In “Music Genre Classification: A Review of Deep-Learning and Traditional

Machine-Learning Approaches” the authors (Ndiatenda Ndou, Ritesh Ajoodha and Ashwini
Jadhav) set out to compare the performance of deep-learning and machine-learning models
in music genre classification. They divided the study into three parts, later called phases. In
phases “A” and “B” classification was done with traditional machine learning classifiers but
with different inputs. Phase C provided the deep-learning approach with more samples but
shorter music excerpts. The authors explain the methodology behind using AI to classify
music genres and then show the actual results of the experiments. The study used a publicly
available dataset “GTZAN”, which contains a thousand thirty-second music excerpts
categorized into ten genres of music. The authors identified four categories of features that
correlated with music genres. The data had to be optimized to be suitable for the
classification task. To put it briefly, optimization included reducing data size while keeping all
the musical aspects of the piece. In this study, the following machine-learning models were
implemented: k-Nearest Neighbors, Linear Logistic Regression, Multilayer Perceptron,
Random Forests trees, and Support Vector Machines. In the deep-learning approach, the
authors used a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) constructed using Keras library, where
the last CNN layer outputs one of ten music genres. Every phase turned out to have close
results above 80% accuracy achieved with different learning models. Results were
presented in three tables containing accuracy, training time and parameters used by every
classifier. In Phase “A” linear logistic regression proved to be the best, with 81% accuracy
but the longest training time. In phase “B” the best classification provided support vector
machines with 80.80% accuracy using 0.3s for training time. Finally, phase C achieved
92.69% accuracy with the k-nearest neighbors algorithm with only 78 milliseconds of training
time. The worst accuracy was performed with the Naive Bayes algorithm, with only
approximately 54% accuracy in phases “A” and “B”. Lastly, authors discussed the results of
the CNN with the highest accuracy of 72.4%, which was much lower than the traditional
machine learning models. However, the authors note that the reliability of learning models is
dependent on the quality of the dataset provided. And yet, with only 1000 samples of
different music genres, the author concludes that automatic classification of music genres is
possible and that traditional machine learning models are more suitable for this task. ● title
of article: “Music Genre Classification: A Review of Deep-Learning and Traditional
Machine-Learning Approaches” ● word count: 394 ● link to article:
https://riteshajoodha.co.za/sitepad-data/uploads/2021/04/Ndou.pdf