The Customer

Launched in January 2009, SoundOut is a web-based Consumer Insight and Analytics engine that guarantees accurate, objective and rapid insight into any music track sourced directly from thousands of music consumers.

The Problem

Slicethepie uses site users (or Scouts) to review and rate tracks.  SoundOut required a blanket solution to unlock the data held within these written reviews and establish an “aggregate view” of the track based on up to eighty independent text reviews.

The Solution

Clouds

Word clouds are normally created using single documents and are based on word frequencies within that document.  SoundOut requires a different process.

First, SoundOut Clouds are based on a large number of individual reviews, not a single document.  Secondly, the words in the cloud are those which evaluate the track in relation to the music, lyrics performance etc., so a degree of contextual filtering was required before the words could be counted.

CFL have devised a flexible system that allows such evaluation to be automatically identified using a list of music terms drawn from a large sample of reviews; what scouts talk about, in other words.  SoundOut can thereby ensure that the words that form the clouds are relevant and will assist them in getting a picture of what the Scouts think about any particular track.

Sentiment

Using sentiment analysis the CFL Software is able to reveal the “affect” a track had on the listener - the resultant report shows how the track affected the Scout rather than simply expressing whether they liked it or not.

CFL Software was able to provide a categorised summary both of the words that appear in the cloud, allocated to levels of negative, positive and very positive feeling and a categorised listing of what produced those feelings.

The results are presented in graphical format as a bar chart, with the categories on the vertical axis and the level of enthusiasm on the horizontal.

The Benefits

• Full automation and integration of the Computational Linguistic process – no human intervention required in the processing of data
• Additional value embedded within the textual reviews has been unlocked
• Highly market focussed – CFL Software has been able to identify the elements of each review that are important to music professionals.
• Qualitative analysis of language provides balance to the quantitative statistical analysis in the rest of the SoundOut report