• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, March 2, 2021

Music can elicit certain moods or reflect listeners’ moods, so a music-oriented company like Vevo might be able to glean listeners receptivity from the music they choose. Or so the theory goes.

Eyal Golshani, Vevo’s senior director, data science, set out to prove the power of music with Moods, through which advertisers can align their creative with music videos that convey certain moods, such as fun, heartfelt, impassioned or empowering.

This is an edited version of my conversation with Golshani.

Charlene Weisler:What are the essential elements of Moods?

Eyal Golshani: We know that we turn to music videos to soundtrack a particular frame of mind or moment at a given point.

From a technical perspective, there are two key elements in determining a mood: positivity (from sad to happy) and energy (from low to high energy). Each element has a range, so we can then create multiple combinations that each capture the varying degrees of these two elements.

Weisler: What made you think of this?

Golshani: As we enter a cookie-free world, the industry overall is moving towards contextual targeting. Naturally, we wanted to provide advertisers with a proprietary option to do the same when it comes to advertising alongside music videos.

Additionally, we always want to make sure our content is relevant and engaging for each of the billions of music fans that watch Vevo. With Moods, we are not only expanding our advertising offerings, but also adding an additional dimension to the way we catalog our library, which helps us curate programming.

Weisler: What is the impact for advertisers matching their ad mood to the music?

Golshani: Ultimately, congruence between advertisements and content significantly increases the likeliness of viewers remembering the ad. Additionally, advertisers can select content that matches a brand’s image and that resonates with their target demographic.

Beyond demographics and volume, it’s highly important that a brand can reach their audience in a way that’s consistent with their values and identity as a company or support the theme of a particular campaign.

Weisler: What data is used, and what is the methodology?

Golshani: Musixmatch provides us with data on the energy levels and positivity of the songs themselves. The energy and positivity values are collected from Musixmatch's proprietary crowdsourcing method -- from their community of more than 50 million music curators and fans  -- which is then used to train an AI/ML model.

Vevo then analyzes the energy and positivity values and clusters them together to find groups of similar videos. This allows us to figure out how videos sit in relation to each other -- as well as artists or genres -- based on the way they make our listeners feel.

Weisler: How is AI involved?

Golshani: Musixmatch’s AI team has developed a cutting-edge system to identify the general mood of a song, called Music Emotion Recognition (MER), which quantifies the positivity and energy of the song. On top of Musixmatch’s MER, Vevo’s clustering model takes the inputs from MER and finds combinations that correspond to mood types.

Weisler: Is it possible to match the moods from music video to viewer? How can you tell their mood?

Golshani: We do not collect individual viewer data. Moods works the other way around, by examining the music and lyrics themselves, which is a nonintrusive approach.

Weisler: Are there differences in music mood by country?

Golshani: Local events and developments can impact viewing behavior, so we can see differences by market. Again, interactions with music videos tend to occur collectively, so we can identify trends at scale.

When Joe Biden was announced the winner of the presidential election on Nov. 7, for example, we saw a spike in viewership around “fun” and “impassioned” music videos as people celebrated in the US.

Weisler: Is there a case study you could share?

Golshani: In addition to trends related to the presidential election, we saw some interesting trends around the Georgia runoffs and the Capitol insurrection.

For example, on Election Day, we saw an increase in viewership of impassioned music videos, such as The Black Eyed Peas’ “Where Is The Love?” and John Mayer’s “Waiting On the World to Change.”

The next day, however, we saw a decrease in impassioned music videos, as votes were still being counted and there was lingering uncertainty. Instead, people began tuning to more heartfelt music videos in anticipation, such as Ray Charles’ “Georgia On My Mind” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia.” Unsurprisingly, these songs also relate to Georgia and Pennsylvania, which were going through recounts at the time.

In January, we saw similar trends around the Georgia run-off elections. Heartfelt music videos, such as Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come,” saw increasing viewership. Once the Georgia election was decided, we saw a spike in fun music videos, including Ludacris’ “Georgia” and Childish Gambino’s “This Is America.” The insurrection in DC right after drove steady viewership of impassioned music videos, such as Michael Jackson’s “Scream” and No Doubt’s “Just a Girl.”

Weisler: What are your next steps for Moods?

Golshani: We are expanding our Moods product in a few ways.

Firstly, we are growing the number of music videos being tagged with a mood, as well as developing other types of moods.

Secondly, we are looking to expand Moods to also include Spanish language content.

Lastly, we are expanding our analysis from lyrics and audio to also include the visual components of music videos. By breaking these components down, we will be able to better understand the complexities of music videos and provide a truly advanced and nuanced experience.