Music Recommendation System Using Artificial Neural Networks

Abstract

Music streaming platforms have transformed how users discover music, but existingrecommendationsystemsface limitations in capturing nuanced user preferences. This paper presents a music recommendation system utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) to analyze song features like tempo, energy, and danceability. Spotify’s API is employedtoextracttheseattributes,whichareusedtotraintheAutoencoder.Personalizedplaylistsaregenerated by incorporating both audio features and user preferences. The system intends to make music recommendations more relevant and enjoyable by leveraging advanced machine learning techniques.

Introduction

Project Overview

The project aims to develop a personalized music recommendation system that moves beyond traditional approaches like collaborative filtering. Instead, it integrates audio feature analysis with user behavior, using data from Spotify’s API (e.g., tempo, energy, danceability).

An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) is trained to understand the relationship between these musical features and user preferences, offering recommendations that are more intuitive, personalized, and adaptive to evolving tastes.

Objectives

• Overcome limitations of traditional systems (e.g., cold start, lack of diversity).

• Use rich, track-level audio data to improve recommendation relevance.

• Enhance music discovery and user satisfaction.

Literature Review Summary

1. Traditional Approaches

• Collaborative Filtering (CF): Based on user-user/item-item similarity; suffers from cold-start and data sparsity.

• Content-Based Filtering: Uses song metadata/audio features; good for similarity but lacks diversity and personalization.

2. Hybrid Models

• Combine CF and content-based techniques.

• Help address cold start and user drift.

• Improve accuracy and diversity of recommendations.

3. Deep Learning Techniques

• Neural Networks (CNNs, RNNs, LSTMs, GRUs): Model complex, nonlinear patterns in user preferences.

• Transformer Models (BERT-based): Handle long-term user behavior dependencies effectively.

4. Advanced Methods

• Latent Factor Models: Use matrix factorization to uncover hidden attributes of users and tracks.

• Reinforcement Learning (RL): Enables real-time adaptive recommendations by learning from user interactions.

• Session-Based Recommendations: Use RNNs to suggest music based on short-term, sequential behavior.

5. Novel Research Directions

• Natural Language Processing (NLP) in playlist modeling.

• Feature-Based Matrix Factorization: Adds interpretability by incorporating audio characteristics like genre or tempo.

• Multi-Task Learning: Uses GRUs to handle both user preferences and contextual information.

• Evaluation Frameworks: Recent work emphasizes standardized benchmarks for fair comparison of systems.

Key Findings

• Basic Models (CF & content-based) are foundational but limited.

• Hybrid Models and deep learning (e.g., ANN, RNN, Transformer) significantly enhance personalization.

• Reinforcement and sequential learning allow dynamic adaptation to changing user preferences.

• Feature-rich systems close the gap between objective track attributes and subjective user tastes.

Conclusion

This project successfully develops a music recommendation system that combines audio feature analysis with user preferences. The integration of Spotify’s API allows seamless playlist creation. While the current model demonstrateseffectiveperformancein reconstructing and clustering song features for recommendation purposes, several enhancements could furtherimproveitsaccuracy,efficiency,andadaptability: A. Latent Space Optimization Further refinement of the latent space could improve the quality of recommendations. Techniquessuchasregularizationor fine-tuning the dimensionality of the latent space may enhance the clustering of similar songs, potentially reducing the MSE and increasing Cosine Similarity even further. Experimenting with different dimensional reduction methods or exploring variational autoencoders (VAEs) could also bevaluable for generating a more compact yet expressive representation. B. User Feedback Integration Adding a feedback loop where users canrate or indicate preferences for recommended songs couldguidecontinuous model improvement. By leveraging this feedback to fine-tune the latent space or adjust recommendation algorithms, the modelcouldevolvebasedonactualuser satisfaction, leading to an increasingly relevant recommendation experience.

References

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Copyright

Copyright © 2025 Thirumahal R, Lishanth PSS, Ranjith RK, Saam Denis S, Umesh Gupta, Shashi Prakash. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.