BandNavi HD 1.3

BandNavi HD offers a methodical approach to discovering new bands and music through the exploration of relationships among musicians.

In the realm of collaborative music creation, it is common to observe changes in band membership, featuring appearances, collaborations, and other connections. Additionally, some musicians maintain relations with numerous bands, whether as supporting members, composers, guest performers, or live collaborators.

This application enables users to trace these relational networks iteratively, facilitating the discovery of new musical acts and compositions.

■ Usage Instructions

1. Upon launching the application, the currently playing music information is displayed in the left "Library" pane on your iPad. You may select different tracks at this stage.
2. Tap the "Start Navi" button to generate a list of musicians involved in the currently playing band. This list appears in the right "Navi" pane.
3. If interested in exploring another band, enter its name in the "Search" tab. Selecting a result will display the associated musicians in the "Navi" pane.
4. Tap on a musician's name within the "Navi" pane to view a list of bands in which they have participated.
5. The relation tracing sequence follows the pattern: Musician > Band > Musician > Band, and so forth, allowing for continuous exploration.
6. The indicator bar adjacent to each band or musician reflects the confidence level of that connection, calculated through an internal proprietary method.
7. To view additional media related to a band, such as videos or music tracks, tap the Option button beside the band name. This allows you to access YouTube clips or search for their music in the iTunes Music Store. If you possess local music files of the band, you can open your device's music library at any time by tapping the relevant button.
8. Tapping the Option button next to a member's name provides information regarding its data sources.
9. The "Link" tab displays a graph illustrating connections for the selected band or musician. Note that large data volumes may result in longer loading times.
10. Within this graph: red nodes denote bands, blue nodes represent musicians, and light-colored nodes indicate terminal points with no further links.
11. The "Number of Links" slider adjusts how many connections are visible for each entity; meanwhile, the "Density" slider modifies the overall appearance of the network graph.

■ Application Overview

• This application relies on a connection to a remote database server; an active network environment is required for operation.
• Band member information is aggregated via web mining techniques from various online sources, which may occasionally introduce inaccuracies. The origin web page for each member can be viewed by tapping the Option button beside their name.
• If member names are unavailable from the server database, data from MusicBrainz (http://musicbrainz.org/) will be used as a fallback.
• BandNavi HD was developed as part of academic research. Additional details about this research can be found at the Music Information Technology Laboratory’s website: http://gttm.jp/hamanaka/en/

■ Disclaimers

• The names of artists displayed on your iPad are transmitted automatically to our server; however, this data is not stored there.
• The accuracy of musician and band information collected through automated web scraping cannot be guaranteed. The reliability of displayed data may vary.
• We do not accept liability for any damages arising from the use of BandNavi HD or its information—including actions such as purchasing music via iTunes or other related activities.