System and method for musical playlist selection in a portable audio device
View Patent ↗A portable audio playing device implements a jukebox manager function to permit the simple generation of musical playlists and the alteration or editing of existing playlists. Data, such as MPEG-3 data or other conventional audio format data, may be readily downloaded into the system for storage in a solid state memory or in a spinning media device. The audio tracks are associated with one or more metatags that are used to describe the content of each track. The metatags and associated audio tracks are stored in a data structure that may be implemented as a database or other convenient data structure that readily permits searching by user-specified search terms. The user generates a new playlist by selecting one or more metatags corresponding to the desired musical tracks. The system queries the data structure using the user-specified metatags and automatically generates a playlist containing one or more audio tracks whose metatags correspond to the user-specified metatags. Alternatively, the system may perform the same query and simply generate a results list that will allow the user to manually specify which of the audio tracks identified by the search process will be added to the newly created playlist. The system also permits the simple editing of existing playlists. New audio tracks may be added in the manner described above using metatags for searching or maybe manually added from the list of stored audio tracks. The system readily supports different audio formats and different playlist types.
1. A system for the display and control of music selection in a hand-held portable multi-media device, the system comprising: a housing sized to be held by a user; a circuit board within the housing; a battery power supply to provide electrical power to electrical circuitry on the circuit board; a data structure to store a plurality of music data files, each music selection data file having identification data associated therewith; a display to display data comprising a playlist indicating music data files to be played; an input device operable by the user to select identification data associated with desired music data files for the playlist; a processor responsive to the input device to select the music data files for the playlist based on the user selected identification data; a CODEC to receive the selected music data files and convert the selected music data files to audio data; an audio output driver coupled to the CODEC to receive the audio data therefrom, the audio output driver further having an output and providing analog signals to the output for connection to an audio output device; and an associated data structure wherein the associated data comprises a plurality of data types, the processor analyzing the music data file to determine one or more associated data types and storing each of the data types for each music data file in the associated data structure in association with the music data file; wherein the processor selects the music data files for the playlist by generating an indicator to indicate a storage location in the associated data structure for an associated data type for each of the selected music data files.