Analysis of Music Tagging and Listening Patterns: Do Tags Really Function as Retrieval Aids?

In collaborative tagging systems, it is generally assumed that users assign tags to facilitate retrieval of content at a later time. There is, however, little behavioral evidence that tags actually serve this purpose. Using a large-scale dataset from the social music website Last.fm, we explore how patterns of music tagging and subsequent listening interact to determine if there exist measurable signals of tags functioning as retrieval aids. Specifically, we describe our methods for testing if the assignment of a tag tends to lead to an increase in listening behavior. Results suggest that tagging, on average, leads to only very small increases in listening rates, and overall the data do not support the assumption that tags generally serve as retrieval aids.