How Streaming Services Automatically Build Custom Radio Stations
A method for streaming services to create custom music radio stations by analyzing genre percentages and artist relationships to pick the best songs.
Original patent title: “Station library creaton for a media service”
A method for streaming services to create custom music radio stations by analyzing genre percentages and artist relationships to pick the best songs. Granted to Gracenote Inc in 2018 with 22 claims and 3 forward citations.
Key facts
Coverage
What does this patent actually cover?
This patent describes a system that builds a custom music station based on a 'seed,' such as a specific song or artist. It creates a 'station descriptor profile' that acts as a blueprint, breaking down the desired music into specific genre percentages. The system then compares candidate songs against this blueprint using a similarity score, while also applying 'boost values' for factors like language, artist relationships, or release dates. Finally, it selects the songs with the highest combined relevancy scores to populate the station library.
The gap
What does this patent NOT cover?
- Does not cover manual playlist creation where a human selects every song.
- Does not cover simple random shuffling of a user's entire library.
- Does not cover hardware-based audio processing or signal compression techniques.
- Does not cover social media-based music sharing or peer-to-peer recommendation systems.
These exclusions are unique to PatentBrief — derived from the actual claim language, not patent-office boilerplate.
What made this novel
The system uses 'focus genre profiles' that assign specific percentage weights to genres, allowing the algorithm to maintain a precise stylistic balance in a station rather than just picking songs that sound vaguely similar.
Schematic visualization of the patent's claim structure. Hand-drawn diagrams in progress for each landmark patent.
Where you've seen this
Real-world examples
Spotify Radio
Pandora stations
Apple Music station generation
YouTube Music radio features
Why it matters
The bigger picture
This technology is fundamental to the 'radio' features found in modern music streaming services. By automating the creation of genre-balanced stations, services like Spotify or Pandora can keep users engaged without requiring them to curate their own music, which is essential for the subscription-based streaming business model.
Filed
December 31, 2015
Granted
October 23, 2018
Market context
Who's building on this
Companies in this space
Gracenote, now a subsidiary of Nielsen, provides the metadata and music recognition technology that powers many major streaming platforms. Companies like Spotify and Apple continue to refine these recommendation algorithms to improve user retention.
Market impact
This patent reflects the shift from static music libraries to dynamic, algorithmic streaming. It helped standardize the expectation that a streaming service should be able to generate an endless, coherent listening experience based on a single input.
Claim 1 — Plain English
What this patent covers
This patent describes a system that builds a custom music station based on a 'seed,' such as a specific song or artist. It creates a 'station descriptor profile' that acts as a blueprint, breaking down the desired music into specific genre percentages. The system then compares candidate songs against this blueprint using a similarity score, while also applying 'boost values' for factors like language, artist relationships, or release dates. Finally, it selects the songs with the highest combined relevancy scores to populate the station library.
The clever bit
The system uses 'focus genre profiles' that assign specific percentage weights to genres, allowing the algorithm to maintain a precise stylistic balance in a station rather than just picking songs that sound vaguely similar.
What it does not cover
- Does not cover manual playlist creation where a human selects every song.
- Does not cover simple random shuffling of a user's entire library.
- Does not cover hardware-based audio processing or signal compression techniques.
- Does not cover social media-based music sharing or peer-to-peer recommendation systems.
Patent timeline
Application submitted to the patent office
Application published, typically 18 months after filing
Patent officially issued
PatentBrief Score
Impact Score
Early stage
Citation count
12/40
Early citations
Claim breadth
15/20
Broad claimsclaimsThe numbered statements at the end of a patent that legally define what the inventor owns.Read more →
Recency
10/20
Granted 5–10 years ago
Assignee scale
0/20
Independent or smaller assigneeassigneeThe entity that owns the patent — usually the inventor's employer or a company.Read more →
PatentBrief Impact Score — based on citation count, claim breadth, recency, and assignee scale. Not a legal assessment.
Heuristic Value Estimate
What this patent might be worth
$68K – $218K
Midpoint $137K · 9.5 yr remaining · industry ×1.4
Heuristic only — blends forward/backward citation counts, claim scope, time remaining, litigation history, and CPC-derived industry baseline. Real valuations need a professional appraisal.
The original legal language
Original claims
22 claims as filed with the patent office.
Concepts involved
Citations
Patent lineage
Cite this patent
Silverman, A., & DiMaria, P. C. (2018). How Streaming Services Automatically Build Custom Radio Stations (U.S. Patent No. 10,108,619). U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. https://patentbrief.org/patent/us/10108619/microsoft-edge-browser
Auto-generated from the patent record. Double-check author order and the issue date against the official USPTO document before submitting.
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Common Questions
Frequently Asked Questions
What does How Streaming Services Automatically Build Custom Radio Stations cover?
A method for streaming services to create custom music radio stations by analyzing genre percentages and artist relationships to pick the best songs.
Who owns patent US 10108619?
Gracenote Inc owns this patent, granted in 2018.
When does this patent expire?
This patent is expected to expire on October 23, 2038, when the invention enters the public domain.
What is patent US 10108619 cited by?
This patent has been cited by 3 later patents that build on its ideas.
What problem does this patent solve?
This technology is fundamental to the 'radio' features found in modern music streaming services. By automating the creation of genre-balanced stations, services like Spotify or Pandora can keep users engaged without requiring them to curate their own music, which is essential for the subscription-based streaming business model.
What does this patent NOT cover?
Does not cover manual playlist creation where a human selects every song.
Patent monitoring