This paper describes the future implementation of mobile music services into pixoona. Based on a user survey concrete developments for pixoona were be elaborated.

1. 1
Mobile music
tagging and tracking
Ausecasestudyforpixoona
Author:Eva Liebelt
Inco-operationwith:
Index:
1. Phototaggingoverview
2.Howdomusictagswork?
3.Experiencemusictags
4.Oursurvey‘stestresults
5.Lookingahead

2. 2
1. Photo tagging overview
The increase of mobile devices accelerated the growth of the global photo stock.
Nearly 70% of smartphone users take photos at least once a week. Almost half of
them share their photos with friends on social media platforms. For example, per
day 350 million photos are shared on Facebook. In January 2014, Pinterest has more
than 38.5 million unique visitors per month in the US, which represents a growth of
more than 22% year-by-year. Pinterest allows users to upload, collect and categorize
photos on boards you can follow. These photos are bookmarks which link to blogs
or other websites. Another photo-tagging tool is Instagram, which reaches more
than150millionuserspermonth.Anaverageof55millionphotosaresharedperday.
Nevertheless,sincelastyear,Instagramisnolongerad-free.Butwhyisn’tpixoonajust
anotherphototaggingtool?What’sthedifference?
pixoona does almost the same, but also adds further value. pixoona is available for
desktop and mobile. With the mobile version of the social media photo-tagging
platform, uploaded photos can be enriched with rich media content. The user can
comment or add YouTube videos, another picture or music by setting a PIX at a
certain point of the photo. So, a PIX is the connection of digital photos with other
media content. Thus, photos on pixoona are more than bookmarks; they are geo-
located. While exploring pixoona, the location turns into a social pinboard. pixoona
steps out of the mobile device into the real world. So, pixoona is everywhere where
the story begins. Life becomes much more spectacular and interesting. Moreover,
pixoona is totally ad-free. The combination of photos and other rich media content
added to the uploaded photo makes pixoona special. This way photo tagging makes
digitalstorytellingsomucheasier.
2. How do music tags work?
Nowadays, 69% of smartphone owners use their device to play and manage their
music. The group of 18 to 25 year olds uses their smartphone an average of 3.5 hours
per day, 37 minutes of that just for listening to music. That shows the huge relevance
of mobile music services in the everyday life of young smartphone owners. pixoona
uses the Apple iTunes Search API to add music, films, apps and books. Especially
music tags are heavily used to enhance photos. At the moment 22% of all tags in
pixoonaaremusictags.
But why is it such an amazing experience to enrich photos with music? Well, this
way it’s much easier for users to add their story with emotions – without using any
words. The message of the song can underline the subtext of the photo or put it
into another context. A picture is said to be worth a thousand words – but with
music it is worth a million.
350 million
photosareshared
onFacebookevery
day.
55 million
photosareshared
onInstagramm
everyday.
70%ofsmartphone
userstakephotos
atleastonceaweek
Withpixoonathe
usercanenhance
photoswithrich
media.

3. 3
To explore music tags, the user can listen to a free sample of the song (around
90 seconds) by clicking on the album cover. He can also see the most important
metadata, e.g. song title and name of the artist. pixoona stores these and much
more information in its database. To download the song, the user is passed onto
the iTunes Store. At the moment the user has to click on the song title to switch
to iTunes. This paper will analyze some solutions for pixoona to increase the
experience while tagging or exploring music.
3. Experience music tags
The usage of music identification services comes to five to ten recognized songs
per month, per person. The meager use is due to the fact that the added value of
pure music identification services is really low. Shazam tries to give an added value
through linking to Spotify and iTunes. Listening directly to songs isn’t available
with Shazam’s mobile application. Spotify on the other hand is inexpensive and
can also be used on mobile devices. The spread of music streaming subscriptions
has increased in recent years. New providers are entering the market and the
technology is increasingly integrated into the everyday life of users. When it
comes to digital music, sales on the German market have increased by 12 percent
in 2013 compared to 2012. This might be caused by the disproportional growth on
the music streaming market, whereas the sales figures of physical music are still
decreasing. All in all there can be a slight increase in sales recorded in 2013.
With the launch of the high-speed mobile web LTE, the networks expansion and the
increased dissemination of LTE-capable devices an increase of user experience can
be achieved. LTE has a theoretical transfer rate of 300 Mbits/second (in practice
ratherathird)aboutfourtotentimesasfastasthecurrentlymorewidespread3G.
The integration of the mobile web in other everyday life situations, e.g. driving
a car, allows the integration of mobile music services. The technical progress of
hardwaredevelopment(e.g.GPSdeviceswithmobilewebconnection)alsorequires
the adaption of software for these new devices. In contrast, mobile devices like
smartphones have a very high user acceptance. Existing resources are used and
improvedtocreateanaddedvalue.
For subscribors the offline mode Spotify offers is very useful, because streaming
music with the mobile web can be very expensive. It is not common to use the data
volume which is included every month for streaming music but with an extended
rangeofwi-fi,thesedisadvantagescanbeeliminated.
1%increasecompared
to2012
12%salesgrowthon
thedigitalmusic
market
1.45bn€
salesoftheGerman
musicmarketin
2013
highspeedmobile
internet(LTE)
opensupnew
opportunites for
musicstreaming

4. 4
4. Our survey‘s test results
To find out, how consumers use music services, we started a survey. The results are
basedontheanswersof145participants;almost30%wereactivepixoonausers.
Sharing music on Facebook is very popular, but pixoona seems to promote music
tagging due to lower barriers in the system. Nearly 60% of the active pixoona users
shared music on pixoona. On Facebook the feature is rarely used. Most test persons
reportedthattheysharemonthlyorlessfrequentlythanmonthlymusiconFacebook.
On the other hand, music on pixoona is shared much more frequently. More test
personsgavetheanswerthattheysharemusiconceperdayorweekly.Theseresults
show that music tagging on pixoona is more commonly in the community and much
easiertouse.
Whichmobileapplicationofasocialnetworkdoyouusetosharemusic?
To download songs, the Apple iTunes Store is most commonly used. Other music
downloadserviceslikeAmazonorGooglePlayMusicarelessfrequentlyused.
Almost 44% of test persons answered that they do not use any music download
services on their mobile devices. Most of the test persons wanted to listen to music
forfree.
Which mobile application of music services do you use to download music?
(basedonalltestpersons)
On the other hand, for the first time in a long while in 2013 the sales of the German
music market have been stabilized again. Compared to 2012 a sales growth of 1%
has been recorded. This growth is affiliated with the changes in the digital music
space.Whilethesalesofthephysicalmusicmarketstilldecreases,thedigitalmusic
sales rise disproportional.
With the increase of the Mobile Web, new ways of listening to music are getting
more popular. Music streaming is one of these new manners. First of all, Spotify
is one of the most used mobile music streaming services, which makes it very
interesting for a potential implementation in pixoona.
41%iTunes
44%none
50%facebook
19%amazon
9%twitter
6%googleplay
60%pixoona(ofallactivepixoonausers)

5. 5
We checked out the importance of special features of mobile music services. We
asked the participants what services or features they would like to have while
using a mobile music tool. Therefore, they ranked 15 different features/services
from 1 = really unimportant to 6 = really important with their own assessment. The
evaluation was performed on the average values that determine the ranking. We
looked at the first five features and tried to find out how they can be implemented
into the mobile version of pixoona.
Rankedfeaturesaskedforinamobilemusictool:
As you can see, the most important feature is the identification of music over-the-
air. For this, one of the most popular music recognition services is Shazam. The
service was founded in 2002; since than it has been improved constantly. First, the
users had to call the service hotline to receive a reply with the metadata via SMS.
With the technical progress and the establishment of smartphones since 2007 the
user experience of recognizing a song over-the-air has increased. Nowadays, the
user gets a reply in a few seconds directly on the screen of his smartphone when
using the Shazam mobile application. The service based on the method of the
audio fingerprinting system, which compares two audio fingerprints.
What does audio fingerprinting mean? Briefly summarized, an audio fingerprint
describes a summary of an audio object. In this case, the bit sequence of an audio
object is compressed to a limited number of bits by using a fingerprint algorithm.
Theobtainedaudiofingerprintisusedasanindexofthemetadata,whicharestored
in the database.
The second component of the system edits an algorithm of the requests of users
to identify a piece of music and puts the relevant results out from the database
in order to deliver them to the users. This algorithm has to be able to recognize
a short sample of the broadcasted piece of music. In order to compare the audio
fingerprints, the original and the sample were edited with the same algorithm.
1.Recognizemusicover-the-air
3.Createplaylists
2.Ad-freeservice
4.Seemetadatafromthesong
5.Downloadmusicforfree

6. 6
Shazam has a very robust algorithm and comes in spite of a database size of more
than 35 million titles very quickly to the correct result. Opposed to the advantages,
the lack of an open API prevents to find an easy way to implement this service into
pixoona. One possibility would be the cooperation of pixoona with Shazam and the
elaborationofabusinessmodelbothpartiescanbenefitfrom.
Another option could be the implementation of the Echoprint music identification
service from the Echonest Company. This code-based integration has the
disadvantage of a really slow algorithm used for the recognition. The over-the-air
algorithmisstillbeingdeveloped,whichmeansthatitwouldnotcomeuptotheusers
expectation. They are used to a much slicker service like Shazam. It’s not possible to
please them with a slow and unreliable service, just because this is the only one with
anopenAPI.
As described above, the music streaming service Spotify is very popular in the
target audience. The implementation of this service could please the user’s needs
of creating playlists and downloading songs for free. To use all Spotify features on a
mobile device a subscription service paid per month is needed. The basic features
like listening to music and playlists is free to use. Spotify is a legal and simple way of
listening to music. In addition to the high popularity, Spotify has further advantages
compared to other music streaming services such as SoundCloud or LastFM.
Especially the offline mode in its mobile version and the low costs per month for
Robustness:
Theretrievalshouldberobustagainstinterferencesignals,whichmaybecaused
bynoiseorfrequencydistortion.
Reliability:
Reliabilityreferstothenumberofappearanceoffalseresults(falsepositiverate).
Granularity:
Granularitydescribesthelengthofthequery.Inthiscase,theshorter,thebetter
thesystemworks.
Speed of the retrieval:
Thespeedoftheretrievaldescribesthetimethesystemneedstocomparethe
samplewiththefingerprintsstoredinthedatabase.
Audio
Finger-
print
Fingerprint size:
Thesizeofthefingerprintsreferstothebitspersecondorbitspersongofthe
audiofingerprints.Thishasaneffectontherequiredstoragecapacityandthusto
thespeedoftheretrieval.

7. 7
users are huge advantages of Spotify. Also in order to integrate features like playing
music, managing playlists and searching for songs or artists, Spotify provides an
open API, which is free for commercial use. Nevertheless, the authorization must be
obtainedinadvancefromSpotify.Spotifylimitstherequeststotenpersecond/IP,to
preventserveroverloads.TherecentnewsthatSpotifytookovertheso-called‘music
intelligence service’ Echonest, shows that the music market is still in transition. This
will revolutionize the music market in the future continuously. The maximum hasn’t
been reached yet; the capability will grow even further. For the users of Spotify the
wayoffindingnewmusicwillgreatlyimprove.Recommendationswillgetmuchmore
individualandpersonalized.
5. Looking ahead
Howcanpixoonausetheacquiredknowledgetoenhancetheuserexperienceandto
The development of two new music features
and one new feed might provide the answer: the
integrationofShazam’ssongidentificationaswell
astheplaylistmanagementfeatureofSpotifyand
the implementation of an individual song feed.
The Spotify function can be easily integrated due
totheopenAPI.
How could this look like?
1.) Music Identification: This screen shows the
Shazam button integrated into the music search
screen of pixoona. By clicking on this button the
service Shazam will start. The user can choose
between the main topics music, movies, apps and
books. Just in the main topic music he will see the
Shazamicon.Heisnowabletosearchmusicinthe
iTunesStoreoridentifyabroadcastedsong.
2.)Pixbox: Theso-calledPixboxisfilledwithasong
and a comment. There are three buttons on the
display that express different services. The first
button shows a shopping cart, which suggests to
the user that he can buy the song e.g. on iTunes.
The center button shows the icon of Spotify,
which means that the user can add the song to a
playlistinSpotify.
If the pixoona user isn’t a Spotify user and there-
fore did not install the mobile application of Spo-
tify on his mobile device, he is being passed to
the Apple App Store to download the application
1.
2.

8. 8
there. The last button shows the YouTube icon
andsuggestswatchingamusicvideoonYouTube.
To this button, no further inquiries were made.
The test persons were only asked what reaction
they expect by clicking on this button. Most of
them would like to watch a music video directly.
It can be said for all displayed buttons, that if the
song isn’t available on iTunes, Spotify or YouTube
the buttons should be hidden. Otherwise, the
user would be confused if no action happens as
soonasheclicksonthebutton.
3.)Managingplaylists:Thisscreenshowstheexist-
ing playlist the user created on Spotify. He logged
in via his Facebook account or his username and
password.
Nowhehastheoptiontoaddthesong,hecansee
at the top of the screen, by clicking on the plus-
icon. A check mark will appear as a confirmation
where once there was the plus-icon. The user has
the options to add the songs to every playlist or
just to some of them and he can also create a new
one.Thecheckmarkatthetopofthescreencon-
firms his input and leads him back to the starting
point,theopenPixbox.
4.) Search feature: At the moment it is only pos-
sible to search for other users in the menu of
pixoona.Thus,itisnotthateasytoretrieveanold-
er photo. With the new created search structure
in the future users are able to search for music,
other users, locations and hashtags. This simpli-
fiestheuseofpixoonaimmensely.
5.) Song feed: With the new song feed the users
can see all uploaded photos, which are enriched
withthisspecialsongheclickedon.
He is also able to buy the song on iTunes, add the
songtoaplaylistonSpotifyorseethemusicvideo
onYouTube.
To sum it up briefly, pixoona will transform music
tagging by integrating these new functions. Exist-
ingsynergiesshouldbeused.
3.
4.
5.

9. 9
about Eva Liebelt:
Eva is a media manager (B.A.) and studied
at Hochschule RheinMain university of
applied science. Before studying she did an
apprenticeship as a management assistant for
digitalandprintmediainapublishinghouse.
about pixoona:
pixoona is a picture tagging tool. Using pixoona
you can link music, videos and products on your
images to share your feeling of the moment. Set a
PIX on your image and choose your rich content.
ShareyourmomentsonFacebookandTwitter.
www.pixoona.com
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The data used in this work were created as part of the bachelor thesis prepared by Eva Liebelt at
HochschuleRheinMain,UniversityofAppliedSiences,Wiesbaden.