Patent ID: 8195639

Claim:
An information processing apparatus for playing back music data, connected to a distribution server for distributing music data over a network, comprising: a music storage portion to store music data; a music playback portion to play back music data; a metadata acquisition portion to acquire metadata describing information about music data being played back in the music playback portion; a metadata transmission portion to transmit the metadata acquired in the metadata acquisition portion to the distribution server; a music reception portion to receive distributed music data selected in the distribution server based on the information contained in the metadata and distributed from the distribution server; a music acquisition portion to acquire local music data from the music storage portion based on the information contained in the metadata, the local music data acquired from the music storage portion being different than the distributed music data distributed from the distribution server; and a control portion to control the music playback portion to selectively play back the distributed music data distributed from the distribution server and the local music data acquired from the music storage portion by the music acquisition portion based on a configurable playback ratio, wherein the configurable playback ratio specifies a ratio between the distributed music data distributed from the distribution server and the local music data acquired from the music storage portion and, wherein the configurable playback ratio is used by the control portion to select either the distributed music data or the local music data for play back by the music playback portion.