Music archive browser using scatter/gather method

The amount of music files on the Internet keeps on growing, and there is a need for easier navigation and organization of the digital music archives. Existing systems organize music based on similarity measures such as timbre and rhythm, and present a map of music wherein similar music files are placed close to one another. Current systems only allow users to navigate and zoom in the music map. This paper proposes a new way of interacting with the music map, through a scatter-gather method. In this method, users can select portions of the map (i.e. small subset of the digital archive) and ask the system to reorganize the selected music file to further cluster them under different grouping criteria. Keywords User Interface, Self Organizing Maps, Music Archive, Clustering, Navigation, Scatter-Gather