Patent ID: 8584198

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for facilitating a rights management service between a media content owner and a media hosting service, the method comprising: receiving, by a computing device, an audio clip from a media hosting service, the audio clip digitally representing a sound recording; processing, by the computing device, the audio clip to extract dominant musical tones in the audio clip at a plurality of times within the audio clip, the extracted tones corresponding to notes of a musical scale; determining, by the computing device, pitch intervals between consecutive ones of the dominant musical tones extracted from the audio clip; generating, by the computing device, an input melody fingerprint from a sequence of the pitch intervals for the audio clip, the input melody fingerprint representing a melody of an input composition that is embodied in the audio clip, the input melody fingerprint being invariant to parameters used to perform or record a performance of the input composition; querying, by the computing device, a reference database for a reference melody fingerprint that matches the input melody fingerprint, each reference melody fingerprint in the reference database representing a melody of a reference composition that is embodied in a reference sound recording; and responsive to a matching reference melody fingerprint for the input melody fingerprint being found, determining, by the computing device, a rights management policy associated with the reference composition that matches the input composition, and providing instructions to the media hosting service for carrying out the rights management policy associated with the reference composition.