BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The field of the invention relates to methods and to computing devices for metering and reporting playbacks of digital media content.

2. Technical Background

Historically, licensing of rights to digital media content has been restricted to an all-or- nothing license on a per-item basis.

For example, artists and other rights holders would collect royalties if a music track was played and would not receive royalties if it was not played in full. Because no technology existed to monitor and record and report upon partial playbacks of digital media content, there has been no concept of a partial play of a music track.

3. Discussion of Related Art

Metering technology has historically allowed the reporting of a playback of a piece of digital media content for reporting purposes, and has also permitted preview clips of a predefined portion of that content, often used to provided a free sample of the whole work.

In WO2010023486 (Al) there is disclosed a distributed digital media metering and reporting system which makes available digital media files for multiple consumer devices from a computer-based infrastructure. The consumer devices meter the number of playbacks of a media file that last beyond a predefined extent, in order to generate metering data, and then automatically report that metering data back to the computer- based infrastructure. Historically, licensing of rights to digital media content has been restricted to all-or- nothing licenses on a per-item basis: royalties are purchased to an entire piece of digital media content or are not paid at all for short clips. Due to limitations of the available technology, such short clips have traditionally been provided on a "preview" basis, with terms and conditions attached such as requiring a prominent link to allow the end user to purchase the full content.

However, some digital media services would require more flexibility than that historical all-or-nothing rights reporting. Some examples of activities which require the rights to play back only specific clips include:

• quiz applications which ask that a user identify a music track, movie or television show from a clip of the content

• music tracks, such as mash-ups, which incorporate elements or samples from other tracks

· videos, such as clip shows, compilations or mash-ups, which incorporate substantial extracts of other video or music.

In such circumstances, historically available technology is inadequate for the purpose and traditional limitations imposed due to those inadequacies are not appropriate (for example, a quiz which asks the user to identify a music track is not a suitable location to place a button linking to the purchase of that track).

To date, the only way to permit licensing of such extracts from digital media content has been to either license the full content— which can be prohibitively expensive— or to enter into, often complex and detailed, negotiations to purchase each of the partial playback licenses specifically required for an individual application.

The present invention provides a mechanism for monitoring partial playbacks of digital media content of arbitrary length and collating such content playbacks to permit royalties to be collected and distributed to rights holders on the basis of such partial playbacks. There is thus introduced a previously unavailable flexibility into the management of digital content rights. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION

The present invention provides a method for recording partial playbacks of digital media content, primarily for the purpose of enabling the collection and distribution of royalties due for such partial playbacks to the respective rights holders.

According to a first aspect of the invention, there is provided a method for reporting the playback of a constituent part of a digital media content file by (a) identifying which digital media content file was played on or near a client device; (b) identifying which portion or portions of that digital media content file were played; (c) providing information concerning that playback to a remote server; (d) associating constituent parts of digital media content files with rights information; and (e) generating a report of that partial playback. The method may be one where the digital media file is identified using metadata about the digital media content file supplied by the client device.

The method may be one where the digital media file is identified using Digital Signal Processing (DSP) analysis of sounds played on, by or in the vicinity of the client device.

The method may be one where the playback metrics provided to the remote server incorporate one or more of: the duration of the partial playback, the start point in the digital media content file of the partial playback, the ending point in the digital media content file of the partial playback, identifying information for the service provider which provided that digital media content file for playback, identifying information for the client device which recorded or played that digital media content file, the location of that playback and any other pertinent metadata concerning that playback.

The method may be one where the partial playback of the digital media file is identified by the remote server checking previously-registered records denoting which partial playbacks are incorporated into digital media content the playback of which has been reported to that remote server. The method may be one where the partial playback consists of the playing of the digital media content file, whether of a specified portion or in its entirety.

The method may be one where the digital media content file which is recorded as having been partially played (the "partial playback") is comprised of multiple channels or stems, each of which would in the full playback of that digital media content file ordinarily be played simultaneously.

The method may be one where the partial playback consists of the playing of one stem or a specified combination of stems, whether of a specified portion or played in their entirety.

The method may be one where the identity of the rights holder or rights holders of the partial playback is accessible to the remote server.

The method may be one where royalty information is associated with the partial playback, whether assigned manually or automatically.

The method may be one where royalty information for the partial playback is determined automatically based on one or more of the duration of the partial playback and a DSP analysis of the digital media content file.

The method may be one where the DSP analysis of the digital media content file is used to identify well known portions ("hooks") of that media content for the purpose of automatic or manual assignment of royalties to those specific hooks.

The method may be one where royalties are calculated based on the duration of the partial playback if the portion of the digital media content file played is not otherwise assigned a specific royalty, such as by virtue of containing or comprising of a hook.

The method may be one where the duration of the partial playback determines the royalty fees charged proportionally based on the percentage of the full digital media content file of which the partial playback consists, whether measured in terms of duration or data size or by any other measure. The method may be one where the royalties assigned to a partial playback differ according to the quality of that partial playback, whether measured in terms of the bitrate of the digital audio or video played or by any other measure.

The method may be one where the royalty fees due are calculated using a combination of the methods disclosed in any of the previous six sentences.

The method may be one where the report generated by the remote server details the amount of royalty fees due for one or more partial playbacks together with information as to which party or parties are due to pay those royalty fees to which rights holders.

According to a second aspect of the invention, there is provided a computing device including a computer program product embodied on a non-transient storage medium and a processor, the computer program product when running on the computing device operable to report the playback of a constituent part of a digital media content file by (a) identifying which digital media content file was played on or near a client device; (b) identifying which portion or portions of that digital media content file were played; (c) providing information concerning that playback to a remote server; (d) associating constituent parts of digital media content files with rights information; and (e) generating a report of that partial playback.

The computing device may be further configured to perform the method steps according to any aspect of the first aspect of the invention.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The above and other aspects of the invention will now be described, by way of example only, with reference to the following Figures, in which:

Figure 1 shows an example of a waveform representation of audio, indicating identified hooks.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Definitions For convenience, and to avoid needless repetition, the terms "music" and "media content" in this document are to be taken to encompass all "media content" which is in digital form or which it is possible to convert to digital form - including but not limited to books, magazines, newspapers and other periodicals, video in the form of digital video, motion pictures, television shows (as series, as seasons and as individual episodes), computer games and other interactive media, images (photographic or otherwise) and music.

Similarly, the term "track" indicates a specific item of media content, whether that be a song, a television show, an eBook or portion thereof, a computer game or any other discreet item of media content.

The terms "playlist", "timeline" and "album" are used interchangeably to indicate collections of "tracks" and/or interstitials which have been conjoined together such that they may be treated as a single entity for the purposes of analysis or recommendation.

The terms "digital media catalogue", "digital music catalogue", "media catalogue" and "catalogue" are used interchangeably to indicate a collection of tracks and/ or albums to which a user may be allowed access for listening purposes. The digital media catalogue may aggregate both digital media files and their associated metadata or, in another example embodiment, the digital media and metadata may be delivered from multiple such catalogues. There is no implication that only one such catalogue exists, and the term encompasses access to multiple separate catalogues simultaneously, whether consecutively, concurrently or by aggregation. The actual catalogue utilised by any given operation may be fixed or may vary over time and/ or according to the location or access rights of a particular device or end-user.

The abbreviation "DRM" is used to refer to a "Digital Rights Management" system or mechanism used to grant access rights to a digital media file. The verbs "to listen", "to view" and "to play" are to be taken as encompassing any interaction between a human and media content, whether that be listening to audio content, watching video or image content, reading books or other textual content, playing a computer game, interacting with interactive media content or some combination of such activities. In addition, the playing of digital media content is to be further construed as occurring where some or all of one digital media content file is incorporated within another digital media content file such that playing the latter would necessitate the former also being played. The terms "user", "consumer", "end user" and "individual" are used interchangeably to refer to the person, or group of people making use of the facilities provided by the interface. In all cases, the masculine includes the feminine and vice versa.

The terms "device" and "media player" are used interchangeably to refer to any computational device which is capable of playing digital media content, including but not limited to MP3 players, television sets, home entertainment system, home computer systems, mobile computing devices, games consoles, handheld games consoles, In- Vehicle Equipment (IVE) or other vehicular-based media players or any other applicable device or software media player on such a device. Something essentially capable of playback of media.

The term "DSP" ("Digital Signal Processing") refers to any computational processing of digital media content in order to extract additional metadata from that content. Such calculated metadata may take a variety of forms, including deriving the tempo of a musical track or identifying one or more spots within the digital media file which are gauged to be representative of that content as a whole.

The term "hook" is used to refer to one or more portions of a digital media file which have been identified, whether via DSP or manually or by some other method, as being representative of the content as a whole. For example, a movie trailer consists of a series of one or more "hooks" from the movie while particularly apposite riffs or lines from a musical track serve a similar identifying purpose. The terms "partial playback" and "extract" are used interchangeably to refer to the playback of an item of digital media content where that item is not played back in its entirety or is incorporated into another item of digital media content. Detailed Description

The present invention provides a method for metering and reporting the partial playback of digital media content by identifying the piece of digital media content which is played on a client device, identifying the portion and/or duration of that content which is played and relaying that information to a server which is capable of generating reports using mechanisms such as are disclosed below.

1 Metering Partial Playbacks In the preferred embodiment, the digital media content is identified by the server which provides that content to the client device. In another example embodiment, the digital media content is identified by utilising a software application, which may reside on the client device or on a remote computer and which may, in some embodiments, be integrated into the digital media player on the client device, to interrogate the digital media player on the client device. In a further example embodiment, the digital media content is identified by digital signal processing (DSP) of audio and/ or video from digital media content which is playing and analysing that data to identify the digital media content being played. In the preferred embodiment, that portion of the digital media content which is played on the client device is identified by interrogation of the digital media player on the client device. In a further example embodiment, the portion of the digital media content which is played on the client device is identified by DSP analysis. 2 Reporting Partial Playbacks

The base metrics concerning playback are provided to a remote server: those metrics consist of at least the identity of the digital media content played on the client device and the duration of that portion of that content which was played. In the preferred embodiment, an identifier is also provided for the service provider who is licensed to play back that digital media content. In another example embodiment, an identifier for the client device which played that content (or the end user to which that device is registered) is also provided. In still another example embodiment, those portions of the digital media track which were played are also identified by their start and/or end positions within that digital media content file. In a further example embodiment, the recorded audio or a digital signature thereof is supplied to the remote server in addition to or instead of the identity of the digital media content played on, by or in the vicinity of the client device.

The data collected by metering partial playbacks may be utilised in a variety of ways in addition to those disclosed above, including to determine the payment of royalties and the level of charges levied in either a business to business or a business to consumer context.

In a further example embodiment, the playback of a given track which incorporates partial elements from other tracks automatically triggers the reporting of those constituent partial playbacks. For example, if a track is played which incorporates samples from two other tracks then the reporting of that track automatically results in the report that those samples were also played, the information concerning those samples having been previously registered on the remote server.

In the preferred embodiment, the metering data used to determine the amount of royalties due to the rights holder of the digital media content is based on the identity of the content played on the client device and/ or the amount of that content which was played on that client device.

For example, supposing that a cost of the rights to play back a five minute music track were to be set at $1.00, playback of one second of that track might be set at $0.01 or $0.02 depending on the identity of that track. Playbacks of differing durations might similarly be set to differing rates, such as five seconds costing $0.03 and 30 seconds $0.05: the association between duration of playback and cost might be determined on a pro rata basis in some embodiments (or for some rights holders or for some tracks) but on a different basis, such as a logarithmic scale, in other cases. In the preferred embodiment, one task of the reporting server is to perform such calculations to determine the royalties due for each playback— partial or full— of digital media content on each client device.

In another example embodiment, the costs associated with playback are levied according to the amount of data transferred, measured in eg. megabytes or kilobytes of the data played by the end user or the bandwidth consumed by the streamed or downloaded digital media or by any other appropriate metric.

In still another example embodiment, the class or value of the digital media content is used to determine pricing. In the preferred embodiment, a combination of the duration played, the amount of data transferred or played, the assigned value of the digital media content and/or any other appropriate considerations may be used, in part or in combination, to form the basis of the reports produced, and hence the royalties charged, for each such playback of digital media content.

3 Multi-channel tracks In some cases, an item of digital media content may consist of multiple constituent stems, also known as channels, which may be mixed together to produce the digital media content. For example, a given music track may constitute one or more main vocal stems, a backing vocals stem, a stem containing a bass line, other stems containing other musical instruments and so forth. Furthermore, additional stems may also be supplied which are intended for use as alternatives to one another, such as a stem providing an alternative bass line or even different vocal stems which may be used to mix differing editions of a song, such as a radio edit as opposed to an album edit of the track or differing sound mixes. Similarly, zero, one or more digital video stems may also be supplied as part of a piece of digital media content, as for movies, television shows, music videos, advertisements or any other digital video. Stems may also contain textual or other digital information, such as subtitles or song lyrics, karaoke timings, images or data identifying how stems may be mixed together to create a specific version of the digital media content. Mixing information and/or stems may be supplied in a single file or in multiple files as desired. The methods by which stems are packaged or distributed has no relevant impact on the workings of the present invention: in the preferred embodiment, the present invention can handle the simple case where a single-stem music track encodes of the audio information in a single digital entity or a complex case, in which mixing information is provided to enable the creation one or more digital entities from stems encoded in one or more individual files, or any intermediate cases.

The present invention, in one example embodiment, allows each stem to be assigned a value which may be used to calculate the royalties due on playback of that stem (as disclosed below). In a further example embodiment, each portion of each stem may be assigned separate royalty information, as disclosed below.

4 Royalty information In its preferred embodiment, the present invention allows each item of digital media content, and/or its constituent stems (as disclosed above), to be assigned metadata which may be used to report on playback of that digital media content, in whole or in part.

That "royalty information" may be utilised, and in the preferred embodiment is utilised, to report on full or partial playbacks of that digital media content and comprises one or more of:

• An identifier as to which portion of the digital media content the royalty information pertains, identified by the start and/ or end points of the content (whether by timing or by positions within the digital media file or both, defaulting in the preferred embodiment to the entire range of the track if omitted)

• An identifier as to which stem of the digital media content the royalty information pertains, defaulting in the preferred embodiment to the entirety of the digital media content within the specified range if omitted • In the preferred embodiment, data to identify the royalties due on playback of the specified range of digital media content, with that identifier capable of being used to identify the amount of royalties due and to whom those royalties are to be paid. In the preferred embodiment, combinations of stems may be assigned royalties derived from the royalties due for playback of the individual stems. Also in the preferred embodiment, discounting modifiers may be used when calculating the royalties due from such combinations. For example, given a movie consisting of a video stem, an audio vocals stem, an audio soundtrack stem and an English subtitles stem then (each portion of each) stem may be assigned a separate royalty which sum to $2 per hour of digital media if those individual royalties are simply added together whereas the royalty due for playback of the entire movie (i.e. a combination of all stems, one or more of which may be optional) might be derived from that simple summing by use of a modifier such as to calculate the royalty due on playback of that movie as being $1 per hour. In that way, in the preferred embodiment, royalties for the constituent stems do not necessarily have to be set so as to sum to the royalty for the entire digital content item (in this example, that item being the movie including all stems which comprise that movie).

In the preferred embodiment, royalties for constituent stems may similarly be calculated based on the royalty set for the entire digital content item.

In the preferred embodiment, the royalties for stems may in addition be set conditionally depending on which other stems are played simultaneously. For example, the lyrics stem for a music track might attract a royalty of 0.1 cent if played back (or displayed) on its own but might attract no additional royalties at all if played back at the same time as the audio stems for that digital media content item.

In one example embodiment, mixing information which describes how (portions stems are to be mixed so as to produce an item of digital media content may also assigned royalty information in the same manner. In a further example embodiment, royalties may be set individually for each separate stem. For example, a stem or combination of stems which contain audio data for the vocals of a song could be set to attract a higher rate of royalties as compared to a stem containing the bass line of a song, or vice versa.

In a further example embodiment, royalties may be set differently on differing portions of a single stem as well as, or instead of, being set differently on differing portions of an entire digital media item. For example, the vocal stem of the Lulu song "Shout" might attract a different royalty from the guitar stem of that same song, with the iconic opening line of that vocal stem itself attracting higher royalties than other portions of that same stem.

In a further example embodiment, the royalties due on playback of a portion of a stem may be calculated proportionately based on the royalties due on playback of that entire stem, such that playback of one minute of a three minute stem would by default attract royalty payments amounting to one third of those due on playback of that entire stem. In another example embodiment, that calculation is utilised only where that portion of the stem, or a subset thereof, is not otherwise specifically assigned a royalty. In a still further example embodiment, the calculation of the amount of royalties due may be made to allow differing royalties for each portion of a stem and/or of a digital media content item.

In the preferred embodiment, a combination of the examples listed above may be utilised such that particular portions of digital media items and/or their constituent stems are able to attract royalties at differing rates, whether those rates be specifically assigned to those portions or calculated based on rates assigned to the overall track or to portions thereof, or by any combination of those techniques.

For example, in the preferred embodiment (and bringing together several of the above approaches) the musical track "Shout" by Lulu might have a royalty of $0.50 set for the overall track, $0.30 for the vocal stem and $0.15 for the opening line of the vocal stem. Royalties for the non-vocal stems might be set at $0.25 when used independently of the vocal stem but defined to attract no additional royalties when used in combination with the vocal stem. Karaoke timing and/ or lyrics might be similarly set to attract royalties of $0.01. With such settings, other royalties might then be derived automatically and proportionately. Thus, in this example, playback of that track (without vocals) in a karaoke context would attract royalties of $0.26 (non-vocals plus karaoke stem), playback of the entire track would cost $0.50 and the incorporation of just the opening line, with or without music (since the music stems were set to not attract additional royalties when used in combination with the vocal stem), would attract royalties of $0.15.

5 Selection of Partial Playbacks As disclosed above, the preferred embodiment of the present invention permits the rights holder to set the level of royalties due based on the individual digital media content item and the portion thereof played on the client device.

In the preferred embodiment, a corollary of that system is that different portions of the partial playback of an item of digital media content may be assigned different royalty rates. In particular, the preferred embodiment permits "hooks" (see elsewhere in this document) within each item of digital media content to be identified, automatically or manually, and, also automatically or manually, to be assigned different royalty rates from those applied to other portions of the same digital media content.

5.1 The Hook

A "hook" is a piece of audio, video or both which is identified within a piece of digital media content as being representative of that content, whether that be representative in the sense of being evocative of that content or of being a particularly identifiable or recognisable area of that content.

For example, the opening bars of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony would be considered an identifiable "hook" for that piece, while a short segment of vocals or a particular riff or other sequence from a popular music track (such as Lulu's cry of at the start of "Shout", for example, or a specific riff from the middle of Michael Jackson's "Thriller") might similarly constitute "hooks" for those pieces. Similarly, one or more scenes of a movie or television show or a sequence recorded from a computer game may be identified as "hooks" for those items of digital media content (examples of such video "hooks" may commonly be found in trailers for those pieces of content).

A variety of ways of identifying such "hooks" exist in legacy technologies, including both manual identification of hooks and their auto-detection via DSP, digital signal processing, technologies, whether pre-existing or developed or customised for use in concert with the present invention.

However identified, a given piece of digital media content may feature one or more "hooks" which may then be utilised by the present invention as disclosed within this document.

Hooks are typically short pieces of audio/video content, often no more than 10 seconds in duration and, in the preferred embodiment, approximately 1 to 6 seconds in duration.

FIGURE 1 illustrates an example of a waveform where several hooks have been identified, and marked graphically. In the example, point 1 indicates the start of the vocals, point 2 is an identified riff which is evocative of the tenor of the piece and point 3 is a section of the content which is recognisably memorable. How each hook was identified is not important for the purposes of the present invention— it is important only that such hooks can be identified for use, whether automatically or manually marked as points in the track.

Note

It is to be understood that the above-referenced arrangements are only illustrative of the application for the principles of the present invention. Numerous modifications and alternative arrangements can be devised without departing from the spirit and scope of the present invention. While the present invention has been shown in the drawings and fully described above with particularity and detail in connection with what is presently deemed to be the most practical and preferred example(s) of the invention, it will be apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art that numerous modifications can be made without departing from the principles and concepts of the invention as set forth herein.