Methods and Systems to Organize Media Items According to Similarity

A system comprising:

• a metadata module configured to retrieve, by a computing system, over a network from a plurality of metadata providers, metadata about media items within a media library of a user, the metadata specifying one or more metadata types and one or more values of each of the specified one or more metadata types;
• a tag module configured to create, by the computing system, for each specified metadata type having one or more non-numerical values, a set of qualitative multi-valued tags by:
• accumulating the one or more non-numerical values;
• and
• calculating a normalized weight for each of the accumulated one or more non-numerical values;
• the tag module further configured to create, by the computing system, for each specified metadata type having a single numerical value, a quantitative single-value tag by:
• calculating a tag weight based on the single numerical value relative to a predefined maximum numerical value;
• a similarity module configured to determine a similarity contribution of each specified metadata type between two of the media items in the media library by:
• combining, from each qualitative multi-valued tag of the two media items, the normalized weights of the accumulated one or more non-numerical values within each metadata type, and
• determining, from each quantitative single-value tag of the two media items, a difference between the respective tag weights of the quantitative single-value tags;
• the similarity module further configured to calculate, by the computing system, a similarity score between each two of the media items from the similarity contribution of each metadata type, resulting in a set of similarity scores;
• and
• a cluster module configured to organize, by the computing system, the media items into separate clusters based on the set of similarity scores.

A non-transitory machine-readable medium having instructions embodied thereon, the instructions executable by one or more processors to perform operations comprising:

• retrieving, by a computing system, over a network from a plurality of metadata providers, metadata about media items within a media library of a user, the metadata specifying one or more metadata types and one or more values of each of the specified one or more metadata types;
• creating, by the computing system, for each specified metadata type having one or more non-numerical values, a set of qualitative multi-valued tags by:
• accumulating the one or more non-numerical values;
• and
• calculating a normalized weight for each of the accumulated one or more non-numerical values;
• creating, by the computing system, for each specified metadata type having a single numerical value, a quantitative single-value tag by:
• calculating a tag weight based on the single numerical value relative to a predefined maximum numerical value;
• determining a similarity contribution of each specified metadata type between two of the media items in the media library by:
• combining, from each qualitative multi-valued tag of the two media items, the normalized weights of the accumulated one or more non-numerical values within each metadata type, and
• determining, from each quantitative single-value tag of the two media items, a difference between the respective tag weights of the quantitative single-value tags;
• calculating, by the computing system, a similarity score between each two of the media items from the similarity contribution of each metadata type, resulting in a set of similarity scores;
• and
• organizing, by the computing system, the media items into separate clusters based on the set of similarity scores.