Patent ID: 7797343

Claim:
A system comprising: a first device configured to download purchased digital content, comprising: a digital content storage that stores digital content files; a monitoring system that monitors, at the first device, consumption of the purchased downloaded digital content of a file selected from the digital content storage, and generates usage data based on one or more usage events associated with the purchased downloaded digital content and indicative of the manner in which the purchased downloaded digital content is consumed; a usage data storage system on the first device that collects the usage data associated with the purchased downloaded digital content; and a usage metrics system at a second device remote from the first device that receives the stored usage data associated with the purchased downloaded digital content and processes the usage data to provide inference results, wherein the usage metrics system organizes the usage data into at least one of a plurality of categories comprising a genre type of digital content, time based consumption of the digital content and date based consumption of the digital content, and wherein said usage events include a play event type describing how the purchased downloaded digital content is consumed, the play event type includes each of begin, resume, complete, pause, error and cancel indicators, and a timestamp indicating when each play event type occurs.