The cold start problem for new users or items is a great challenge for recommender systems. New items can be positioned within the existing items using a similarity metric to estimate their ratings. However, the calculation of similarity varies by domain and available resources. In this paper, we propose a content-based music recommender system which is based on a set of attributes derived from psychological studies of music preference. These five attributes, namely, Mellow, Unpretentious, Sophisticated, Intense and Contemporary (emph{MUSIC}), better describe the underlying factors of music preference compared to music genre. Using 249 songs and hundreds of ratings and attribute scores, we first develop an acoustic content-based attribute detection using auditory modulation features and a regression by sparse representation. We then use the estimated attributes in a cold start recommendation scenario. The proposed content-based recommendation significantly outperforms genre-based and user-based recommendation based on the root-mean-square error. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of these attributes in music preference estimation. Such methods will increase the chance of less popular but interesting songs in the long tail to be listened to.
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