Deep Neural Networks for Music Tagging

Abstract

In this thesis, I present my hypothesis, experiment results, and discussion that are related to various aspects of deep neural networks for music tagging. Music tagging is a task to automatically predict the suitable semantic label when music is provided. Generally speaking, the input of music tagging systems can be any entity that constitutes music, e.g., audio content, lyrics, or metadata, but only the audio content is considered in this thesis. My hypothesis is that we can fi nd effective deep learning practices for the task of music tagging task that improves the classi fication performance. As a computational model to realise a music tagging system, I use deep neural networks. Combined with the research problem, the scope of this thesis is the understanding, interpretation, optimisation, and application of deep neural networks in the context of music tagging systems. The ultimate goal of this thesis is to provide insight that can help to improve deep learning-based music tagging systems. There are many smaller goals in this regard. Since using deep neural networks is a data-driven approach, it is crucial to understand the dataset. Selecting and designing a better architecture is the next topic to discuss. Since the tagging is done with audio input, preprocessing the audio signal becomes one of the important research topics. After building (or training) a music tagging system, fi nding a suitable way to re-use it for other music information retrieval tasks is a compelling topic, in addition to interpreting the trained system. The evidence presented in the thesis supports that deep neural networks are powerful and credible methods for building a music tagging system.