Title: Prospective GSoC 2026 Contributor - Manaswini Kalyankar
Message Body:
Application Template
Project Title: ListenBrainz: Enhancing Recommendation Engines with Machine Learning
Proposed Project: My project aims to enhance the ListenBrainz recommendation system by applying Deep Learning techniques. Having developed a Netflix Recommendation System using TensorFlow, I want to bring similar collaborative and content-based filtering logic to ListenBrainz. I plan to work on optimizing the data pipelines (Python/SQL) that feed the recommendation models to ensure they can handle the high volume of “listens” efficiently.
Public Profiles:
Programming Precedents:
-
Netflix Recommendation System: I developed a deep learning model using TensorFlow on a real Netflix dataset (titles, languages, viewing hours). I built the model to answer “If someone liked X, what else might they enjoy?”—a logic I want to apply to music discovery in ListenBrainz.
-
Loan Prediction System: I built a Python-based ML model to predict loan eligibility. This project gave me strong experience in data preprocessing, feature engineering, and handling imbalanced datasets using Pandas and Scikit-Learn.
Summer Commitment: I do not have a job or university studies during the summer. I am committed to working on GSoC 40 hours per week as my primary focus.
Other Information
Computer Setup: I have a Laptop with 8GB RAM and a stable internet connection available for the duration of the project.
When did you start programming? I started programming 2 years ago, with a primary focus on Python, SQL, and Machine Learning.
What type of music do you listen to? (MBIDs): I am a fan of diverse genres. Here are some examples of my favorite artists from MusicBrainz:
-
The Weeknd:
c8b03190-a971-4682-93c6-44446171ea3c -
Taylor Swift:
06631b1c-d039-4ce6-bddf-3f002da77cc5 -
Radiohead:
2ed432c1-c13c-461d-8aab-dd8ebac9ad41
What aspects of ListenBrainz interest you most? I am fascinated by how ListenBrainz uses open data to build personalized music experiences. I am particularly interested in the Collaborative Filtering aspect of recommendations and how SQL optimization can speed up data retrieval for these models.
Have you contributed to other Open Source projects? This is my first time participating in GSoC. I am currently exploring the listenbrainz-server repository and am eager to fix a “good-first-bug” to prove my technical capabilities to the community.
Application Template
We require very detailed proposals and we insist that you work with our community to improve your application. Tell us everything about your proposed project. Include diagrams to help us understand your proposal. If you propose anything that requires a database schema you need to show us the proposed schema. The same applies to UI changes/additions – we need to see mock-ups. If you provide no mock-ups, schemas or supporting diagrams, you won’t be accepted.
As part of applying for SoC we require that you take your idea and propose it to the MetaBrainz developer community. Please propose the idea and then respond to any questions that may arise. Improve your proposal based on the feedback you receive from the community. If you cannot get the community to support your idea your chances for getting your proposal accepted are very slim. Finally, in order to have your GSoC application be accepted by MetaBrainz you MUST interact with your potential mentor and submit one bug fix or new feature that is related to your proposal. You will need to create a schedule of how you plan to spend your time. A weekly breakdown with a few milestones is best.
Do you have Github, Twitter or any other public profiles you think we might find interesting?
Have you contributed to other Open Source projects or created projects on your own? If so, which projects and can we see some of your code?
Do you plan to have a job or study during the summer in conjunction with Summer of Code?
Other Information
There is other information we’d love to know about you – please consider adding this to your application:
- Tell us about the computer(s) you have available for working on your SoC project!
- When did you first start programming?
- What type of music do you listen to? (Please list a series of MBIDs as examples.)
- If applying for a BookBrainz project: what type of books do you read? (Please list a series of BBIDs as examples. (And feel free to also list music you listen to!))
- What aspects of the project you’re applying for (e.g., MusicBrainz, AcousticBrainz, etc.) interest you the most?
- Have you ever used MusicBrainz to tag your files?
- Have you contributed to other Open Source projects? If so, which projects and can we see some of your code?
- If you have not contributed to open source projects, do you have other code we can look at?
- What sorts of programming projects have you done on your own time?
- How much time do you have available, and how would you plan to use it?
