Patent ID: 7647128

Claim:
A method of building an authoritative database of digital audio identifiers from digital media accessed by clients, said digital media including one or more media items, said method comprising: uploading a candidate base digital audio identifier along with a known identifier for each media item on multiple copies of digital media accessed by one or more clients, each of said candidate base digital audio identifiers identifying a physical characteristic of the actual audio contained in the corresponding media item; processing the uploaded candidate base digital audio identifiers for each media item to create an authoritative base digital audio identifier for each media item of said digital media, said processing comprising: ignoring any candidate base digital identifier associated with a respective media item, wherein the difference between the ignored candidate base digital audio identifier and other candidate base digital audio identifiers for the respective media item exceeds a threshold; and aggregating each of the uploaded candidate base digital audio identifiers associated with the respective media item, said aggregating comprising averaging all of the uploaded candidate base digital audio identifiers associated with the respective media item that have not been ignored; and adding the authoritative base digital audio identifiers to an authoritative database of authoritative base digital audio identifiers associated with other digital media.