PLAY HISTORY BASED DETECTION OF SIMILAR DIGITAL WORKS OR WORK CREATORS

• US 20130254065A1
• Filed: 05/20/2013
• Published: 09/26/2013
• Est. Priority Date: 04/19/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Amazon Technologies, Inc. (Amazon.com, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Amazon.com, Inc.
• Inventors: Harbick, Andrew V., Spiegel, Joel R., Snodgrass, Ryan Justin
• Granted Patent: US 10,275,404 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/26.7
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/24578 using ranking
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/02 Marketing; Price estimation or determination; Fundraising
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0631 Item recommendations
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 51/02 using automatic reactions or user delegation, e.g. automatic replies or chatbot-generated messages

Abstract

A computer-implemented service recommends digital works (and/or creators of works) to a user based on works currently or previously played or downloaded by the user on a player device or based on playlists stored on the player device. The works may be, for example, music files, video files, electronic books, or other digital content for playing by users. A user may thus obtain personalized recommendations that are based on works obtained from sources (web sites, physical CDs, etc.) that are independent of the recommendations system. In one embodiment, the service identifies pairs of works (and/or work creators) that are similar to each other by virtue of the relatively high frequency with which they co-occur on playlists or within play histories of users. The resulting mappings are used to provide recommendations to users.

Claims

1. Non-transitory computer storage having stored thereon executable code that directs a computing system to implement a process that comprises:

storing metadata received over a network from each of a plurality of player devices of each of a plurality of users, said metadata associated with digital works played by the users on the player devices;

generating session-specific play histories using the received metadata, each session-specific play history identifying, for a particular play session, a set of digital works played on a player device during the particular play session;

assessing a degree to which a first digital work and a second digital work are related to each other based, at least in part, on a measure of how frequently the first and second digital works co-occur in the session-specific play histories; and

storing a result of the assessment in computer storage.

2. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the process comprises, for each of a plurality of play sessions, determining whether the first and second digital works were both played during the play session.

3. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the process comprises dividing a user'"'"'s play history into multiple sessions, and analyzing each of the multiple sessions separately.

4. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises using the result of the assessment to provide digital work recommendations to users.

5. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 4, wherein at least some of said recommendations are provided to users within an interactive electronic catalog that provides functionality for users to purchase digital works.

6. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the session-specific play histories include play event timestamps, and the process comprises using the play event timestamps to associate particular digital works with particular play sessions.

7. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the metadata comprises metadata read from the digital works by the player devices.

8. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 7, wherein the metadata read from the digital works comprises album/artist/track information encoded in the digital works.

9. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the metadata comprises data obtained by the player devices from user-generated playlists.

10. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the player devices include general purpose computing devices that run a player application.

11. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, wherein the process further comprises using the session-specific play histories to identify digital work creators that are related to each other.

12. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 1, in combination with said computing system, wherein the computing system is programmed via said executable code to implement said process.

13. Non-transitory computer storage having stored thereon executable code that directs a computing system to implement a process that comprises:

receiving metadata over a network from each of a plurality of player devices of each of a plurality of users, said metadata descriptive of digital works played by the users on said player devices;

generating session-specific play histories using the received metadata, each session-specific play history specifying, for a particular play session, a set of digital works played on a player device during the particular play session;

assessing a degree to which a first digital work creator and a second digital work creator are related to each other based, at least in part, on a measure of how frequently digital works of the first and second digital work creators co-occur in the session-specific play histories; and

storing a result of the assessment in computer storage.

14. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, wherein the process further comprises generating recommendations of items for users based at least partly on said result.

15. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, wherein the process comprises dividing a user'"'"'s play history into multiple sessions, and analyzing each of the multiple sessions separately.

16. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, wherein the session-specific play histories include event timestamps, and the process comprises using the event timestamps to associate particular digital works with particular play sessions.

17. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, wherein the metadata comprises metadata read from the digital works by the player devices.

18. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, wherein the metadata comprises data obtained by the player devices from user-generated playlists.

19. The non-transitory computer storage of claim 13, in combination with said computing system, wherein the computing system is programmed with said executable code to implement said process.

20. A system for detecting relationships, comprising:

a metadata reporting component that runs on player devices of users, said metadata reporting component comprising executable code that directs the player devices to monitor digital work play events on the player devices and to report, on a network, metadata associated with said play events, including metadata extracted from digital files of played digital works; and

a server system programmed to use the metadata reported by the player devices to maintain session-specific digital work play histories, each of which corresponds to a specific play session, said server system additionally programmed to detect relationships between particular digital works, and/or relationships between particular digital work creators, at least partly by analyzing the session-specific play histories.

21. The system of claim 20, wherein the metadata additionally includes digital work metadata obtained from user-generated playlists.

22. The system of claim 20, wherein the metadata includes play event timestamps, and the server system is programmed to use the play event timestamps to associate particular digital works with particular play sessions.

23. The system of claim 20, wherein the server system is programmed to detect relationships between particular digital work creators.

24. The system of claim 20, wherein the server system is additionally programmed to use the detected relationships to generate personalized recommendations for users.