Patent ID: 7220910

Claim:
A method comprising: monitoring a user's media-playing experience by monitoring one or more parameters associated with the user's experience, the parameters comprising at least a last played time associated with when a particular piece of content was played by the user; producing metadata associated with the monitored parameter(s); associating produced metadata with media content experienced by the user; and using the metadata to automatically personalize one or more playlists, to reflect the user's media-playing experience, wherein the one or more parameters comprise one or more of the following parameters: an update time associated with when one or more other parameters are updated; a user rating for allowing a user to rate content; an effective rating that provides a rating for content that the user has not actually rated, and a timestamp parameter associated with when the effective rating was provided; a service rating for providing a third party rating on content; a playcount total comprising the total number of times a particular piece of content has been played; one or more custom parameters that can be programmed by the user; and wherein each of said playlists is defined by a file format comprising: a first portion containing data that is associated with a user of the playlist; and a second portion containing data associated with the playlist, wherein the second portion comprises: a static portion that contains a list of media content for the playlist; and a dynamic portion that defines one or more queries for dynamically updating the playlist.