In this age of streaming music, mixtape has all but lost its charm. However, if Apple’s latest invention is anything to go by, the company might just bring back mixtape into the fashion once again but with a digital twist.
In its “digital mixed tapes” patent, Apple describes a system where users can purchase and create personalised albums, which they can then gift to someone. Apple also intends to offer many advanced customisation options to users, including the ability to prevent the recipient of the gift to fast forward songs, skip them, and more. Additionally, users will also be able to add their own photos or iBooks to further customise the mixtape.
Disclosed herein are systems, methods, and non-transitory computer-readable storage media for gifting a personalized album. A system is described that includes generating a personalized album from a request and subsequently gifting the personalized album to another party. The personalized album can include playback attributes stored in a file associated with the album or alternatively in metadata of the media items to be gifted. The playback attributes can limit playback of the album to a particular playback sequence or configure playback to reveal the names of media items as they are presented to the user. The personalized album can be accepted, rejected, or re-gifted by the recipient.
Once the ‘digital mixtape’ is created, Apple’s system will automatically send a push notification or an alert to the recipient of the gift prompting them to accept or reject it. In case the recipient rejects the mixtape, the user will not be charged any money.
There are a few services out there that create ‘digital mixtape,’ but none of them offer a music library as big as iTunes, which is why Apple launching this service might just bring back mixtape into fashion. Whether the Cupertino headquartered company will do so or not remains to be seen.
Apple had first filed for the ”digital mixed tapes” patent back in 2012 and further filed its continuation in April this year. The company credits Gregory F. Hughes as the inventor of this patent.
[Via Apple Insider]
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