On August 7, 2008, the US Patent & Trademark Office published Apple’s patent application titled Communicating and Storing Information Associated with Media Broadcasts. Apple’s patent generally relates to receiving media broadcasts and in particular to systems and methods for communicating and storing information associated with broadcasts. Apple’s first patent relating to this new live iTunes Broadcast Service for the iPhone and other wireless devices was published last week. In this week’s revelations, Apple presents us with details about their advanced Content Tags that covers HD Radio and HDTV programming. In addition, Apple’s broadcast partners will be able to embed advanced track identifiers as metadata in their broadcasts to ensure credit and/or payment from Apple. Content tags will also cover metadata for such things as album art, images from a book and even radio talk shows. Also noteworthy is Apple’s newly conceived concept referred to as “bleeding” – which allows users to send live broadcast tags to friends during a conversation on an iPhone. This secondary filing would strongly suggest that Apple is very close to releasing this new iTunes service relating to wireless broadcast TV services. This would be a significant new iPhone service for Christmas Holiday sales.

Apple’s Patent Background

Users listen to or watch broadcast media in a variety of contexts. For example, it is common to listen to the radio while driving or doing chores or the like. During such listening, the user may hear a song he or she likes but might not hear or be able to remember the title of the song or the name of the artist. Or a user might see a portion of a television (”TV”) broadcast that seems interesting but not catch the name of the program. Further, even when the identifying information is provided, the user might not have ready access to a pen or paper to write down the information and might not be able to remember it later. This can make it difficult for users who want to acquire interesting content to locate the content later.

In the case of music broadcasts (e.g., radio), various services have sprung up to assist users in identifying songs they hear. For example, radio stations maintain play lists indicating what songs were played when, and some services make these lists available to users. If the user knows which station he or she was listening to and the time when the song was played, the play list can be searched to identify the song. Other services identify songs from recorded segments in analog or digital formats. For example, a user with a mobile phone who hears a song playing in a shop can call a service and allow the service to “hear” a portion of the song. The service analyzes the sounds and identifies the song. Other services allow a user to send a digital recording (e.g., in MP3 format) of a segment of the song via the Internet or other digital data network; the service analyzes the digital recording and identifies the song.

These services are not always reliable. In the case of playlists, the user must remember the station identifying information (e.g., frequency or call letters) and the date and time. In the case of sample matching, the matching can be error-prone, particularly if the quality of the recording or live sound is poor. It would therefore be desirable to provide improved techniques to facilitate communication and storing of information about broadcasts.

About Content Tags

In some embodiments, a tag includes metadata associated with a received broadcast. Metadata can be available, e.g., in digital audio or video broadcast streams, such as HD radio or HDTV broadcasts. In some embodiments, one or more of the following sources can be used: radio data system (”RDS”) data, UPC data, international standard recording code (”ISRC”) data, Global Release Identifier (”GRid”) data, All Media Guide (”AMG”) data, application specific data (e.g., such as that used in media management and delivery systems similar to that offered under the trademark iTunes by Apple Inc. of Cupertino, Calif.), or any combination thereof.

A variety of information about the track and/or the broadcaster may be included in the metadata. Apple’s patent FIG. 2 is a table listing examples of metadata that can be captured by an accessory and/or Portable Media Device (PMD) such as the iPhone or other wireless device. In the table of FIG. 2, the broadcast is an audio track (e.g., a song) received from a radio station; it will be appreciated that other types of broadcast content (e.g., video broadcasts, spoken-word broadcasts, etc.) could also be tagged using similar metadata.

Metadata in one embodiment includes track-identifying information, such as track name (or title), artist name, album name, or a combination thereof. Metadata can also include a track identification code (TrackIdentifier), which can be e.g., a unique numerical value or character string identifier associated with the track. Multiple track identifiers may be supported. For example, various standard track identifiers such as an AMG identifier, an ISRC, or GRid can be used. In addition, a proprietor of a media delivery service (such as, for instance, the iTunes Store service of Apple Inc.) can define its own unique track identifiers and make those identifiers available to broadcast partners (selected broadcasters or all broadcasters); the broadcast partners can then embed these track identifiers as metadata in their broadcasts.

Metadata can also have temporal aspects. For example, the metadata associated with a radio talk show may change as the topics change. In this manner, the PMD can receive nontemporal metadata associated with the talk show, which is consistent for the length of the talk show, as well as temporal metadata that can be directed, e.g., to a book while the book is being discussed during the talk show or to a celebrity while the celebrity is being discussed during the talk show.

Station-identifying information can also be embedded in the broadcast data stream and extracted as metadata, e.g., by tag extraction engine. Station identifying information can include, for example, station frequency, station name, station genre, station call letters, station tagline, program name, disc jockey name, station message, station designated market area (DMA), station website URL, network affiliation of the station, or any combination thereof. In some embodiments, a broadcaster may register as a “broadcast partner” of a media asset delivery service. The service assigns a unique affiliate identifier to each broadcast partner, and the broadcast partner can include its affiliate identifier in the metadata for each track it broadcasts. If a user tags a track, the affiliate identifier can be recorded as part of the tag, and when a recorded tag is provided to media asset delivery service 178, the service receives the affiliate identifier. In the event that the user purchases the tagged track, the service can use the affiliate identifier to award payment or other credit to the broadcast partner whose broadcast led to the purchase. In some embodiments, metadata can also include images associated with the track, e.g., album art, cover or images from a book, or the like.

The amount and type of information available to be stored in a tag can depend on the broadcast source. In addition, different broadcast signals can include different types and/or different amounts of information. FIG. 3, noted above, is a table identifying some types of data fields supported by various known radio data services, such as HD radio program service data (”PSD”), HD radio station information service (”SIS”), HD radio station information guide (”SIG”), RDS, and satellite radio program associated data (”PAD”). Table 300 also identifies data fields that might be supported in an enterprise partner feed (”EPF”) used by broadcast partners of a media asset delivery service.

Portable Media Devices Using Multiple Communication Networks

Apple’s patent FIGS. 4A and 4B illustrate systems in which a Portable Media Device (PMD) uses two or more communication networks in an integrated manner in accordance with one embodiment of the present invention. Referring first to FIG. 4A, system 400 includes PMD 402 and broadcaster 404. System 400 can manage media information transmission (e.g., media track metadata) when there are bandwidth constraints. For example, in some cases, it may be desirable to provide large amounts of metadata with a media broadcast. However, due to bandwidth limits, it may be impractical to do so. System 400 can solve this problem by using bandwidth from more than one communication network to send large amounts of information for the same media broadcast. Some embodiments of the present invention provide for transmitting and downloading information (e.g., metadata) requiring larger bandwidth and/or transmitting and downloading information more quickly by communicating different portions of the information using different communication networks.

For example, in one embodiment, broadcaster 404 can transmit a media broadcast in multiple data segments A, B, and C, each of which can be encoded in a different communication format. The multiple communication formats can be appropriate for different communication networks (e.g., cellular, internet, terrestrial radio, satellite radio, terrestrial cable, satellite cable, etc.). PMD 402 can be equipped with multiple communication receivers 406a-c configured for receiving the multiple data segments in accordance with the different communication formats. Controller 408 processes and combines the multiple data segments as appropriate to reconstruct the complete transmission.

Bleeding a Media Broadcast into a Telephone Call

Apple’s patent FIG. 6 is a flow diagram of process 600 illustrating use of two or more communication networks in an integrated manner in accordance with another embodiment of the present invention. During a telephone call, a Portable Media Device (PMD), with integrated telephone capability (e.g., cell phone or other mobile phone capability) like the iPhone – can bleed a media broadcast into a call responsive to a user request. For example, the PMD can provide visual indication of the media being played by a radio broadcast currently being received and can selectively bleed the media stream into the telephone conversation at the user’s request. The user then can tag a media file being played and share a copy the tag with the person on the other end of the line or other people.

The process starts (step 601) in an idle state. In step 602, the PMD can connect the telephone call; for instance, the user may operate controls of the PMD to place a call or accept an incoming call. In step 604, the integrated device can output media track information or metadata being provided with the media broadcast (e.g., title and artist of a currently playing song). In one embodiment, the integrated device has a display on which the metadata can be provided to the user.

When the user is interested in the media track being played, the user can actuate a user input component of the PMD to indicate the desire to tag, purchase, or record the media track (not explicitly shown in FIG. 6). Alternatively, the user can actuate a user input component to indicate the user’s desire to bleed the media broadcast into the call (step 606). If the user does not indicate a desire to bleed the media broadcast into the call, then provided that the call has not ended (step 608), the process continues to output media track info (step 604) and await further user input.
If the user indicates a desire to bleed the media broadcast into the call, then at step 610, the PMD begins bleeding the media broadcast into the call, making the broadcast audible to all parties connected to the call. The user can continue with the telephone conversation and interact with the media broadcast, e.g., by tagging media tracks, purchasing media tracks, and/or recording the media broadcast as described below. In particular, if the user or another party to the call is interested in a particular media track being played, the user or the other party can tag the media track.

Other areas that are greatly detailed in this patent are clearly titled, Storing Tags in a PMD; Processes for Capturing Tags; Ambiguous Tags; Access to Tagged Media – and Sharing Tags.

Apple lists the following engineers associated with this patent: Jesse Lee Dorogusker (Menlo Park, CA), Emily Clark Schubert (Los Altos, CA), Donald J. Novotney (San Jose, CA), Anthony M. Fadell (Portola Valley, CA), Michael Benjamin Hailey (Campbell, CA), Chris Bell (Pacifica, CA), Steve Saro Gedikian (Cupertino, CA), Robert Edward Borchers (Pleasanton, CA), Jay Laefer (Sunnyvale, CA), Gregory Thomas Lydon (Santa Cruz, CA), Lawrence G. Bolton (Fremont, CA) and Eric Oliver (Cupertino, CA).

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Written and researched by Neo.