based on new services and content distribution models.


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Co-funded by the European Commission

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 761634. This website reflects the views only of the Consortium, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained herein.