CFP: The Million Song Dataset Challenge

[Thierry Bertin-Mahieux]

(sorry for cross-postings, just wanted to make sure that everyone on the MSD list hears about this first)

CALL FOR PARTICIPATION: The Million Song Dataset Challenge
DEADLINE: 2012-08-09 23:59 UTC.
URL: http://www.kaggle.com/c/msdchallenge.

We are happy to announce the Million Song Dataset Challenge: a large-scale, open evaluation of personalized music recommendation algorithms.

We provide listening history data for 1.1 million users (1 million train, 110 thousand validation and test) and over 380 thousand songs from the Million Song Dataset.  Given partial historical data for each test user, the goal is to produce a ranking over the remaining songs for that user.

What makes this challenge unique?  Openness!  The songs in the dataset are equipped with metadata (e.g., artist and title), as well as audio content analysis, semantic annotations, lyrics, etc.  Because the data is open, participants are free to construct and include any additional features, or ignore the features altogether.  The field is wide open!

Details:

• The challenge ends 2012-08-09 23:59 UTC.
• Evaluation is handled through Kaggle.com, and the details can be found at http://www.kaggle.com/c/msdchallenge.
• A post-analysis of the leading submissions will be performed by the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX), and the results presented at the 13th International Society for Music Information Retrieval (ISMIR) conference in October, 2012.
• For details on the Million Song Dataset, please see http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/.
• For background information about the contest and the organizing team, please see http://labrosa.ee.columbia.edu/millionsong/challenge.

Good luck, and happy listening!

-- The Million Song Dataset Challenge team,
Brian McFee, Thierry Bertin-Mahieux, Daniel P.W. Ellis, and Gert Lanckriet.

--
Thierry Bertin-Mahieux
Columbia University, NY
Ph.D. Candidate, Electrical Engineering
http://www.columbia.edu/~tb2332/