Cross-Service Media Linking Via Unified Database
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing media playback systems face limitations in accessing media items across different streaming services due to unique database maintenance methods, making it difficult to retrieve media from one service using information from another.
Innovation Solution
A media-item database is maintained through crowd-sourced information from playback devices, comparing metadata from different services to infer and store associations between media items, allowing playback devices to access media items from one service using identifiers from another.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If each streaming service maintains its own unique database with service-specific media-item identifiers, then each service can independently manage and retrieve media items, but playback devices cannot access media items from different services using cross-service identifiers
Solution Approach 1:
A cloud-based computing system acts as an intermediary between multiple streaming services and playback devices. The system receives media-item information from different services, compares metadata, infers associations between media items, and stores these associations in a database. This allows playback devices to access media from various services using a unified approach without each service maintaining separate access mechanisms.
Solution Approach 2:
The media-item database and associated computing system provide universal access to media items across multiple streaming services. Instead of requiring separate database maintenance for each service, the system creates a unified structure that can store and retrieve media information from different services using common identifiers, enabling one system to serve multiple services.
2Productivity
If playback devices maintain separate databases for each streaming service, then media retrieval from each service is efficient, but the overall system cannot facilitate cross-service media linking and access
Solution Approach 1:
The system merges database functions by creating a single media-item database that consolidates information from multiple streaming services. The computing system receives media-item information from different services, compares their metadata, and stores associations between media items in a unified database structure. This allows efficient retrieval while maintaining cross-service linking capabilities.
3Adaptability or versatility
If the system implements comprehensive metadata comparison and association inference across all services, then cross-service media access is enabled, but the processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-comparing metadata from different services and pre-inferring associations between media items before actual playback requests. The computing system receives media-item information, compares metadata, and stores associations in advance, so that when playback devices need to access media from different services, the association data is already ready for quick retrieval.
Data Source
AI summary
Examples described herein relate to facilitating media item access via a media item database. For instance, a playlist may include audio tracks of a first streaming service (e.g., as uniform resource identifiers linking to streamable audio tracks). When a subscription to the first streaming service is not active, the playlist may be unplayable by a media playback system including a playback device. To play the playlist, a computing system may convert the playlist to audio tracks of a second streaming service and then send the converted playlist back to the media playback system for playback.