System and method for generating purchased media

Abstract

An archiving system is provided for archiving a user's media collection and refining recommendations made to the user by an e-commerce service, such as an e-commerce website, based on the archive of the user's media collection. In general, a central archiving system interacts with a user system to archive a user's media collection. Thereafter, while the user is interacting with the e-commerce service, a list of recommended media for the user is generated and provided to the archiving system. The archiving system refines the list based on the archive of the user's media collection. Optionally, the list of recommended media may be further refined based on a user profile and play history of the user. The refined list of recommended media is returned to the e-commerce service and presented to the user.

1 . A system comprising:
 a communication interface for receiving communications from an e-commerce service; and   a control system associated with the communication interface and adapted to:
 store information identifying a media collection in an associated storage unit; 
 receive information identifying media purchased from the e-commerce service; 
 generate the purchased media based on a corresponding reference media file and a desired encoding algorithm; 
 update the information identifying the media collection to include the generated media; and 
 provide the generated media to a computing system associated with the media collection. 
   
     
     
         2 . The system of  claim 1 , wherein the control system is further adapted to:
 receive a list of recommended media from the e-commerce service; and   refine the list of recommended media based on the information identifying the media collection.   
     
     
         3 . The system of  claim 2  wherein the e-commerce service comprises a recommendation engine operating to generate the list of recommended media while a user is interacting with the e-commerce service. 
     
     
         4 . The system of  claim 2  wherein the list of recommended media identifies a plurality of media files, and the control system is further adapted to limit a number of the plurality of media files in the list of recommended media to a predetermined number of media files. 
     
     
         5 . The system of  claim 2  wherein the list of recommended media identifies a plurality of albums, and the control system is further adapted to limit a number of the plurality of albums in the list of recommended media to a predetermined number of albums. 
     
     
         6 . The system of  claim 1  wherein information identifying the media collection is an archive of the media collection. 
     
     
         7 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the communication interface is further adapted to communicatively couple the control system to a user system associated with a user, and the control system is further adapted to:
 receive information regarding media content and an encoding algorithm for each of a plurality of media files in the media collection; 
 identify the media content and the encoding algorithm for each of the plurality of media files based on the information regarding the media content and the encoding algorithm for each of the plurality of media files; and 
 generate an archive record operating as an archive of the media collection, the archive record comprising information identifying the media content and information identifying the encoding algorithm for each of the plurality of media files rather than the plurality of media files. 
 
     
     
         8 . The system of  claim 7  wherein the control system is further adapted to:
 receive a notification identifying the purchased media from the e-commerce service; and 
 update the archive record of the media collection to include the purchased media from the e-commerce service in response to receiving the notification. 
 
     
     
         9 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the control system is further adapted to:
 store information identifying media files in the media collection of each of a plurality of users including the information identifying the media files in the media collection; 
 receive advertisements and criteria for identifying a target group of the plurality of users for each of the advertisements from an advertiser via a network; 
 identify the target group of the plurality of users for each of the advertisements based on the criteria for each of the advertisements and the information identifying the media files in the_media collection of each of the plurality of users; and 
 provide the advertisements to the target group of the plurality of users. 
 
     
     
         10 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the control system is further adapted to:
 store information identifying media files in the media collection of each of a plurality of users including the information identifying the media files in the media collection; 
 receive criteria for identifying a target group of the plurality of users for each of a plurality of advertisements from an advertiser via a network; 
 identify the target group of the plurality of users for each of the plurality of advertisements based on the criteria and the information identifying the media files in the media collection of each of the plurality of users; and 
 provide contact information to the advertiser for each of the plurality of users in the target group for each of the plurality of advertisements; 
 wherein the advertiser provides the plurality of advertisements to the target group of the plurality of users based on the contact information. 
 
     
     
         11 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the reference media file contains a version of the purchased media having higher quality than the generated media. 
     
     
         12 . The system of  claim 1  wherein the information identifying the purchased media from the e-commerce system includes information identifying media that has been previously stored in the media collection. 
     
     
         13 . The system of  claim 12  wherein the information identifying the purchased media from the e-commerce system includes information concerning the encoding algorithm of the purchased media. 
     
     
         14 . The system of  claim 1  wherein generating the purchased media based on the corresponding reference media file and the desired encoding algorithm comprises generating a plurality of versions of the purchased media. 
     
     
         15 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the plurality of versions of the purchased media includes a version of each media identified by the information identifying the purchased media from the e-commerce service. 
     
     
         16 . The system of  claim 14  wherein the plurality of versions of the purchased media includes a version of each media identified by the information identifying the purchased media from the e-commerce service for each of a plurality of encoding algorithms. 
     
     
         17 . A method comprising:
 storing information identifying a media collection in an associated storage unit;   receiving information identifying media purchased from an e-commerce service;   generating the purchased media based on a corresponding reference media file and a desired encoding algorithm;   updating the information identifying the media collection to include the generated media; and   providing the generated media to a computing system associated with the media collection.   
     
     
         18 . A non-transitory computer-readable medium having instructions for directing a processor to perform a method comprising:
 storing information identifying a media collection in an associated storage unit;   receiving information identifying media purchased from an e-commerce service;   generating the purchased media based on a corresponding reference media file and a desired encoding algorithm;   updating the information identifying the media collection to include the generated media; and   providing the generated media to a computing system associated with the media collection.   
     
     
         19 . A system comprising:
 a communication interface for receiving communications from an e-commerce service; and   a control system associated with the communication interface and adapted to:
 store information identifying a media collection in an associated storage unit; 
 receive information identifying media purchased by the user from the e-commerce service; 
 generate the purchased media based on a corresponding reference media file and a desired encoding algorithm; 
 update the information identifying the media collection to include the generated media; and 
 provide the generated media to a computing system associated with the media collection. 
   
     
     
         20 . The system of  claim 19 , wherein the control system is further adapted to:
 receive a list of recommended media for the user from the e-commerce service; and   refine the list of recommended media based on the information identifying the media collection.