Method, apparatus and computer program product for identifying a playing media file and tracking associated user preferences

1. A method of collecting user preference information related to a playing media recording, comprising the steps of:

gathering descriptive information related to the playing media recording from a media player program presenting the playing media recording;

determining if tags are embedded in the playing media recording and gathering information related to the playing media recording from the tags embedded in the playing media recording, if the tags exist;

determining if table of contents information for a collection of tracks containing the playing media recording exists, where each track in the collection has a respective length, and gathering the table of contents information for the collection by identifying the collection using an identifier computed from concatenating the track lengths, if the table of contents exists;

assembling the gathered descriptive information, from the tags and the table of contents information into an media recording information packet; and

sending the media recording information packet to a server computer, resulting in a collection of user preference information related to the playing media recording.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the descriptive information comprises:

a user identifier; and

at least one of: a name of the playing media recording, a name of a collection containing the playing media recording, a name of an artist performing the playing media recording; and

a sequence number of the playing media recording within the collection.

3. The method of claim 1 wherein the tags are MPEG Layer 3 tags.

4. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

responding to said sending the media recording information packet to the server by:

identifying the playing media recording with a best matching identifier, the best matching identifier being based on the media recording information packet sent;

inferring user's preferences relating to the playing media recording by tracking the best matching identifier identifying the playing media recording; and

storing the best matching identifier and inferred user preferences in the collection of user preferences, where the collection of user preferences is stored in a database consisting of information related to audio files.

5. The method of claim 4 , wherein identifying the playing media recording with a best matching identifier further includes:

using the identifier computed from concatenating the track lengths to identify a matching table of contents hash code stored in the database; and

if no matching table of contents hash code exists in the database, then adding the identifier computed from concatenating the track lengths to the database.

6. The method of claim 5 , wherein if a matching table of contents hash code exists in the database, then correlating, in the database, the playing media recording with artist, title and track data associated with the table of contents hash code.

7. The method of claim 4 , wherein the step of inferring user's preferences further includes tracking a user's repeated behavior by tracking the best matching identifier identifying the playing media recording.

8. The method of claim 1 , wherein the step of sending the media recording information packet further includes creating a user community using information from the collection of user preferences to generate a list of users having similar preferences.

9. The method of claim 1 further comprising responding to sending the media recording information packet to the server by soliciting the user's preference relating to the media recording.

10. The method of claim 1 wherein the step of gathering information related to the playing media recording further includes identifying the embedded tags at an end of a media file, where the media file is the playing media recording.