Patent Application
20100267331
This relates to systems and methods for identifying radio stations of interest based on information received from a user's electronic device. In particular, this relates to systems and methods for identifying radio stations of interest based on specific media items in a media libraries stored on an electronic device of the user.
Using a radio system, a user can receive radio waves broadcast from a radio station and provide an audio output associated with the received radio waves. An electronic device having communications circuitry appropriate for receiving broadcast radio waves can receive radio broadcasts from several sources. For example, several terrestrial radio stations can broadcast signals with sufficient strength to reach the user's electronic device. As another example, satellite radio stations can broadcast signals over large geographic regions. As still another example, Internet radio stations can provide broadcast signals that may be received by any device having an Internet connection. Each radio station can broadcast any suitable media, such as music or talk shows. In particular, different radio stations can broadcast media of a particular type, such as music stations broadcasting music from a particular era, of a particular genre, or by a specific artist (e.g., the U2 station on satellite radio).
Because of the large number of radio stations available to a user, some radio devices can recommend specific radio stations as being of interest to a user. To determine the user's preferences, the radio devices can ask the user a series of questions to identify the user's interests (e.g., direct the user to rank genres or identify particular artists or songs of interest), monitor attributes of the radio stations and media items to which a user listens, or receive from a second source metadata describing attributes of particular media items to which a user listens. While these approaches can be used to provide radio station recommendations, they require the user to either affirmatively provide recommendations, or a history of prior media consumed by the user.
Systems and methods are provided for identifying radio stations of interest to a user. Using an electronic device with appropriate communications circuitry, a user can receive broadcasts from one or more media sources. Each media source can provide an audio stream that can be played back by the electronic device when tuning to the media source. The particular audio provided in each stream can vary from media source to media source. For example, some media sources can provide music streams, other media sources can provide talk programs, and still other media sources can provide combinations of the two or other types of audio. Within each audio type, different radio stations can broadcast different categories or genres of media. For example, different music radio stations can broadcast music from different eras, of different genres, by specific artists, or from specific locations. As another example, different talk radio stations can broadcast sports talk, news talk, business talk, or politics talk.
Because each radio station may broadcast different types of audio, a user may be interested in only a subset of the available radio stations. For example, the user may be interested in only recent musical hits and sports talk radio. To provide appropriate recommendations to a user, an electronic device can retrieve information describing the user's interests. In particular, the electronic device can compare the media items stored locally on the user's electronic device or available from a host device to which the electronic device can connect with the media broadcast by each radio station. The electronic device can then identify the radio stations providing the most matches, and recommend those radio stations.
In some embodiments, the electronic device can treat each radio station as a distinct media library, where the different media items played back by the radio station define the radio station media library. The electronic device can in addition monitor play counts to determine which media items are of more importance to or more representative of the radio station media stream. By then comparing radio station media libraries with the user's own media library, and adjusting as necessary based on play counts and user ratings, the electronic device can identify and recommend particular radio stations to the user.
The above and other objects and advantages of the invention will be apparent upon consideration of the following detailed description, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, in which like reference characters refer to like parts throughout, and in which:
Using an electronic device with communications circuitry, a user can tune to and receive broadcast streams provided by media or content sources. For example, a user can direct an electronic device radio tuner to tune to a particular radio station. Because a large number of content providers may be available to a user, the electronic device can provide recommendations to the user. In particular, the electronic device can compare media locally stored on the electronic device or on a host device from which the electronic device receives the media with the particular media items of each broadcast stream receivable by the electronic device. Upon identifying the broadcast streams having the most overlapping content with the locally stored media, the electronic device can recommend the content sources or radio stations providing the identified broadcast streams. As used in this application, the term media item will be understood to include any audio or video that can be broadcast by a content source and received by an electronic device for playback. For example, a media item can include music (e.g., a song), a talk show segment, an advertisement, news programming, a podcast, videos, or any other media content that may be provided to a user. In addition, it will be understood that embodiments described in the context of a radio broadcast by a radio station can also be provided using any type of media broadcast by any media or content source over any suitable communications network.
User device 100 can include main device 102 and one or more accessory devices 104. Generally, any of the components of user device 100 described below can be integrated into main device 102, contained in accessory device 104, or both. For example, as discussed above, a radio tuner can be integrated into accessory device 104 or integrated directly inside main device 102. Additionally, although accessory device 104 is depicted as being physically coupled to main device 102 in
In some embodiments, user device 100 can include display screen 106. Further to the discussion above, display screen 106 does not need to be integrated into main device 102, and in other embodiments can be an accessory device that is physically or wirelessly coupled to main device 102. Display screen 106 can include any suitable screen, such as a television screen, a computer monitor, a projection screen, a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen, or an organic light-emitting diode (OLED) screen. Display screen 106 can present various types of information to the user such as graphical and/or textual displays. This can include, for example, user-selectable options, radio station playlists, music playlists, stored videos, stored photos, stored data, and system information. In some embodiments, display screen 106 can function as a user input mechanism that allows for a touch screen or user input via a touch input (e.g., from actual or near contact of a user's finger or of a tool with the screen).
User device 100 can also include one or more of user input mechanisms 108 and 110. These mechanisms can be, for example, a keyboard, buttons, switches, track wheels, or click wheels. User device 100 can include one or more of port 112 for coupling external data and/or hard drives into user device 100. For example, port 112 can enable user device 100 to receive SIM cards, flash drives, or external hard drives. There can be multiple ways of connecting accessories devices through, for example, connector 114. Persons skilled in the art will appreciate that connector 114 can be any suitable connector such as one or more USB ports, 30-pin connector ports, dock or expansion ports, and headset jacks.
User device 100 can also include user input/output devices such as microphone 114 and speakers 116. Although depicted as being contained in accessory device 104, one skilled in the art would appreciate that microphone 114 and speakers 116 may alternatively or additionally be contained in main device 102.
Control circuitry 202 can include any processing circuitry or processor operative to control the operations and performance of electronic device 200. For example, control circuitry 202 can be used to run operating system applications, firmware applications, media playback applications, radio tuner applications, or any other application. In some embodiments, the control circuitry can drive a display and process inputs received from a user interface.
Storage 204 can include, for example, one or more storage mediums including a hard-drive, solid state drive, flash memory, permanent memory such as ROM, any other suitable type of storage component, or any combination thereof. Storage 204 can store, for example, media data (e.g., music and video files), application data (e.g., for implementing functions on device 200), firmware, user preference information data (e.g., radio preset preferences), authentication information (e.g. libraries of data associated with authorized users), wireless connection information data (e.g., information that can enable electronic device 200 to establish a wireless connection), and any other suitable data or any combination thereof.
Memory 206 can include cache memory, semi-permanent memory such as RAM, and/or one or more different types of memory used for temporarily storing data. In some embodiments, memory 206 can also be used for storing data used to operate electronic device applications, or any other type of data that can be stored in storage 204. In some embodiments, memory 206 and storage 204 can be combined as a single storage medium.
Input/output circuitry 208 can be operative to convert (and encode/decode, if necessary) analog signals and other signals into digital data. In some embodiments, input/output circuitry 208 can also convert digital data into any other type of signal, and vice-versa. Although input/output circuitry 208 is illustrated in
Radio tuner circuitry 210 can include any suitable circuitry for tuning to a particular frequency of a received radio signal. For example, by resonating at a particular frequency, radio tuner circuitry 210 can pass that particular frequency and exclude any other frequencies that were received with the radio signal. Radio tuner circuitry can communicate with input/output circuitry 208 to audibly output the particular frequency through, for example, speakers 116 of
In some embodiments, electronic device 200 can include a bus operative to provide a data transfer path for transferring data to, from, or between control processor 202, storage 204, memory 206, input/output circuitry 208, radio tuner circuitry 210, and any other component included in the electronic device.
To determine which radio stations or broadcast content sources will be of interest to a user, the electronic device can first identify the particular media available from each radio station. The electronic device can identify the particular broadcast media using any suitable approach. For example, the electronic device can monitor each radio station and store data describing each broadcast media item (e.g., identified from an analysis of the broadcast audio, or from metadata broadcast with the media, such as RDS, RT or RT+ data). As another example, the electronic device can access a remote database that includes a listing of the media items broadcast by particular radio stations. The remote database can include past and present broadcast media content, as well as future media content (if available). The remote database can be provided by individual radio stations, or generated and managed by a specialized entity. As still another example, the electronic device can identify media items provided by a radio station from alternative sources of the radio broadcast, such as a counterpart Internet radio station of a terrestrial or Internet radio station. The electronic device can monitor the alternative source, or alternatively retrieve listings of broadcast media items from the alternative source (e.g., retrieve from the past ten songs broadcast from a radio station website, or determine future guests on a talk show program from a website schedule).
The electronic device can locally store the media items broadcast by each radio station. Alternatively, the electronic device can retrieve the listing of broadcast media items from a host device or server operative to store such information. In some embodiments, the electronic device can provide the listing of broadcast media items to the host device or server, or alternatively the host device or server can, instead or in addition to the electronic device, identify and store the listings of media items broadcast by each radio station (e.g., using any of the approaches described above in connection with the electronic device).
To determine which media would be of interest to a particular user, the electronic device can catalog the media items locally stored or locally available to the user of the electronic device. For example, the electronic device can identify, from metadata associated with each media item, the available media items stored in memory or stored on a host device from which the electronic device receives media (e.g., a computer to which a portable media device is coupled). In some embodiments, the electronic device can provide the catalogued information to a remote server that receives and processes information defining the media libraries of several electronic devices. Using an algorithm for determining the relative proximity of two or more media items, the electronic device, the remote server, or both can mathematically define a proximity value for each of the media items in the one or more libraries processed by the electronic device, remote server, or both.
The algorithm can use any suitable attribute of the media items within the libraries to determine the proximity value. For example, the algorithm can consider metadata attributes of the media items (e.g., artist and genre). As another example, the algorithm can process media items based on the libraries in which they were found. In particular, the algorithm can identify, for each media item in a particular library, the other media items within the same library. The algorithm can in addition process user-generated playlists that include a subset of media items from a library. Because single users typically listen to media having some similarity within a single playlist, or own media items that can be categorized in one or more groupings, the algorithm can predict the similarity of media items without processing the attributes of the media items (e.g., define similarity without verifying that the defined genre is the same). When the electronic device or remote server processes a large number of playlists and libraries provided by a large number of users or distinct electronic devices, the electronic device or remote server can identify overlaps in libraries and playlists, and thus determine which sets of media items are most related.
Once the electronic device has identified the media of most interest to the user, the electronic device can compare the identified media with the media items provided by the radio stations. In particular, the electronic device can treat the listings of media items broadcast by each radio station as the library of media items for the radio station. Each radio station library can be provided to the electronic device or remote server processing the similarity between media items to determine the relative similarity of each of the radio station libraries with the library of the electronic device. In some embodiments, the electronic device can directly compare each radio station library with the locally accessed media library to identify the overlapping media items, artists, genres, or other metadata categories. The electronic device can then recommend the radio stations for which the corresponding radio station libraries had the most overlap with the media library of the electronic device.
The electronic device can provide the recommended radio stations to the user using any suitable approach. In some embodiments, the electronic device can store the identified radio stations as presets mapped to a particular input interface, such as physical buttons (e.g., in an automobile or accessory). As another example, the electronic device can provide a menu or display with selectable recommended radio stations.
In some embodiments, the electronic device can determine that no individual media items, artists, or both of the user's media library match corresponding media items, artists or both of radio station libraries. This may in particular be the case for talk radio programs, for which a user may not necessarily have corresponding media items in the user's media library (e.g., the user can instead subscribe to podcasts for talk programs by hosts similar to those available from the radio broadcasts). To provide recommendations to the user, the electronic device can retrieve, from an appropriate source of proximity information (e.g., a remote server), information describing the proximity of the media items of the user's media library with the media items of each radio station library. In some embodiments, the electronic device can instead or in addition identify other media libraries having both particular media items from the user's media library and from a radio station library. In particular, the electronic device can identify groupings, clusters or “buckets” of media items that are commonly found in libraries or playlists (e.g., buckets of related media items). Using the buckets, the electronic device can identify the radio station libraries that have the most media items in buckets of the media items of the user's media library, and recommend the identified radio stations. In some embodiments, the electronic device can define buckets based only on several playlists defined for the local media library (e.g., if information from other electronic devices is not available).
To ensure that the electronic device properly recommends radio stations based on the media items of the user's library, the electronic device can weigh each of the buckets differently. For example, each bucket weight can be incremented for each media item of the user's library that is in a bucket. As another example, buckets can be weighed based on the play counts of different media items, or based on any other suitable factor reflecting the user's media library. Correspondingly, the radio station libraries can be more or less attributed to buckets based on the number of media items in the radio station library, on the play counts of each media item (e.g., if a song is repeated often by a radio station, the radio station is more closely attributed to the bucket corresponding to the song), or on any other suitable factor reflecting the media items in the radio station library.
In some embodiments the electronic device can modify the recommended radio stations based on the time of day or day of the week at which a user requests the present listing. For example, the electronic device can determine that a user listens to a particular playlist or a particular subset of the user's media library at specific times (e.g., music on weekday mornings, news podcasts on weekday evenings, and sports radio on the weekend). The electronic device can then recommend radio stations that match the particular media items of the user's media library that are consumed at the corresponding time of day. For example, the electronic device can identify the particular buckets associated with the media played back at each identified part of the day, and retrieve radio stations associated with each of the identified presets for each day part. The electronic device can monitor the user's local media playback using any suitable approach, including for example, storing metadata indicative of playback timing.
In some embodiments, the electronic device can identify available radio station or other media broadcasts, and tailor broadcast recommendations based on the availability of the broadcasts. For example, the electronic device can recommend broadcasts for which the strength of the received signal exceeds a minimum threshold. As another example, the electronic device can recommend broadcasts for which static or other transmission artifacts are below a pre-determined threshold.
The following flowcharts describe illustrative processes for use in identifying radio stations of interest.
At step 508, the electronic device can determine whether the selected media broadcast includes media items identified from the local media library. For example, the electronic device can determine whether an identified media item was broadcast as part of the radio station broadcast. The electronic device can identify the content of a radio broadcast of each radio station using any suitable approach, including for example from RDS, RT or RT+ data broadcast with the media, a distinct source of radio data, or any other suitable approach. If the electronic device determines that some the media items provided as part of the selected media broadcast match identified media items from the user's local library, process 500 can move to step 510. At step 510, the electronic device can recommend the selected media broadcast. For example, the electronic device can store information for receiving the selected media broadcast, provide selectable options for the selected media broadcast, map the selected media broadcast to an electronic device input interface (e.g., map the broadcast to a preset button), or any other suitable approach. In some embodiments, the electronic device can assign a rank or priority to the selected media broadcast based on the number of media items that matched the local media library (e.g., to only recommend the highest ranking broadcasts). Process 500 can then move to step 512.
If, at step 508, the electronic device instead determines that the selected media broadcast does not include media items identified from the local media library, process 500 can move to step 512. At step 512, the electronic device can determine whether all of the received media broadcasts have been selected. For example, the electronic device can determine whether the device has directed tuning circuitry to tune to each possible frequency. As another example, the electronic device can determine whether media broadcasts have been selected from all available communications networks (e.g., AM, FM and satellite). As still another example, the electronic device can determine whether media broadcasts from all content sources known in a library have been selected (e.g., all content sources for known Internet radio stations). If the electronic device determines that all received media broadcasts have not been selected, process 500 can return to step 506 and select an unselected media broadcast. If the electronic device instead determines that all received media broadcasts have been selected, process 500 can move to step 514 and end.
At step 608, the electronic device can define media buckets or clusters of related media items based on identified common media items. For example, the electronic device can identify sets of media items that include a sufficiently large number of items (e.g., at least a predetermined number of items) and define those sets as buckets. The electronic device can define any suitable number of buckets, including for example buckets that have overlapping media items (e.g. a bucket with 80s music can overlap with a bucket for American Pop music).
At step 610, the electronic device can select a received media broadcast. For example, the electronic device can select a radio broadcast received by tuning radio tuning circuitry to a frequency at which a radio station transmits. At step 612, the electronic device can identify media buckets for the media items of the selected media broadcast. The electronic device can identify the media items of a radio broadcast of each radio station using any suitable approach, including for example from RDS, RT or RT+ data broadcast with the media, a distinct source of radio data, or any other suitable approach. The electronic device can then match the identified media items with the defined media buckets. At step 614, the electronic device can associate the selected media broadcast with the media buckets most commonly identified at step 612. For example, the electronic device can increment a counter for each identified media bucket, and select the media buckets having the largest counter values. The electronic device can identify each media broadcast with any suitable number of media buckets, including for example a fixed number, a number selected based on the values of the media bucket counters (e.g., at least 100 songs in a particular media bucket), a number selected based on the percentage value of each media bucket counter (e.g., associate with all media bucket having at least 30% of the broadcast media items), or any other suitable number of media buckets.
At step 616, the electronic device can determine whether all of the received media broadcasts have been selected. For example, the electronic device can determine whether the device has directed tuning circuitry to tune to each possible frequency. As another example, the electronic device can determine whether media broadcasts have been selected from all available communications networks (e.g., AM, FM and satellite). As still another example, the electronic device can determine whether media broadcasts from all content sources known in a library have been selected (e.g., all content sources for known Internet radio stations). If the electronic device determines that all received media broadcasts have not been selected, process 600 can return to step 610 and select an unselected media broadcast. If the electronic device instead determines that all received media broadcasts have been selected, process 600 can move to step 618.
At step 618, the electronic device can identify media buckets for the media items of the local media library associated with the electronic device. For example, the electronic device can identify the media buckets having at least a minimum number of media items in a particular media bucket. In some embodiments, the electronic device can identify and select only the media buckets having a minimum number of local media items (e.g., to ensure that the identified media buckets are relevant to the user's local media library). In some embodiments, the identified and selected media buckets can change based on the time of day or day of the week. At step 620, the electronic device can select a subset of the media broadcasts associated with the identified local library media buckets. For example, the electronic device can select a subset of media broadcasts that are related to the most common media buckets of the electronic device local library. As another example, the electronic device can select media broadcasts that are more strongly associated with identified media buckets (e.g., instead of a media broadcast less strongly associated with a media bucket closer related to the local media library).
At step 622, the electronic device can recommend the selected subset of media broadcasts. For example, the electronic device can store information for receiving the selected subset of media broadcasts, provide selectable options for the media broadcasts, map the media broadcasts to an electronic device input interface, or any other suitable approach. In some embodiments, the electronic device can assign a rank or priority to the media broadcasts based on the number of media items that matched the local media library (e.g., to only recommend the highest ranking broadcasts). Process 600 can then end at step 624.
The above described embodiments of the present invention are presented for purposes of illustration and not of limitation, and the present invention is limited only by the claims which follow.
