GENERATING A PLAYLIST

• US 20120290621A1
• Filed: 05/09/2011
• Published: 11/15/2012
• Est. Priority Date: 05/09/2011
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Google LLC (Alphabet Inc.)
• Inventors: Weston, Jason E., Weiss, Ron J., Bengio, Samy, Ponte, Jay M., Heitz, Geremy A. III, Berenzweig, Adam, Goldman, Sally A., Walters, Thomas, Eck, Douglas, Rifkin, Ryan M.
• Granted Patent: US 10,055,493 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 707/780
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/639 using playlists
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/683 using metadata automatically derived from the content

Abstract

Generating a playlist may include designating a seed track in an audio library; identifying audio tracks in the audio library having constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track, where the constructs for the audio tracks are derived from frequency representations of the audio tracks, and the corresponding construct for the seed track is derived from a frequency representation of the seed track; and generating the playlist using at least some of the audio tracks that were identified.

Claims

1. A method of generating a playlist, comprising:

designating a seed track in an audio library, the audio library comprising audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the seed track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track; and

generating the playlist using at least some of the identified audio tracks.

2. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining distances between the construct for the seed track and the constructs for the audio tracks;

wherein identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track comprises comparing the distances to a designated distance corresponding to the range.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein the distances are determined using cosine similarity measurements.

4. The method of claim 2, further comprising applying weights to the distances, the weights being indicative of relative importance of frequency representations of audio tracks in generating the playlist.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein each audio track is represented by a second construct derived from attributes of the corresponding audio track, and the seed track is represented by a corresponding second construct derived from an attribute associated with the seed track;

and

wherein the method further comprises;

determining distances between the second constructs for the audio tracks and the corresponding second construct for the seed track;

wherein identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track comprises comparing the distances to a designated distance corresponding to the range.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising determining the constructs, wherein determining a construct for an audio track comprises:

obtaining metadata tags for the audio track, the metadata tags relating to one or more attributes of the audio track;

generating the frequency representation for the audio track; and

generating the construct using at least one of the metadata tags and the frequency representation.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein obtaining the metadata tags comprises:

retrieving information about the audio track from one or more sources; and

generating the metadata tags using the information.

8. The method of claim 6, wherein the construct is generated using a machine-learning technique configured to move, towards each other, audio tracks in a same or similar genre in an N-dimensional space (N≧

2), the N-dimensional space being derived from features of the audio tracks.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

using one or more heuristics to select audio tracks within the range;

wherein the playlist is generated using the audio tracks that were selected using the one or more heuristics.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the one or more heuristics comprise limitations on numbers of audio tracks having a specific attribute.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein each of the audio tracks is represented by a second construct derived from a corresponding artist associated with the audio track, and the seed track is represented by a corresponding second construct derived from an artist associated with the seed track;

and

wherein the method further comprises;

determining distances between the second constructs for the audio tracks and the corresponding second construct for the seed track;

wherein identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track comprises comparing the distances to a designated distance corresponding to the range.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising designating a second audio track in an audio library;

identifying additional audio tracks in the audio library having second constructs that are within a range of a corresponding second construct of the second audio track, the second constructs for the additional audio tracks being derived from second frequency representations of the additional audio tracks, and the corresponding second construct for the second audio track being derived from a second frequency representation of the seed track; and

wherein the playlist is generated using at least some of the additional audio tracks that were identified.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising ordering tracks in the playlist in accordance with a decreasing-similarity preference function.

14. An apparatus comprising a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, in response to execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

designating a seed track in an audio library, the audio library comprising audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the seed track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track; and

generating the playlist using at least some of the identified audio tracks.

15. A system for generating a playlist, comprising:

one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing instructions; and

one or more processing devices for using the instructions to perform operations comprising;

designating a seed track in an audio library, the audio library comprising audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the seed track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track; and

generating the playlist using at least some of the identified audio tracks.

16. A system for generating a playlist, comprising:

an interface for communication over a network; and

means for performing operations comprising;

designating a seed track in an audio library, the audio library comprising audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the seed track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks in the audio library having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the seed track; and

generating the playlist using at least some of the identified audio tracks.

17. A method of identifying similar audio tracks, comprising:

designating a first track among multiple audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the first track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks among the multiple audio tracks having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the first track; and

outputting an indication that the first track and the audio tracks are similar.

18. The method of claim 17, further comprising:

determining distances between the construct for the first track and the constructs for the audio tracks;

wherein identifying audio tracks among the multiple audio tracks having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the first track comprises comparing the distances to a designated distance corresponding to the range.

19. An apparatus comprising a non-transitory machine-readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, in response to execution by a computing device, cause the computing device to perform operations comprising:

designating a first track among multiple audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the first track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks among the multiple audio tracks having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the first track; and

outputting an indication that the first track and the audio tracks are similar.

20. A system for generating a playlist, comprising:

one or more non-transitory machine-readable storage media storing instructions; and

one or more processing devices for using the instructions to perform operations comprising;

designating a first track among multiple audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the first track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks among the multiple audio tracks having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the first track; and

outputting an indication that the first track and the audio tracks are similar.

21. A system for generating a playlist, comprising:

an interface for communication over a network; and

means for performing operations comprising;

designating a first track among multiple audio tracks, each of the audio tracks, including the first track, being represented by a construct, each construct being derived from a frequency representation of a corresponding audio track;

identifying audio tracks among the multiple audio tracks having corresponding constructs that are within a range of a corresponding construct of the first track; and

outputting an indication that the first track and the audio tracks are similar.