Community Structure in Audio Clip Sharing

This paper describes the application of several network analysis techniques to the networks of users in audio clip sharing sites. Two kinds of networks are described: one based on the file downloading activity, and the other based on semantic similarity in the use of free tags to annotate sounds. The properties of these networks as well as their community structure are analyzed using data from Free sound, a very popular audio clip sharing site. Both are characterized as "small worlds". The component structure of the file downloading network provides a general overview of the user community which resembles the structure of the world wide web. On the other hand the analysis of the community structure of the semantic network using modularity optimization appears to be a good way to identify the different themes in the site.