US 2006/0080356 A1 · System and method for inferring similarities between media objects

Abstract

A “similarity quantifier” automatically infers similarity between media objects which have no inherent measure of distance between them. For example, a human listener can easily determine that a song like Solsbury Hill by Peter Gabriel is more similar to Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. than it is to Highway to Hell by AC/DC. However, automatic determination of this similarity is typically a more difficult problem. This problem is addressed by using a combination of techniques for inferring similarities between media objects thereby facilitating media object filing, retrieval, classification, playlist construction, etc. Specifically, a combination of audio fingerprinting and repeat object detection is used for gathering statistics on broadcast media streams. These statistics include each media objects identity and positions within the media stream. Similarities between media objects are then inferred based on the observation that objects appearing closer together in an authored stream are more likely to be similar.

Claims30

Dependent claims

A system for inferring similarities between media objects in an authored media stream, comprising using a computing device to:

identify media objects and relative positions of the media objects within at least one media stream;
generate at least one ordered list representing relative positions of the media objects within the at least one media stream;
infer a similarity score between a plurality of media objects as a function of the at least one ordered list.

A computer-readable medium having computer executable instructions for computing statistical similarity scores between discrete music objects in an authored media stream, comprising:

receiving at least one authored media stream containing at least some music objects;
identifying music objects and relative positions of each identified music object within the at least one authored media stream;
populating at least one ordered list with the identification and relative position information of the music objects;
and
computing similarity scores for measuring a similarity between a plurality of identified music objects in the at least one authored media stream through a statistical analysis of the relative position information of the one or more identified music objects relative to each other of the one or more identified music objects.

2 more elements

A computer-implemented process for inferring similarities between individual songs in broadcast media streams, comprising:

receiving at least one media stream broadcast;
explicitly identifying one or more songs within the at least one media stream through a comparison of sampled portions of the media stream to a fingerprint database comprised of information characterizing a set of known songs;
implicitly identifying one or more songs not already identified through the comparison to the fingerprint database by locating repeating instances of unique unidentified songs within the at least one media stream through a direct comparison of multiple portions of the at least one media stream centered around repeating instances of each particular unique unidentified song within the at least one media stream;
constructing at least one ordered list including at least the identity and a relative position of each explicitly and implicitly identified song;
and
inferring a similarity score between a plurality of songs in each ordered list as a function of the at least one ordered list.

3 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

System and method for inferring similarities between media objects

Life of this patent

System and method for inferring similarities between media objects

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims30