Media usage monitoring and measurement system and method

A computer program product in a non-transitory computer readable medium comprising instructions executable by one or more processors of one or more computers, the one or more computers being coupled to a network to receive, over the network, data for a sequence of audio data samples, the audio data samples comprising representations of audio data captured at a media monitoring device, the plurality of audio data samples being submitted over the network, the instructions comprising instructions for:

• (a) using the one or more computers to query an electronic database of a plurality of audio data representations and corresponding content identifiers;
• (b) generating a raw play stream, the raw play stream comprising a sequence of content identification results corresponding to the sequence of audio data samples;
• wherein:
• the sequence of content identification results is obtained by querying the electronic database to attempt to determine respective likely matches between respective audio data samples in the sequence of audio data samples and respective audio data representations in the electronic database;
• a content identification result of the sequence of content identification results comprises either:
• (i) a content identifier associated in the electronic database with a respective audio data representation that is determined to be a respective likely match with a respective one of the audio data samples;
• or (ii) an indication of the absence of a respective likely match between a respective audio data sample and an audio data representation in the electronic database;
• and
• the raw play stream includes either:
• at least two different content identifiers obtained from the electronic database;
• or at least one content identifier obtained from the electronic database and at least one indication of the absence of a respective likely match between a respective audio data sample and an audio data representation in the electronic database;
• (c) scrubbing the raw play stream by analyzing sample sequence data of the raw play stream to determine whether to change a result of the sequence of content of identification results in view of a pattern of the sample sequence data of the raw play stream compared to an expected pattern of sample sequence data;
• and
• (d) generating a clean play stream from the raw play stream by making any changes to the raw play stream that are determined to be made by the scrubbing.