Exploring internet radio across the globe with the MIRAGE online dashboard
Ngan V. T. Nguyen, Elizabeth A. M. Acosta, Tommy Dang, David R. W. Sears
TL;DR
The paper introduces the MIRAGE online dashboard and MIRAGE-MetaCorpus, a global, openly accessible metadata repository for 1 million events across 10,000 internet radio stations, designed to counter geographic biases in music information retrieval research. It describes a three-stage data collection pipeline (Station/Event collection, Station review, and Event parsing) that aggregates 100 variables from multiple sources, with a reliability filter defined by a threshold of $0.90$ on a $0$–$1$ scale. The dashboard uses a Node.js/MongoDB/React stack to provide interactive Earth-view, maps, event details, and customizable visualizations, with export options in URL, CSV, PNG, and SVG, and links to streaming services for listening. The work emphasizes cross-cultural research utility, data interoperability, and ethical considerations around metadata accuracy and copyright, while outlining planned updates, usability studies, and future enhancements. Overall, MIRAGE offers a scalable, exportable platform to study global radio-derived music data and to develop cross-cultural MIR applications grounded in diverse musical ecosystems.
Abstract
This study presents the Music Informatics for Radio Across the GlobE (MIRAGE) online dashboard, which allows users to access, interact with, and export metadata (e.g., artist name, track title) and musicological features (e.g., instrument list, voice type, key/mode) for 1 million events streaming on 10,000 internet radio stations across the globe. Users can search for stations or events according to several criteria, display, analyze, and listen to the selected station/event lists using interactive visualizations that include embedded links to streaming services, and finally export relevant metadata and visualizations for further study.