System and method for musical playlist selection in a portable audio device

Abstract

A portable audio playing device implements a jukebox manager function to permit the simple generation of musical playlists and the alteration or editing of existing playlists. Data, such as MPEG-3 data or other conventional audio format data, may be readily downloaded into the system for storage in a solid state memory or in a spinning media device. The audio tracks are associated with one or more metatags that are used to describe the content of each track. The metatags and associated audio tracks are stored in a data structure that may be implemented as a database or other convenient data structure that readily permits searching by user-specified search terms. The user generates a new playlist by selecting one or more metatags corresponding to the desired musical tracks. The system queries the data structure using the user-specified metatags and automatically generates a playlist containing one or more audio tracks whose metatags correspond to the user-specified metatags. Alternatively, the system may perform the same query and simply generate a results list that will allow the user to manually specify which of the audio tracks identified by the search process will be added to the newly created playlist. The system also permits the simple editing of existing playlists. New audio tracks may be added in the manner described above using metatags for searching or maybe manually added from the list of stored audio tracks. The system readily supports different audio formats and different playlist types.

Description

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION[0001]This application is a continuation of U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09 / 975,748 entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MUSICAL PLAYLIST SELECTION IN A PORTABLE AUDIO DEVICE, filed Oct. 10, 2001.TECHNICAL FIELD[0002]The present invention is related generally to portable audio devices and, more particularly, to a system and method for cataloging and creating playlists of audio data files.BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION[0003]Portable audio devices have evolved from large cumbersome analog tape players to highly miniaturized digital storage devices. Early portable audio devices were typically in the form of analog tape players that sequentially played musical selections (or other audio presentations). For example, a prerecorded audio tape could be purchased by the user and sequentially played in a portable tape player. However, the user had no control over the sequence of play other than to stop the playing and manually fast forward or rewind to skip ov...

AI Technical Summary

Problems solved by technology

However, the user had no control over the sequence of play other than to stop the playing and manually fast forward or rewind to skip over one or more selections.

However, the CD players described above are still limited to the selection of musical tracks on a single CD.

However, track selection and organization of such data files cannot be readily accomplished with conventional techniques.

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