Sequence-Based Explainable Hybrid Song Recommendation

Despite advances in deep learning methods for song recommendation, most existing methods do not take advantage of the sequential nature of song content. In addition, there is a lack of methods that can explain their predictions using the content of recommended songs and only a few approaches can handle the item cold start problem. In this work, we propose a hybrid deep learning model that uses collaborative filtering (CF) and deep learning sequence models on the Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) content of songs to provide accurate recommendations, while also being able to generate a relevant, personalized explanation for each recommended song. Compared to state-of-the-art methods, our validation experiments showed that in addition to generating explainable recommendations, our model stood out among the top performers in terms of recommendation accuracy and the ability to handle the item cold start problem. Moreover, validation shows that our personalized explanations capture properties that are in accordance with the user’s preferences.