Wireless communication devices, such as mobile handsets, pagers and other two-way messaging devices, have had the capability to receive data and/or voice from the wireless communication system. Besides this basic wireless communication functionality, other technical achievements have been integrated onto the wireless communication devices. In recent years, as the speeds of wireless communication equipments and the speed of processors increase, the wireless communication devices have been provided with complete Internet access via web browsers or application software tailored to the wireless communication. As the wireless communication devices have advanced so as to serve as players for listening to music and viewing videos, the downloading of music and video to wireless communication devices has become widespread.
To meet needs for downloading music and video, a lot of music and video vendors provide websites through which the wireless communication device users can download music (including ringtones and ringback tones) and video over the air into the communication devices. The vendors' websites provide catalogs, which categorize music and video e.g. according to artists (directors or actors), albums or titles, in various ways, for the wireless communication device users to conveniently search and find their desired music or video. Since the vendors' catalogs, however, have different formats with each other, even the same music of the same artist is represented by different textual identifications in the vendors' catalogs. A similar problem may arise even within one catalog, if one item appears in multiple forms (e.g. MP3 audio, MPEG video and/or ringtone) if the textual identifications are inconsistent.
On the other hand, wireless communication service providers provide media platforms from which the wireless communication device users buy and download diverse music and video from the plurality of vendors and/or from the wireless communication service providers. The music or the like bought from the media platform may be downloaded onto the wireless communication devices via the wireless network directly, and be downloaded to the PCs via the landline network, in which, thereafter, the downloaded music in the PCs are transferred to the wireless communication devices via wireless or wired cables. The media platforms need to provide catalogs of music and video, which categorize music and video according to artists (directors), albums and titles and pull together diverse versions of the same music and video, for convenience of wireless communication device users in searching and finding their desired music and video. It has been proposed that one service provider, e.g. a wireless service provider, might offer a “store” that offers collective access for searching and possibly purchasing of content files. Although some content may reside on the store's server, many of the actual content files reside on any number of other vendors' servers. However, since the vendors' catalogs have different formats and different descriptive texts for title or track and artist names from each other, it is difficult to categorize music and video and pull together diverse versions of the same music or video from plural vendors' catalogs, particularly to provide a comprehensive unified catalog for the multimedia store.
Hence, a need exists for a method and a system that finds and matches the same music and video from their diverse versions in one or more vendors' catalogs, categorize the diverse versions of the same music and video in the media platform according to artists (directors), album, or title, and allow multimedia content in a manner that is the catalog to be used more effectively in searching and downloading conveniently to the users.
Another need exists for piecing together and categorizing a list of music and video or the like from plural vendors' catalogs according to artists (directors), album, or title and providing a harmonized catalog to wireless communication device users.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds