Patent ID: 8572169

Claim:
A social music network, comprising: (a) a plurality of client agents, each client agent associated with a respective network member and configured to communicate and exchange data with a processing platform, wherein each client agent is further configured to provide one or more types of data regarding the respective network member's music library and playback data for the playback of media in the respective network member's music library, to the processing platform; (b) a processing platform, wherein the processing platform includes a data storage element that includes member data regarding each respective member of the network, library data regarding each respective member's music library, and playback data of each respective member's music library; and (c) a processing module configured to: (1) access the library data and the playback data contained in the data storage element; (2) compare the library data and the playback data for two or more of the plurality of client agents; and (3) produce an output based on the comparison, wherein the output represents a music discovery tool to assist a member of the network to discover music of interest to that member.