MIReS · Roadmap for Music Information ReSearch

The field of Music Information Retrieval (MIR) has centered primarily on the analysis of sound signal for the purpose of more efficient search and faster access to digital collections of recorded music. The advent of web-mediated social networks has created a dynamic global market for digital music, collateral services and new user behaviours with significant challenges and opportunities for exploitation. For Europe to leverage its position as a world leader in music creativity, production and mobile distribution, a programme of digital music search technology RTD is needed to ensure coherent targeted support for innovation and underpin competitive strategies for maintaining European excellence.MIR field has contributed to the success of EU music companies such as Last.fm, Shazam, and BMAT who have started to revolutionise the way music is produced, stored and marketed. Although these services have generated a growing audience reaching over 100 million users in Dec. 2010, the EU music revolution is still in the making. By expanding its context and addressing challenges such as multimodal information, multiculturalism and multidisciplinarity, MIR has the potential for a major impact on the future economy, the arts and education, not merely through applications of technical components, but also by evolving to address questions of fundamental human understanding, with a view to building a digital economy founded on uncopiable intangibles": personalisation, interpretation, embodiment, findability and community. Within this wider context we propose to refer to the field of MIR as Music Information ReSearch (MIReS) and thus widen its scope, ensuring its focus is centered on quality of experience with greater relevance to human networks and communities.The Roadmap for MIReS will provide a meta-analysis of the MIR discipline, address emergent contexts and major challenges, formulate research evaluation standards for the discipline, contribute to the establishment of music production and digital library management standards, engage a variety of stakeholders from different disciplines of academia and industry and deliver innovative platforms for co-creative workshops focusing on horizon-scanning and technology foresight. The roadmap will also include a framework for the establishment of a MIR excellence network, involving the field drivers and stakeholders (music researchers, industry representatives, strategists and policy makers).The MIReS action is therefore expected to impact on (i) policy making and research planning (alignment to other ongoing initiatives such as CHORUS+ or the Media Search Cluster)