The mSpace Classical Music Explorer: Improving Access to Classical Music for Real People

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Description/Abstract

The mSpace Classical Music Explorer, available at http://demo.mspace.fm, is a Web-based explorer designed to improve access to the classical music domain, especially for those who do not have domain knowledge. We could characterize the approach as designed to support those who might say “I don’t know much about classical music, but I know what I like when I hear it.” For this group, browsing a list of domain terms is not helpful, because those terms do not have meaning for the group; key word search is equally unhelpful, since again the group does not yet know what they wish to specify. The mSpace classical music explorer addresses the access problem by providing a variety of direct manipulation techniques that enables exploration and selection without domain expertise. In the following paper, we describe these techniques. We also present results of evaluation informing the multimedia aspects of the interface, and briefly describe the mSpace model on which the explorer is based.