LabelBuddy: An Open Source Music and Audio Language Annotation Tagging Tool Using AI Assistance

Ioannis Prokopiou, Ioannis Sina, Agisilaos Kounelis, Pantelis Vikatos, Themos Stafylakis


Abstract
The advancement of Machine learning (ML), Large Audio Language Models (LALMs), and autonomous AI agents in Music Information Retrieval (MIR) necessitates a shift from static tagging to rich, human-aligned representation learning. However, the scarcity of open-source infrastructure capable of capturing the subjective nuances of audio annotation remains a critical bottleneck. This paper introduces LabelBuddy, an open-source collaborative auto-tagging audio annotation tool designed to bridge the gap between human intent and machine understanding. Unlike static tools, it decouples the interface from inference via containerized backends, allowing users to plug in custom models for AI-assisted pre-annotation. We describe the system architecture, which supports multi-user consensus, containerized model isolation, and a roadmap for extending agents and LALMs. Code available at https://github.com/GiannisProkopiou/gsoc2022-Label-buddy.
Anthology ID:
2026.nlp4musa-1.2
Volume:
Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on NLP for Music and Audio (NLP4MusA 2026)
Month:
March
Year:
2026
Address:
Rabat, Morocco
Editors:
Elena V. Epure, Sergio Oramas, SeungHeon Doh, Pedro Ramoneda, Anna Kruspe, Mohamed Sordo
Venues:
NLP4MusA | WS
SIG:
Publisher:
Association for Computational Linguistics
Note:
Pages:
7–12
Language:
URL:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlp4musa-1.2/
DOI:
Bibkey:
Cite (ACL):
Ioannis Prokopiou, Ioannis Sina, Agisilaos Kounelis, Pantelis Vikatos, and Themos Stafylakis. 2026. LabelBuddy: An Open Source Music and Audio Language Annotation Tagging Tool Using AI Assistance. In Proceedings of the 4th Workshop on NLP for Music and Audio (NLP4MusA 2026), pages 7–12, Rabat, Morocco. Association for Computational Linguistics.
Cite (Informal):
LabelBuddy: An Open Source Music and Audio Language Annotation Tagging Tool Using AI Assistance (Prokopiou et al., NLP4MusA 2026)
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PDF:
https://aclanthology.org/2026.nlp4musa-1.2.pdf