Abstract: Multimedia item characteristics are used in domains, such as recommender systems and information retrieval. In this work we distinguish two main groups of item characteristics: (i) item-centric item characteristic (ICIC) and (ii) user-centric item characteristic (UCIC). With the term ICIC we denote a characteristic of an item that (a) has roots in the item and (b) has the same value for all users, for example, the duration of a song. With the term UCIC, we denote a characteristic of an item that (a) has roots in the perception of the user from an item characteristic and (b) exhibits some variance across different users, for example, the perceived emotion of a song. We survey recent work that covers various types of UCIC, acquisition methods of UCIC, and domain usage of UCIC. We identify gaps in the research and provide guidelines for future work.
