Content Provisioning and Revenue Disbursement

Abstract

A method for provisioning content to users, including for each of a plurality of items of media content, maintaining information about one or more owners of the item of media content, and maintaining information about one or more providers of the item of media content, for each of a plurality of users, maintaining information about items of media content acquired by the user and about player devices owned by the user, for each of a plurality of time periods, maintaining a history log of items of media content played by one or more of the plurality of users during the time period, receiving a request from a user to play a designated item of media content on a designated player device, during a current time period, identifying an appropriate provider of the designated item of media content, according to a location of the user and according to the designated player device, causing the identified provider of the designated item of media content to transmit the designated item of media content to the user's designated player device, updating the history log for the current time period to reflect the user having played the designated item of media content, and calculating revenue disbursement among the owners of the plurality of items of media content, and the providers of the plurality of media content, for the current time period, based on the history log of the current time period. A system is also described and claimed.

Description

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS[0001]This application is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / 607,173, filed on Dec. 1, 2006, entitled “Media Management and Tracking,” which is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending U.S. application Ser. No. 11 / 261,687, filed on Oct. 28, 2005, entitled “Method and System for Tracking and Managing Rights for Digital Music,” which is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 893,473, filed on Jul. 16, 2004, entitled “Method and System for Managing Rights for Digital Music,” which is a continuation-in-part of assignee's pending U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 829,581, filed on Apr. 21, 2004, entitled “Portable Music Player and Transmitter,” which is a continuation-in-part of assignee's U.S. application Ser. No. 10 / 336,443, now U.S. Pat. No. 7,191,193, filed on Jan. 2, 2003, entitled “Automatic Digital Music Library Builder.”FIELD[0002]Embodiments of the present invention re...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0021]There is further provided in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention a method for content provisioning, including identifying media content stored on at least one of a consumer's media devices, generating a content registry of the consumer's media content identified by the identifying, generating a device registry of the consumer's media devices, generating a list of media content IDs for identifying versions of media content at one or more content suppliers, corresponding to content listed within the content registry, and for determining an appropriate source from which to transmit a designated version of media content to a designated media device from the device registry, in response to a request for media content issued by the consumer.

[0022]There is yet further provided in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention a content provisioning system, including a content identifier for identifying media content stored on at least one of a consumer's media devices, a registrar, coupled with the content identifier, for generating a content registry of the consumer's media content identified by the content identifier, and a device registry of the consumer's media devices, a content mapper, coupled with the registrar, for generating a list of media content IDs for identifying versions of media content at one or more content sources, corresponding to media content listed within the content registry, and a content router, coupled with the registrar and with the content mapper, for determining an appropriate source from which to transmit a designated version of media content to a designated media device from the device registry, in response to a request for media content issued by the consumer.

[0023]There is moreover provided in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention a method for provisioning content to users, including for each of a plurality of items of media content: maintaining information about one or more owners of the item of media content, and maintaining information about one or more providers of the item of media con

Problems solved by technology

The shift in paradigm from physically packaged content to content that is not stored on a consumer device, but instead streamed for playing, has been largely perceived by consumers as limiting.

Images