Patent Application
20110082703
The invention is directed to a novel system and methods for sale of digitized content including, music, software, and videos.
There exist business practices for sale of downloadable audio files, games, and other software. The Apple App Store as a part of iTunes is the best example of such a system. However, as these systems grow in number of applications, both customers and authors share in frustration of identifying the “good” apps. Prices are driven toward $0, as low pricing is necessary to achieve volume, and the market has become a loss leader for larger game studios to promote their titles on other platforms where they can control pricing or for independent developers who accept recognition in place of revenue.
While the prior art includes systems for sale of software and other digital content (audio, video, e-books, and other) online, and while the free market as a means of supply and demand price setting, there are no systems that combine these in an automated fashion. Furthermore, one of the largest complaints among developers and other digital content authors on popular downloading websites is that it is difficult to generate sufficient revenue, because prices are driven toward $0 in order to attract customers. Rating systems exist, but are too subjective and sales volumes remain largely a function of price.
Thus, there is a significant unmet need for an alternative system that enables in-demand products to sustain higher prices. As will be seen, the invention provides such a system and related methods of operation, in an elegant manner.
As described in the embodiments and examples below, the invention is not limited to any particular configuration or orientation described, but is only limited to the appended claims, their equivalents, and also future claims submitted in this and related applications and their equivalents. Also, many configurations, dimensions, geometries, and other features and physical and operational characteristics of any particular embodiment or example may vary in different applications without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention, which, again, are defined by the appended claims, their equivalents, and also future claims submitted in this and related applications and their equivalents.
In the following description, numerous specific details are set forth in order to provide a thorough understanding of the invention. However, it will be apparent to one skilled in the art that the invention can be practiced without these specific details. In other instances, well known circuits, components, algorithms, and processes have not been shown in detail or have been illustrated in schematic or block diagram form in order not to obscure the invention in unnecessary detail. Additionally, for the most part, details concerning materials, tooling, process timing, circuit layout, and die design have been omitted inasmuch as such details are not considered necessary to obtain a complete understanding of the invention and are considered to be within the understanding of persons of ordinary skill in the relevant art. Certain terms are used throughout the following description and claims to refer to particular system components. As one skilled in the art will appreciate, components may be referred to by different names. This document does not intend to distinguish between components that differ in name, but not function. In the following discussion and in the claims, the terms “including” and “comprising” are used in an open-ended fashion, and thus should be interpreted to mean “including, but not limited to . . . .”
Embodiments of the invention are described herein. Those of ordinary skill in the art will realize that the following detailed description of the invention is illustrative only and is not intended to be in any way limiting. Other embodiments of the invention will readily suggest themselves to such skilled persons having the benefit of this disclosure. Reference will be made in detail to implementations of the invention as illustrated in the accompanying drawings. The same reference indicators will be used throughout the drawings and the following detailed description to refer to the same or like parts.
In the interest of clarity, not all of the routine features of the implementations described herein are shown and described. It will, of course, be appreciated that in the development of any such actual implementation, numerous implementation-specific decisions must be made in order to achieve the developer's specific goals. Moreover, it will be appreciated that such a development effort might be complex and time-consuming, but would nevertheless be a routine undertaking of engineering for those of ordinary skill in the art having the benefit of this disclosure.
Provided is a system for delivering downloadable digital content that rewards authors and content owners using a unique pricing model. As used herein, authors may include and be interchangeable with content owners that may or may not have authored content, including content providers could just as easily be musicians, programmers, or video/film directors—anything that lends itself to digital distribution. In particular embodiments and examples below are a system for delivering digital content using a price setting formula such whereby prices increase as volume of downloads or purchases increase and prices decreases as volumes decrease. Such a system fairly rewards vendors and authors based on the market appeal of their product while simultaneously communicating to buyers that a given product's price has been fairly set by genuine interest from other like-minded customers. In one embodiment, the system correlates price to value in a way that is not currently done by sellers in mass digital markets, defined here as any system offering more products than can be easily browsed and downloaded. These products may be comparable to each other, such as digital games, books, or music of a given genre, and may be offered by different sellers. Traditional marketing involves price-setting as a function of cost of goods, the producer's desired margin, a string of value-add channel partners along the way, and the marketer's sense on the reaction of the market to price—higher prices may communicate quality, lower prices may enable reaching a different demographic, split pricing may allow one company to flank a competitive product, etc. However, these traditional approaches are not effective in the Mass Double-Sided Digital (MDSD) market, where there are large numbers of both buyers and sellers, but unlike a commodity market, the sellers' products are each unique (i.e., with commodities a pound of flour, beets, or silver from one farmer or miner is interchangeable with a pound of flour or beets from another, but with authored digital content, one punk rock song, poem, or sci-fi novel is not interchangeable with another, even if from the same author). Furthermore, on the production side, the cost of production is insubstantial, channel partners can be removed from all but the sales function (the web store), and promotion is nearly impossible as there is simply not enough available media for the thousands of available products to even reach consumers (iTunes has millions of songs, the App Store has over 200,000 applications as of mid-2010).
This invention is a solution to this modern capitalist conundrum of the digital age. In one embodiment, the author/creator posts his work to a central server. Optionally, the author may set a starting price or a minimum price floor (such non-automatic prices will always be noted as such to the customers). Depending on the market segment, the system features a ranged set of default values that could range from free to the typically accepted upper range for such a product. The system may start with a conservative upper range. For audiobooks this upper range might be for example $19.99, and for songs it might be for example $1.29, or $8.99 and $0.89, respectively for works from unknown authors or music artists.
A set of stratified pricing values fill the range between lowest and highest. The starting number of steps can vary, but 7 is the default. Similarly, the differences between them can also vary. Consumers may purchase via download. If the author was allowed to set the price (step 2 above), consumers can see the price and if it is the original author's price (in which case they know it has not been set by market interest) or set by the market, pursuant to the system described herein. Prices may be adjusted based on the number of downloads for each title at the current price during the preceding unit of time (Δt, default is 2 weeks) and the percentage of download volume compared with all other works available in that genre. Once a product's price is adjusted, it is assured that it will stay in its new pricing strata for at least the default unit of time (Δt).
In one example, the default is that the percentile breaks would be logarithmic based on volume, but optionally could be evenly spaced linearly, follow some other formula, or even be selected manually. These could also optionally be stratified by genre, recognizing that some categories may be smaller, but still comprise a market segment willing to pay more for quality work (e.g., historical audiobooks could be compared only with other historical audiobooks, rather than with all audiobooks). Other non-default options include a longer trailing period of volume calculation to reduce pricing volatility.
In another example, if the number of purchases at the top tier is more than a defined amount relative to the next lower tier (default is half), another higher tier is added automatically setting the volume limit for that tier to be the top segment as defined (default is the top third). The actual dollar amount of the increase could either be $1, any other set increase amount, the next step in a pre-defined set of tiered pricing, or functionally calculated based on the previous tiers (e.g., previous top tier+20%).
Referring now to the figures, examples of systems and methods of downloading and selling digital content according to the broad invention are provided. In any of these examples, the particular process steps are set forth for illustration, and those skilled in the art will understand that the process steps may or may not be performed in the particular order as illustrated in the figures or as described below.
In one embodiment, Δ□ may be set by default to be 2 weeks. The prices change every 2 weeks. It could also be set to change not after a fixed period of time elapses, but more rapidly if the download rate is sufficient to justify it (e.g. if in 1 day a given title receives as many downloads as a title from the tier above it received in the prior 2 week period, it could be immediately upgraded to the next higher tier).
If the author has set a price, it is returned in step 204, typically to the storefront for display or delivery to a prospective purchaser. If not, the process queries in step 206 whether a price has previously been set by an author, whether the same, similar or a different author and whether the same, similar or different product. If it has been previously set by a previous pass through the subroutine, and if a predetermined amount of time has NOT passed in step 214, then the existing price is returned in step 216. If the minimum time has passed, then a genre-based prices lookup table is queried in step 218, a call to the create/destroy top price tier subroutine is performed in step 220 to assess whether to split the current top tier and add a new one, or remove the top tier, merging its members with the former second tier, and the lookup price for each title is returned in step 222 wherein the price is selected from a table specific to the title's master genre (e.g., songs, novels, short stories) and based on the title's ranking within its specific genre (e.g., vampire romance novels, hard sci-fi novels, historical fiction novels), such as by means of one such example, in this case for books:
Referring back to step 206, if the price has not previously been set, then there is a query whether there is an advance discussion value in step 208. If there is, then the advance discussion value is returned in step 212. In one example, tracking titles as keywords on a social network allows a system to see that a given title is receiving a lot of buzz in advance of its release and therefore should not start with a $0 price. For example, if there were another Harry Potter book about to be released, advance discussions on Facebook would occur. Based on the number of such references, the system could set a starting price from the table for a novel, say $6.99 or $8.99.
If not in step 206, then $0.00 is returned as the value in step 210.
While certain exemplary embodiments have been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that such embodiments are merely illustrative of and not restrictive on the broad invention, and that this invention is not limited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown and described, since various other modifications may occur to those ordinarily skilled in the art. Hence, alternative arrangements and/or quantities of, connections of various sorts, computer network systems that include arrangements and quantities of transistors to form circuits, and other features and functions can occur without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Similarly, components not explicitly mentioned in this specification can be included in various embodiments of this invention without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Also, different process steps and integrated circuit manufacture operations described as being performed to make certain components in various embodiments of this invention can, as would be apparent to one skilled in the art, be readily performed in whole or in part to make different components or in different configurations of components not explicitly mentioned in this specification without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
While certain exemplary embodiments have been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that such embodiments are merely illustrative of and not restrictive on the broad invention, and that this invention is not limited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown and described, since various other modifications may occur to those ordinarily skilled in the art. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
Again, the invention has application in many areas, particularly in internet storefront systems. Furthermore, the invention may extend to devices, systems and methods that would benefit from the invention. Those skilled in the art will understand that different combinations and permutations of the components described herein are possible within the spirit and scope of the invention, which is defined by the appended Claims, their equivalents, and also Claims presented in related applications in the future and their equivalents.
The invention may also involve a number of functions to be performed by a computer processor, such as a microprocessor. The microprocessor may be a specialized or dedicated microprocessor that is configured to perform particular tasks according to the invention, by executing machine-readable software code that defines the particular tasks embodied by the invention. The microprocessor may also be configured to operate and communicate with other devices such as direct memory access modules, memory storage devices, Internet related hardware, and other devices that relate to the transmission of data in accordance with the invention. The software code may be configured using software formats such as Java, C++, XML (Extensible Mark-up Language) and other languages that may be used to define functions that relate to operations of devices required to carry out the functional operations related to the invention. The code may be written in different forms and styles, many of which are known to those skilled in the art. Different code formats, code configurations, styles and forms of software programs and other means of configuring code to define the operations of a microprocessor in accordance with the invention will not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention.
Within the different types of devices, such as laptop or desktop computers, hand held devices with processors or processing logic, and also possibly computer servers or other devices that utilize the invention, there exist different types of memory devices for storing and retrieving information while performing functions according to the invention. Cache memory devices are often included in such computers for use by the central processing unit as a convenient storage location for information that is frequently stored and retrieved. Similarly, a persistent memory is also frequently used with such computers for maintaining information that is frequently retrieved by the central processing unit, but that is not often altered within the persistent memory, unlike the cache memory. Main memory is also usually included for storing and retrieving larger amounts of information such as data and software applications configured to perform functions according to the invention when executed by the central processing unit. These memory devices may be configured as random access memory (RAM), static random access memory (SRAM), dynamic random access memory (DRAM), flash memory, and other memory storage devices that may be accessed by a central processing unit to store and retrieve information. During data storage and retrieval operations, these memory devices are transformed to have different states, such as different electrical charges, different magnetic polarity, and the like. Thus, systems and methods configured according to the invention as described herein enable the physical transformation of these memory devices. Accordingly, the invention as described herein is directed to novel and useful systems and methods that, in one or more embodiments, are able to transform the memory device into a different state. The invention is not limited to any particular type of memory device, or any commonly used protocol for storing and retrieving information to and from these memory devices, respectively.
The term “machine-readable medium” should be taken to include a single medium or multiple media (e.g., a centralized or distributed database, and/or associated caches and servers) that store the one or more sets of instructions. The term “machine-readable medium” shall also be taken to include any medium that is capable of storing, encoding or carrying a set of instructions for execution by the machine and that causes the machine to perform any one or more of the methodologies of the present invention. The machine-readable medium includes any mechanism that provides (i.e., stores and/or transmits) information in a form readable by a machine (e.g., a computer, PDA, cellular telephone, etc.). For example, a machine-readable medium includes memory (such as described above); magnetic disk storage media; optical storage media; flash memory devices; biological electrical, mechanical systems; electrical, optical, acoustical or other form of propagated signals (e.g., carrier waves, infrared signals, digital signals, etc.). The device or machine-readable medium may include a micro-electromechanical system (MEMS), nanotechnology devices, organic, holographic, solid-state memory device and/or a rotating magnetic or optical disk. The device or machine-readable medium may be distributed when partitions of instructions have been separated into different machines, such as across an interconnection of computers or as different virtual machines.
While certain exemplary embodiments have been described and shown in the accompanying drawings, it is to be understood that such embodiments are merely illustrative of and not restrictive on the broad invention, and that this invention not be limited to the specific constructions and arrangements shown and described, since various other modifications may occur to those ordinarily skilled in the art. Accordingly, the specification and drawings are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive sense.
Reference in the specification to “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,” “some embodiments,” or “other embodiments” means that a particular feature, structure, or characteristic described in connection with the embodiments is included in at least some embodiments, but not necessarily all embodiments. The various appearances “an embodiment,” “one embodiment,” or “some embodiments” are not necessarily all referring to the same embodiments. If the specification states a component, feature, structure, or characteristic “may”, “might”, or “could” be included, that particular component, feature, structure, or characteristic is not required to be included. If the specification or Claim refers to “a” or “an” element, that does not mean there is only one of the element. If the specification or Claims refer to “an additional” element, that does not preclude there being more than one of the additional element.
The methods, systems and devices include improved systems and methods for downloading digital content and providing an infrastructure for compensation to authors and other monetization operations. Such systems would greatly benefit from increased convenience for both buyers and sellers. Although this embodiment is described and illustrated in the context of devices, systems and related methods of downloading authored content including music and software applications, the scope of the invention extends to other applications where such functions are useful. Furthermore, while the foregoing description has been with reference to particular embodiments of the invention, it will be appreciated that these are only illustrative of the invention and that changes may be made to those embodiments without departing from the principles of the invention, the scope of which is defined by the appended Claims and their equivalents.
| Number | Date | Country | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 61296049 | Jan 2010 | US | |
| 61244025 | Sep 2009 | US |
