Abstract:
Systems and methods are disclosed for creating a list of media items that are similar to an input mediaset comprising at lease one input media item, optionally together with at least one input parameter that constrains the output in scope or number of items. Media items include music, videos, pictures and other such items that can be associated or grouped together by a human into a list or mediaset. The mediaset is formed by a human applying virtually any objective and/or subjective criteria. Those criteria need not be made explicit; a relation among the selected items is implicit in the list per se. Alternatively, objective criteria such as metadata can be used.

Description:
COPYRIGHT NOTICE  
       [0001]     ©2005 MusicStrands, Inc. A portion of the disclosure of this patent document contains material that is subject to copyright protection. The copyright owner has no objection to the facsimile reproduction by anyone of the patent document or the patent disclosure, as it appears in the Patent and Trademark Office patent file or records, but otherwise reserves all copyright rights whatsoever. 37 CFR § 1.71(d).  
       TECHNICAL FIELD  
       [0002]     The present invention relates generally to the field of data processing. More specifically, the present invention relates to techniques for identifying media items having characteristics in common with an input set of media items.  
       BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION  
       [0003]     With the explosion of digital music and digital video, consumers are faced with more and more options of media that they can purchase and/or access. Consumers are finding themselves overwhelmed with the masses of options of digital media from which they can pick.  
         [0004]     As the cost of digital storage continues to drop, online vendors of media, particularly music, are finding that the incremental cost of increasing the number of digital media in their inventory is rapidly dropping. Thus online vendors are offering more and more content—expanding both the diversity of the content, but also the age and quantity of historical releases available. Combine this with the truly global nature of the internet, and the end result is a completely bewildering array of media that is immediately available for purchase and playing. New systems and methods are needed to enable consumers to search and explore this space, limiting the decision space to a size with which consumers are comfortable making decisions.  
         [0005]     Current technologies and approaches for achieving the goal of limiting the space of options down to manageable sizes are either undesirable or incomplete. In one class of approaches, automatic content analysis (such as signal analysis for music) is used to extract features of the media, then correlate user tastes with those features; this approach is limited because the features on which user tastes are really based are often much more complex than can be inferred by a computer program.  
         [0006]     In another class of approaches, a user&#39;s preferences are solicited on human defined metadata characteristics, and related media that matches those metadata characteristics that the user identifies with the most are selected. This approach fails because a) users&#39; tastes are generally more complex then the rigid metadata allows, and b) one must first map all of the media onto values of the metadata characteristics, an expensive and time-consuming process.  
         [0007]     Accordingly, there is a need for improved methods and systems for generating media recommendations for users that is cost-effective and scalable, and has the ability to capture complex tastes and adapt to new evolutions in taste.  
       SUMMARY  
       [0008]     The recent evolution of technology for distributing and playing digital media has created a large population of end consumers using software for managing and playing digital media. Almost every media player provides the ability to create and store “sets”, which allow users to create named lists of “related” media items. Thus, if we consider the collection of all sets stored on the media players of all those users of digital media players, we have an impressive collection of knowledge that can be used to identify media items that are related to each other.  
         [0009]     Mediasets are created by humans to group together media items that they feel are related. This is often a somewhat subjective judgment. Importantly, we commonly have no explicit information regarding what exactly the items have in common—only knowledge that there is some relatedness between items in the mediaset. An important aspect of the present invention is a method for leveraging those judgments to generate sets of related media items, without having to actually discover or articulate the specific characteristics that users applied in creating their own mediasets. This invention exploits information implicit in mediaset data.  
         [0010]     One aspect of the present invention provides a system and methods for generating a related set of media items when given a query set of related media items, where all of the items in the query set have been determined by some human to be related in some way. The system creates a new set of media items by merging existing sets of media items, where each of those sets contains items related to each other, and each of those sets shares some similarity with the items in the query set. Embodiments of the invention can be used advantageously in networked and standalone applications.  
         [0011]     Additional aspects and advantages will be apparent from the following detailed description of preferred embodiments, which proceeds with reference to the accompanying drawings. 
     
    
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS  
       [0012]      FIG. 1  is a conceptual diagram of a method of generating a list of media items, responsive to an input mediaset, in accordance with one embodiment of the invention.  
         [0013]      FIG. 2  is a block diagram of principle system components and communication paths among them in accordance with one embodiment of the invention.  
         [0014]      FIG. 3  is a flowchart illustrating a method of generating an output set of media items, responsive to an input mediaset, in accordance with an embodiment of the invention.  
         [0015]      FIG. 4  is a networking/communications diagram illustrating selected applications of embodiments of the invention. 
     
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS  
       [0016]     Reference is now made to the figures in which like reference numerals refer to like elements. For clarity, the first digit of a reference numeral indicates the figure number in which the corresponding element is first used.  
         [0017]     In the following description, certain specific details of programming, software modules, user selections, network transactions, database queries, database structures, etc., are provided for a thorough understanding of the embodiments of the invention. However, those skilled in the art will recognize that the invention can be practiced without one or more of the specific details, or with other methods, components, materials, etc.  
         [0018]     In some cases, well-known structures, materials, or operations are not shown or described in detail in order to avoid obscuring aspects of the invention. Furthermore, the described features, structures, or characteristics may be combined in any suitable manner in one or more embodiments. In general, the methodologies of the present invention are advantageously carried out using one or more digital processors, for example the types of microprocessors that are commonly found in PC&#39;s, laptops, PDA&#39;s and all manner of desktop or portable electronic appliances.  
         [0019]      FIG. 1  is a conceptual diagram of one embodiment of a method of the present invention. In  FIG. 1 , an input mediaset ( 101 ) is a set of descriptors of media items. (We use “input mediaset” and “query mediaset” interchangeably.)  
         [0020]     In the Similarity Computation Step ( 103 ), the input mediaset ( 101 ) is compared with a database of previously collected mediasets, and a similarity weight is computed between the input mediaset ( 101 ), and each of the individual mediasets from the database ( 102 ). In the Merge Step ( 104 ), the mediasets from the database ( 102 ) with the highest similarity (similarity weight values) relative to the Input Mediaset are merged into a single large list of media items ( 105 ), each media item in the list ( 105 ) having a weight value associated with it. The weight values are intended to reflect the relatedness of each associated media item to the Input mediaset. The entire list ( 105 ) of media items is sorted by the weight values. In the final selection step ( 106 ), a desired number of items are selected from the top of list  105 , and output in an output list ( 107 ).  
         [0021]     A mediaset is a set of media items (or descriptors of media items), where the items in the set have been determined by a human to be related in some fashion or to have some characteristics in common. Media items may be audio, video, images, or other such types of media. Generally the mediaset will contain descriptors (pointers or identifiers) of the item, rather than digital representations the media items themselves, because media such as music or video can be very large.  
         [0022]     A common example of a mediaset is a manually constructed music playlist, where a human has placed songs together in the playlist, because they feel that those songs belong together for some reason. The power of mediasets is that the relatedness function is not restricted to dimensions on which we have metadata (e.g. name, artist, genre, etc). Often we as humans are able to indicate that a set of movies, music, etc “feel” similar to us, without being able to say why. Note that items in a mediaset may share common metadata values—a mediaset could also be created by a human who chooses media items based on having particular values of predefined metadata characteristics (such as artist, genre).  
         [0023]     Each element in the mediaset represents a single media item in the perspective of the human who created the mediaset. However, different people may have different perspectives about what constitutes a single media item. In the music domain, for example, you may have two different versions of the same song done by an artist—one live and one in the studio. The similarity computation step can be configured to match at different levels of abstraction—for example, the system can be configured to return related tracks or to return related songs. Thus, it may be necessary in some embodiments to map from a specified media item in the Input Mediaset to a more general description of an item, such as in music, mapping from a track (a specific recording) to a song (which could represent all recordings of a particular song by an artist). A further abstraction would map the song title to all recordings of that song title by all artists.  
         [0024]     An “item” in a mediaset may be specified as a unique identifier (unique to the implementation of the invention) for a media item, or it may comprise a set of metadata characteristics and associated values that the creator of the mediaset believes identify a unique media item. Examples of specifications of items in a mediaset of music might be (“trackid=123129”) or (“title=Brand New Day”, “artist=Sting”). In the first case, the person creating the mediaset probably selected the song from a list of songs in a user interface, and in the case of the second example, the person creating the mediaset may not realize that there could be as many as ten different recordings of “Brand New Day” by Sting.  
         [0025]     As an example of an interaction with one embodiment of the invention for music, an Input Mediaset might be supplied with: 
        Beatles—Ticket to Ride     Elton John—Tiny Dancer     Fleetwood Mac—Go Your Own Way 
 
 . . . and the system might output the following results: 
    Bob Dylan—Like a Rolling Stone     Stevie Wonder—Isn&#39;t She Lovely     Eagles—Hotel California     Talking Heads—Burning Down the House     Pink Floyd—Wish You Were Here     U2—With or Without You     Van Morrison—Brown-Eyed Girl        
 
       Components of a Presently Preferred Embodiment  
       [0036]     Referring now to  FIG. 2 , the principle components of one embodiment of the invention and their interactions are shown in a block diagram. In this implementation, which is merely illustrative, a Mediaset Processing System ( 202 ) is responsible for storing large numbers of mediasets, and indexing those mediasets to enable rapid retrieval of mediasets by the Query Processing System ( 201 ). Mediasets are fed into the Mediaset Processing System from two sources. The first source are Input Mediasets ( 101 ), which are stored during or after the query processing has happened. Secondarily, mediasets may be fed directly into the Mediaset Processing System from other external sources ( 205 ), often in an offline batch mode. Through the first source, the size of the mediaset database grows with every query to the invention. With each growth, the capability of the invention increases.  
         [0037]     The Query Processing System ( 201 ) receives an Input Mediaset ( 101  in  FIG. 1 ), see path “A”, and an optional set of Query Parameters ( 207 ), path “B”. The query parameters can include, by way of example and not limitation, a desired result (output) set size, a flag to request that the result list be cached for future queries, and lists of metadata characteristics for further limiting the result sets.  
         [0038]     The Query Processing System matches each entry in the Input Mediaset onto a unique media item recognized by the Mediaset Processing System, path “C”. If the specification of the media item in the Input Mediaset could potentially map to multiple media items recognized by the Mediaset Processing System, then the Query Processing System either picks the best matching item (by some predefined criteria) or causes the query to fail—perhaps enabling a user interface to request clarification from the user. See  FIG. 3  described below. The choice of action may optionally be configured by the Query Parameters.  
         [0039]     Optionally (potentially configured by the Query Parameters), the Query Processing System ( 210 ) may map all media items in the Input Mediaset to a similar level of abstraction. For example, in the music domain, references to specific recordings may be mapped to references to songs (which may represent all recordings of a song).  
         [0040]     The Query Processing System retrieves a list of mediasets, path “D”, from the Mediaset Processing System ( 202 ) that each have at least one media item in common with the Input Mediaset. The Query Processing System may optionally (potentially specified by the Query Parameters) check with the Selection Processing System ( 204 ), path “E”, to see if the Input Mediaset is identical to a recent Input Mediaset for which the Selection Processing System has memorized the result (see description of the Selection Processing System below for more details). If the result of the query is not already known by the Selection Processing System, then the Input Mediaset, the Query Parameters, and the list of retrieved mediasets are passed to the Merge Processing System ( 203 ), path “F”.  
         [0041]     The Merge Processing System ( 203 ) is responsible for merging the list of retrieved mediasets into a single ranked list of media items, such that higher ranked items are more likely to be related to the items in the Input Mediaset. The operation of the merging may be altered by the values of the Query Parameters. The ranked list consists of the union of all retrieved mediasets, ordered by a computed item similarity weight. The computation of the item weight is described in more detailed in the Procedural Description of the Merge Processing section below.  
         [0042]     The ranked list of media items, the Input Mediaset, and the Query Parameters are transmitted to the Selection Processing System ( 204 ) (see paths “E” and “G”), which is responsible for selecting a subset of the ranked list appropriate for the current context of the application using the invention. For example, if the system is being used to present results in a web-based user interface, then the top ten items (or some other predetermined number) might be selected from the ranked list. Additionally for a web-based user interface, there might be a need to display the 11th through 20th items in the ranked list. See output ranked list ( 206 ).  
         [0043]     The Selection Processing System ( 204 ) may optionally limit the selected items to items that match metadata characteristics optionally specified by the Query Parameters ( 207 ). For example, the Query Parameters may specify that the selected items should be limited to music of the “Classical” genre, or music from a particular country, or music from date range.  
         [0044]     The Selection Processing System ( 204 ) may optionally keep a memory of ranked lists recently generated by the Merge Processing System (perhaps configured by the Query Parameters), to support repeated selection from the same ranked list (such as might be needed when displaying consecutive pages of search results on a user interface). This memory ensures that the consecutive selections from the same query are consistent even if the database of mediasets change. On the other hand, if novelty is more important than consistency, the Selection Processing System may also incorporate a randomization factor into the selection, such that items towards the top of the ranking are more likely to be selected, but it is unlikely that exactly the top will be selected and unlikely that the same items will be selected if the same query is presented multiple times. The selected items are then outputted.  
         [0045]     The foregoing methodologies are further illustrated in the flow chart of  FIG. 3 . Briefly, beginning at  300 , the process calls for receiving an input mediaset  302 , which optionally can include parameters as discussed above. Parameters are checked, and stored lists are checked  306  for any that match the present query. The next step  308  is matching each input mediaset item to an item in the mediaset collection database. If no match can be found for a given item, a user interface can be invoked  310  to return a message or seek clarification of the item. Next is forming a list of the mediasets in the database identified as having at least one item in common with the input mediaset, step  312 . The items comprising those identified mediasets are then merged, step  314 , into a single list of media items. That list is then sorted, step  316 , by similarity weight values, further described below. This sorted list optionally can be stored, step  318 , as explained above. A subset of the sorted list is selected, step  320 , in accordance with input parameters or predetermined parameters. The selected subset list forms the output list, which is then delivered, step  322 , to the user or requesting application. The process is completed at step  326 . The foregoing steps can be implemented in hardware, software, or a combination thereof. Various functions can be distributed as well, over a network server and client machines.  
         [0000]     Procedural Description of the Merge Processing System  
         [0046]     The Merge Processing System ( 203 ) in one embodiment seeks to create a merged list of media items such that, the more related an item is to the items presented in the Input Mediaset, the higher the ranking of that item in the merged list. It does this by looking for media items that occur frequently in the retrieved mediasets, but do not occur in the Input Mediaset. Determination of “similar” mediasets is explained below.  
         [0047]     The inventors have observed that in media domains we generally find that a relatively small percentage of media items are accessed the majority of the time. Based on that observation, we expect that where people are asked to create mediasets of related items, “popular” media items will occur in many more of those mediasets than relatively less-popular items. The probability of occurrence of a popular item in a mediaset will be high, independent of the other items in the mediaset.  
         [0048]     Thus, if we observe two mediasets that have the same popular item, we have less reason to believe that this observation indicates that the mediasets are modeling similar functions of relatedness than if we observe two mediasets to have the same non-popular item. To capture this characteristic, we compute a discrimination weight d i  for each media item m i  in the Input Mediaset. The discrimination weight is computed as a function of a ratio of the number of occurrences of the media item m i  in the stored mediasets (numerator) to the number of occurrences of all the media items in the Input Mediaset across all the mediasets in the stored mediasets (denominator). The method in one embodiment is as follows: 
        Compute discrimination weight d i  as described above for each media item m i  in the Input Mediasets.     Compute similarity between the Input Mediaset and each stored mediaset that has at least one media item found in the Input Mediaset. The similarity is computed as a sum of the discrimination weights of the items co-occurring in the stored mediaset and the Input Mediaset. The similarity of any one Mediaset can be capped to a predetermined constant.     Compute the item rank weight for every item that appears in the retrieved mediasets but does not occur in the Input Mediaset. Add this item and its associated weight to the ranked list. The rank weight is computed by taking the sum of the similarities of the retrieved mediasets where the item occurs.     Optionally, compute an inverse popularity score for each item in the ranked list, where the inverse popularity score is higher for non-popular items, and lower for popular items. Multiply the rank weight of each item in the ranked list by the inverse popularity score. Resort the ranked list according to the new adjusted weight.     Output the ranked list.        
 
         [0054]     Referring now to  FIG. 4 , a network/communication diagram illustrates some applications of embodiments of the invention. In  FIG. 4 , a server system  400  can be configured to host software that implements the processes described above. The server  400  can be coupled to a LAN  404  using any of a variety of known networking protocols, and thereby access a data store  402  which can be used to maintain a database of mediasets. (Of course, the data store can be directly coupled to the server in an alternative embodiment.) A desktop computer  408  or the like can be used to interface with the server, for maintenance and administrative functions, accounting, etc. An administrator can use computer  408  to download mediasets via an external network  410 , for example the Internet, and add them to the data store  402 .  
         [0055]     The server  400  can be configured to provide output lists of related media items or recommendations in response to a user input query as explained above in various scenarios or business methods. For example, the network server  400  can be configured to support client music search and discovery software that is integrated into popular media players such as iTunes(r) and Windows Media Player(r). The music search application can be deployed, for example, in a client computer  412 . The client computer optionally can support a portable music player  414 . The client computer  412  has access to the server  400  via the public or private network  410 . In this scenario, the client software extracts playlists that have been created in media players, sends these playlists to the server as an input mediaset, and receives a response containing a list of related items that the user might be interested in playing (if they own the media) or purchasing.  
         [0056]     In terms of a business method, when the user chooses to purchase an item suggested in the output related media items, the user can be redirected to an online site  416  that sells digital music. If the user then purchases music, a percentage of the sales (or some other consideration) flows to the company deploying the client software pursuant to a prearranged contractual relationship. The client software may be available for free download, or a price may be charged for it.  
         [0057]     In an alternative business opportunity, an implementation of the present invention can be licensed to vendors of CD-media burning kiosks (not shown). In these kiosks, a consumer walks up to a device with a display, selects a set of media items to purchase, pays for those items, and is provided with a CD (or other portable storage media) containing the purchased items. In this scenario, recommendation software that implements an embodiment of the invention described herein is installed on the kiosk, and the software controlling the user interface interacts with the recommendation software provide lists of related items. Thus, after the consumer has specified at least one media item, the kiosk can recommend related media items that may be of interest. Once the consumer has purchased a list of items, this list can be sent to the recommendation software, which can generate a new list of media items that the consumer may want to additionally purchase. Thus the present invention can be employed to enable consumers to quickly build a list of songs to purchase, without having to be overwhelmed with selecting from a massive collection. The kiosk can include a stand-alone version of the recommendation software described herein, or it can access a remote server (like  400 ) or ASP.  
         [0058]     The server system  400 ,  402 ,  404  is merely illustrative of a wide variety of hardware and software implementations of the invention and is not intended to be limiting in any way. As further shown in  FIG. 4 , the system can be used by end users who have dialup access  420 , via the PSTN  422  or other transport. Because they are receiving a list of recommendations, and not necessarily downloading actual media content, bandwidth is not a significant issue. Wireless devices including cell phone  426 , and PDA  428  can also access the recommendation services (as well as download content) via the wireless network  430 .  
         [0059]     Another alternative business model calls for licensing software that embodies aspects of the invention to online vendors of digital media such as music or video, to enable increased sales of music per consumer, and increased attraction and retention of consumers to their portals or platforms that support digital media. For example, enabling recommendation software can be licensed to such online vendors of digital music, who run the software on their servers. The vendors design into their user interface a feature that enables their consumers to specify input mediasets, and the recommendation software returns a list of related media items. Thus the consumer specifies a mediaset of items that captures their current interest, and get in return a new set of media items that they are likely to want to view or purchase. In this fashion, consumers can quickly locate items that they will be willing to purchase. The enabling recommendation software, implementing the present invention, can be licensed to the music or other media vendor on mutually acceptable financial terms, e.g. applying flat rates or a royalty based on generated sales. The music vendor need not be online; similar advantages can be enjoyed at a brick and mortar location as well, such as a record or video store.  
         [0060]     It will be obvious to those having skill in the art that many changes may be made to the details of the above-described embodiments without departing from the underlying principles of the invention. The scope of the present invention should, therefore, be determined only by the following claims.