AU2007100173A4 - Business method and system for marketing and delivery of digital media content - Google Patents

Description

COMPLETE SPECIFICATION INNOVATION PATENT Business method and system for marketing and delivery of digital media content The following statement is a full description of this invention, including the best method of performing it known to me: This invention is an improved method for marketing and delivering digital media content to customers.

Digital media is any type of information in digital format including computergenerated text, graphics and animations, as well as photographs, animation, sound and video. Digital media content, however, is marketable pieces of digital media intended to be used as source material for proprietary 'players', physical devices that interpret the information and present it to humans. These players are typically personal devices such as mobile phones or portable music players. The digital information is usually compressed as these 'players' have limited storage capacity.

This compression reduces the quality of the playback.

Traditionally normal, uncompressed digital media is sold in stores as Digital Video Discs (DVDs) for video and Compact Discs (CDs) for music. However digital media content is almost exclusively marketed and delivered over the internet. This means that for a customer to have access to digital media content products, they must be proficient in computer use and have access to a computer that is connected to the internet. This excludes a significant proportion of the traditional digital media market.

Furthermore, the traditional medium of delivering digital media (DVDs and CDs) requires the maintenance of a stock of physical products in the vendor's shop. These products take up space. For example a standard CD case is 142 x 125 x 10 mm. This physical volume places restrictions on the number of products a vendor's store can carry. Also these products have value and represent risk as inventory to, for example, fire, theft or becoming out dated.

This invention provides a method for marketing and delivering digital media content to customers who are non-computer literate and those without computer and internet access while avoiding the restrictions and risks of traditional digital media sales methods.

The invention is to create a unique physical, but thin product to which is associated a specific digital media content offering. The physical product's role is to present to the customer information relating to this digital media content offering, including a unique machine readable code to identify the offering. The physical product is then displayed for sale in the vendor's store. A customer selects the product and presents the product to the sales clerk. The sales clerk completes the financial transaction and transfers the purchased digital media content to the customer's personal digital media content player or digital information storage device. The transfer is done by connecting the customer's device to the vendor's digital media storage and transfer device. The vendor's digital media storage and transfer device reads the coded identification of the digital media content in the offering from the physical product.

The digital media storage and transfer device then transfers the identified digital media content to the customer's device.

The vendor's digital media storage and transfer device consists of a programmable computer, a data-store, a scanner and a transfer mechanism for transfer of digital information to player devices or intermediate digital information storage devices. The data-store contains firstly the digital media content and secondly the lists of digital media content offerings and their associated unique codes. The computer is programmed to deliver, through the transfer mechanism, the digital media content associated with a unique code read by the scanner.

The information displayed on the physical product can be broken down into two types. The first type of information, Supplier Information, is typically received with the digital media content from a third party supplier of the content. This is information that pertains directly to the digital media content and is often referred to as meta-data. The second type of information, Marketing Information, is other information that is associated with the digital media content offering. One critical piece of marketing information is a coded machine readable reference identifying the product offering. This information may also include: a) information about separate items that are included in the product offering (that are not digital media), b) information about separate, independent products that are not part of the offering (advertising) (that may or may not be digital media), or c) information about separate products that are related by a sales association, in that sales of these products are correlated (recommendations) (that may or may not be digital media).

To assist with understanding the invention, reference will now be made to the accompanying drawing which shows one example of the invention: FIG. 1 shows one example of the physical product.

In this instance the invention is for marketing and delivering a collection of compressed digital music tracks.

Figure 1 depicts a 140mm x 120mm card, printed on the front and the back. On the front is printed the meta-data. This can include 1 a graphical image, 2 the collection title, 3 the primary artist, 4 a list of the tracks included in the collection, 5 the genre, 6 applicable content warnings and 7 the music label. Also on the front is the principle marketing information: 8 the price (or prices), 9 instructions on how to make the purchase, 10 a bar-code identifying the collection and 11 a trade-mark image.

On the back is printed the additional marketing information. This can include 12 a review of the collection, 13 recommendations for products likely to also be desired by the customer and 14 an advertisement.

The cards are pre-printed and distributed to vendor stores for display.

Each store has its own digital music storage and transfer device. In this instance of the invention the device is a machine comprising of a computer connected to a scanner that reads the bar-code displayed on the card, a Compact Disc burner and a set of connectors to connect to the customer's personal music player. All the digital music tracks available for sale on the cards are stored on the computer. The computer is programmed to retrieve the tracks associated with the offering identified by the scanned bar-code and either transfer them through a connector to a customer's personal music player or burn them onto a Compact Disc.

The card is displayed on a rack for perusal by in-store customers. The customer selects a card and presents it to the sales clerk. The sales clerk conducts the monetary transaction and then scans the bar-code on the card with the digital music storage and transfer device. The device then retrieves the collection of music tracks identified by the bar-code and either transfers them to the customer's personal digital music player or digital information storage device via a direct link or burns them on to a Compact Disc.

Claims (4)

1. A method for delivering and marketing digital media content involving the production and distribution of a physical product to display information describing a odigital media content offering and the display in-store of this product for purchase by customers and the provision of an in-store digital media storage and transfer device 0 o that automatically delivers to the customer's digital storage device the associated digital media content. The information printed on the physical product includes both the meta-data and the marketing information.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital media content is specifically digital music audio and video.

3. The method of claims 1 and 2 wherein the physical product is a card with the associated digital media information printed on it roughly 140mm wide by 120 mm high.

4. The method of claims 1, 2 and 3 where the card of claim 3 is the slip of a Compact Disc and the physical product comprises this slip and a Compact Disc containing the digital music of the offering. The method of claim 1 wherein the marketing information includes information relating to other products, in the form of simple advertising and or recommendations for products that have sales correlations.