Audio cover song identification: Mirex 2006-2007 results and analyses

This paper presents analyses of the 2006 and 2007 results of the Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) Audio Cover Song Identification (ACS) tasks. The Music Information Retrieval Evaluation eXchange (MIREX) is a community-based endeavor to scientifically evaluate music information retrieval (MIR) algorithms and techniques. The ACS task was created to motivate MIR researchers to expand their notions of similarity beyond acoustic similarity to include the important idea that musical works retain their identity notwithstanding variations in style, genre, orchestration, rhythm or melodic ornamentation, etc. A series of statistical analyses were performed that indicate significant improvements in this domain have been made over the course of 2006-2007. Post-hoc analyses reveal distinct differences between individual systems and the effects of certain classes of queries on performance. This paper discusses some of the techniques that show promise in this research domain.