US 8,572,169 B2Granted

System, apparatus and method for discovery of music within a social network

AssigneeMyspace LLC

InventorsHadi Partovi, Ali Partovi, Nathaniel Scott Brown, Yevgeny Zarakhovsky, Benjamin Botts Osheroff, Firooz Partovi

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Abstract

A system, apparatus, and method to assist in the discovery of music or other content by members of a social network. The present invention permits network members to network together and share information about their music collections and listening habits with a processing platform and with each other. The processing platform processes music library content and playback related data to produce similarity and compatibility measures between artists (that is, an artist-to-artist measure) and between network members (that is, a network member-to-network member measure). By combining the content and playback related data with filtering mechanisms, recommendation techniques (which may be based on the calculated measures), and set membership concepts, the present invention provides network members of the network with tools to discover artists and/or songs that are likely to be of interest to them.

Claims38

Dependent claims

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.

5 more elements

A social music network server, comprising:

(a) a communications interface configured to receive data from a plurality of social music clients, wherein each social music client is associated with a respective network member and configured to provide one or more types of data regarding the respective network member's music library and playback data of media in the respective network member's music library, to the server;
(b) a data storage element, wherein the data storage element includes member data regarding each respective member of the network, library data regarding each respective network 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.

5 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.