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How is the process of associating music and moods conducted?

Hi. I'm a PhD student, and I'm using AllMusic's moods in my research. Therefore, I would like to know if there is more information about how adjectives are/were defined and how the association between a song and the respective moods is conducted. I've already researched and the most I found was information that the initial process was carried out by editors and specialists. Are there any pages that describe this process or any research? Thank you very much!

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I've very rarely filtered themes/moods, except for one of my musical curiosities about political songs after the 2016 U.S. elections.  When I filter for 2017 & after and ( Political Folk or Protest Songs ) and Main Albums, there are very few results.  But filtering for 2017 & after and Main Albums and ( Politics/Society or Protest ) finds 22 pages of results.

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My guess is that over the decades, different editors may gravitate toward different ways of describing the music.

Hi Paulo,

Unfortunately there aren't really white papers or documentation on the process of assigning moods (and styles and themes and genres) to different pieces of music in our system.

The editorial staff came up with an initial lexicon of adjectives that describe the sound and feel of a song, album, or overall body of work. Once this set of terms was established, the music editors assign the words that they feel are represented in the music and then apply them with different weights to the song, album, or artist.

The moods are then displayed on the website in order of weight, so a heavy metal album which is mostly aggressive but a little bit sentimental will list Aggressive near the top of the list, and then Sentimental closer to the bottom of the list.

There aren't really rock-solid rules when an editor is applying moods to a piece of music. 
 
It may be the vibe of the song, it may be something in the lyrics, or it may just be a feeling the writer feels that the music evokes.
 
It is more of an interpretation of the music than anything that can be firmly defined with rules.

Hope this helps, and we'd love to read your research once it is completed.

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