Technologies for finding ringtones that match a user's hummed rendition
View Patent ↗Described is a technology by which a user hums, sings or otherwise plays a user-provided rendition of a ringtone (or ringback tone) through a mobile telephone to a ringtone search service (e.g., a WAP, interactive voice response or SMS-based search platform). The service matches features of the user's rendition against features of actual ringtones to determine one or more matching candidate ringtones for downloading. Features may include pitch contours (up or down), pitch intervals and durations of notes. Matching candidates may be ranked based on the determined similarity, possibly in conjunction with weighting criterion such as the popularity of the ringtone and/or the importance of the matched part. The candidate set may be augmented with other ringtones independent of the matching, such as the most popular ones downloaded by other users, ringtones from similar artists, and so forth.
1. A method comprising:
receiving audio data via a mobile phone, wherein the audio data originates live from a user of the mobile phone at the time of the receiving, and wherein the audio data comprises a humming or singing rendition provided live by the user, and wherein the humming or singing rendition represents at least a portion of a desired ringtone;
processing the received humming or singing rendition of the audio data resulting in a triplet melody representation comprising data that comprises pitch contour, pitch interval, and duration for each detected note of the humming or singing rendition, wherein the pitch contour indicates whether pitch of the each detected note is increasing or decreasing relative to a previous note, and wherein the pitch interval indicates a frequency of the each detected note, and wherein duration indicates a length in time of the each detected note;
matching, based on at least the triplet melody representation of the humming or singing rendition, the humming or singing rendition of the desired ringtone to a ringtone triplet melody representation derived from of a corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones, wherein the plurality of actual ringtones and corresponding ringtone triplet melody representations derived from each of the plurality of actual ringtones are stored in a database, and wherein each stored ringtone triplet melody representation comprises the pitch contour, the pitch interval, and the duration for each detected note of its corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones;
providing the matched corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones to the mobile phone; and
wherein the method is performed by a computing device.
2. The method of claim 1 further comprising, converting the audio data to an audio file.
3. The method of claim 1 further comprising:
receiving selection data from the user via the mobile phone that selects one of the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones; and
downloading, in response to the receiving the selection data, the one of the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones to the mobile phone.
4. The method of claim 1 further comprising ranking the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones.
5. The method of claim 4 wherein the ranking is based on at least one weighting criterion.
6. The method of claim 1 wherein the providing further comprises providing at least one recommended ringtone with the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones, wherein the at least one other recommended ringtone is provided based on an interest profile of the user.
7. The method of claim 1 wherein the receiving comprises detecting a user coupling to a voice response server.
8. A system comprising:
a service of a computer configured to receive audio data via a mobile phone, wherein the audio originates live from a user of the mobile phone, and wherein the audio data comprises a humming or singing rendition provided live by the user, and wherein the humming or singing rendition represents at least a portion of a desired ringtone;
a processing component of the computer coupled to the service and configured to process the received humming or singing rendition of the audio data into a triplet melody representation comprising data that comprises pitch contour, pitch interval, and duration for each detected note of the humming or singing rendition, wherein the pitch contour indicates whether pitch of the each detected note is increasing or decreasing relative to a previous note, and wherein the pitch interval indicates a frequency of the each detected note, and wherein duration indicates a length in time of the each detected note;
a matching component of the computer coupled to the processing component and configured to match, based on at least the triplet melody representation of the humming or singing rendition, the humming or singing rendition of the desired ringtone to a ringtone triplet melody representation derived from a corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones, wherein the plurality of actual ringtones and corresponding ringtone triplet melody representations derived from each of the plurality of actual ringtones are stored in a database, and wherein each stored ringtone triplet melody representation comprises the pitch contour, the pitch interval, and the duration for each detected note of its corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones; and
the service further configured to provide the matched corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones to the mobile phone.
9. The system of claim 8 further comprising a wireless application protocol (WAP)-based search platform, an interactive voice response-based search platform, or a simple message service (SMS)-based search platform.
10. The system of claim 8 wherein the service is further configured to convert the received audio data to a file.
11. The system of claim 8 wherein the service is part of a subscription-based model, a pay-per-download model, a pay-per-call model or an advertisement model, or any combination thereof.
12. At least one computer storage media that is an article of manufacture storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform a method comprising:
receiving audio data via a mobile phone, wherein the audio originates live from a user of the mobile phone, and wherein the audio data comprises a humming or singing rendition provided live by the user, and wherein the humming or singing rendition represents at least a portion of a desired ringtone;
processing the received humming or singing rendition of the audio data into a triplet melody representation comprising data that comprises pitch contour, pitch interval, and duration for each detected note of the humming or singing rendition, wherein the pitch contour indicates whether pitch of the each detected note is increasing or decreasing relative to a previous note, and wherein the pitch interval indicates a frequency of the each detected note, and wherein duration indicates a length in time of the each detected note;
matching, based on at least the triplet melody representation of the humming or singing rendition, the humming or singing rendition of the desired ringtone to a ringtone triplet melody representation derived from a corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones, wherein the plurality of actual ringtones and corresponding ringtone triplet melody representations derived from each of the plurality of actual ringtones are stored in a database, and wherein each stored ringtone triplet melody representation comprises the pitch contour, the pitch interval, and the duration for each detected note of its corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones; and
providing the matched corresponding one of the plurality of actual ringtones to the mobile phone.
13. The at least one computer storage media of claim 12 wherein the providing further comprises ranking the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones based on at least one criterion, the at least one criterion including public popularity of the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones.
14. The at least one computer storage media of claim 12 wherein the providing further comprises ranking the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones based on at least one criterion, the at least one criterion including whether the matched at least one of the plurality of actual ringtones is part of a main tune or is part of a chorus.