Method of providing digital rights management for music content by means of a flat-rate subscription

A software application, embodied on a non-transitory storage medium or on a cellular mobile telephone device or on another hardware device, for a cellular mobile telephone device that enables digital music tracks to be downloaded and used on the cellular mobile telephone device, comprising:

• (a) the software application enabling an end-user to directly browse and search music tracks on a remote server using a cellular wireless network;
• and to download music tracks from that remote server using the cellular wireless network;
• (b) the software application including or interacting with a digital rights management program whose operation can be remotely configured (i) to enable unlimited legal downloads of different music tracks to the cellular mobile telephone device using the cellular wireless network whilst a subscription service between the cellular mobile telephone device and the remote server is valid for the cellular mobile telephone device or user associated with that cellular mobile telephone device and (ii) to enable any of those tracks stored on the cellular mobile telephone device to be played so long as the subscription service has not terminated;
• (c) the software application using a multithreaded architecture to balance the computational demands of network and/or music track catalogue access;
• and a computational demand of one or more of:
• a user interface of the software application;
• the digital rights management program;
• media operations;
• and
• (d) the software application using track meta-data that is formed as a separate meta-data layer and defines attributes of tracks, the meta-data being external to a music track to enable sharing and browsing of track information without needing to distribute the related music track files.

A music track distribution system comprising:

• (a) a remote server for storing music tracks;
• (b) multiple cellular mobile telephone devices each adapted to enable digital music tracks to be downloaded over a cellular wireless network from the remote server and used on each cellular mobile telephone device each cellular mobile telephone device including a software application, the software application having been automatically adapted to parameters associated with the cellular mobile telephone device without end-user input;
• and the software application adapted to enable an end-user to browse and search music tracks on the remote server using the cellular wireless network, to download music tracks from that remote server using the cellular wireless network and to playback and manage that downloaded music tracks;
• the software application adapted to include a digital rights management system that enables unlimited legal downloads of different music tracks to the cellular mobile telephone device using the cellular wireless network and also enables any of those tracks stored on the cellular mobile telephone device to be played so long as a subscription service has not terminated;
• (c) the software application uses a multithreaded architecture to balance the computational demands of network and/or music track catalogue access;
• and a computational demand of one or more of:
• a user interface of the software application;
• the digital rights management program;
• media operations;
• and
• (d) the software application uses track meta-data that is formed as a separate meta-data layer and defines attributes of tracks, the meta-data being external to a music track to enable sharing and browsing of track information without needing to distribute the related music track files.