Conclusion

Congratulations! You’ve completed the book, working through all the code examples and content we’ve prepared!

In Chapter 2, we provided a comprehensive overview of language models, examining their key components from tokenizers to training methodologies and conditioning methods. We also investigated the challenges that arise when using language modeling as a framework and explored how these challenges are currently being addressed in NLP and multimodal domains.

In Chapter 3, we introduced Music Description as a novel MIR task. We discussed how the abstractness and specificity of music description, combined with the flexibility of language, create unique advantages for music and language models. This chapter traced the evolution of methodologies from classification models to encoder-decoder architectures and audio LLMs, demonstrating how the field has leveraged music description in increasingly sophisticated ways.

In Chapter 4, we focused on traditional Music Retrieval approaches and how audio-text joint embedding helps overcome their limitations. We explored the advantages and disadvantages of multimodal metric learning using triplet and contrastive losses, and examined how advances in text encoders have enhanced joint embedding capabilities. The chapter concluded by analyzing the current limitations of joint embedding models and exploring the possibilities of conversational music retrieval.

In Chapter 5, we reviewed two prominent text-to-music generation methods: discrete token-based language models and diffusion-based generative models operating in continuous space. We also conducted an in-depth discussion about the importance of evaluation and current challenges in evaluation methodologies.

We’re delighted that you’ve studied these topics with us. Have you achieved your learning goals? Were your questions answered? We hope we’ve succeeded in our aims: making these complex topics more accessible to newcomers, providing practical solutions for data challenges, and bridging the gap between academic research and practical applications. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions or feedback.

As a sweet dessert, we’ve prepared two exciting future directions in the following pages. Don’t miss these delightful treats!

Best wishes,

SeungHeon, Ilaria, Zachary, JongWook, Ke