Content provisioning and revenue disbursement

Abstract

A method for provisioning content to users, including for each of a plurality of items of media content, maintaining information about one or more owners of the item of media content, and maintaining information about one or more providers of the item of media content, for each of a plurality of users, maintaining information about items of media content acquired by the user and about player devices owned by the user, for each of a plurality of time periods, maintaining a history log of items of media content played by one or more of the plurality of users during the time period, receiving a request from a user to play a designated item of media content on a designated player device, during a current time period, identifying an appropriate provider of the designated item of media content, according to a location of the user and according to the designated player device, causing the identified provider of the designated item of media content to transmit the designated item of media content to the user's designated player device, updating the history log for the current time period to reflect the user having played the designated item of media content, and calculating revenue disbursement among the owners of the plurality of items of media content, and the providers of the plurality of media content, for the current time period, based on the history log of the current time period. A system is also described and claimed.

1 - 39 . (canceled) 
     
     
         40 . A content usage tracking system, comprising:
 a tracking computer for tracking, for each of a plurality of consumers and for each of a plurality of content owners, each content owner owning a plurality of items of media content, the relative frequency of the number of times the consumer plays items of media content owned by the content owner during a specified time period, relative to the total number of times the consumer plays items of media content during the specified time period; and   a disbursement manager for deriving revenue allocation for each of the plurality of content owners for the specified time period, based on the relative frequencies tracked by said tracking computer.   
     
     
         41 . (canceled) 
     
     
         42 . A content usage tracking system, comprising:
 a tracking computer for tracking, for each of a plurality of consumers and for each of a plurality of content owners, each content owner owning a plurality of items of media content, the relative amount of time spent by the consumer during a specified time period playing items of media content owned by the content owner, relative to the total amount of time spent by the consumer playing items of media content during the specified time period; and   a disbursement manager for deriving revenue allocation for each of the plurality of content owners for the specified time period, based on the relative amounts of time tracked by said tracking computer.   
     
     
         43 - 46 . (canceled)