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			{{Short description\|American metadata company}}
	{{for\|grace notes in music\|grace note}}
			{{Other uses\|Grace note (disambiguation)}}
			{{advert\|date=January 2017}}
			{{Infobox company
			\| name = Gracenote, Inc.
			\| logo = Gracenote logo (2022).svg
			\| image = File:2000 Powell Street.jpg
			\| image_caption = Gracenote headquarters in Emeryville
			\| former_name = Compact Disc Data Base (1998–2000)
			\| type = ]
			\| products = {{unbulleted list\|Music Data\|Video Data\|Sports Data\|Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) Technology\|Digital Video Fingerprinting\|Acoustic Fingerprinting}}
			\| num_employees = 1,700+ (2016)
			\| parent = ]
			\| homepage =
			\| key_people = {{ubl\|Sujit Dasmunshi(])\|Tim Cutting (])\|Trent Wheeler (])\|Roger Rached (])}}
			\| foundation = {{start date and age\|1998\|10\|5}}<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://whois.domaintools.com/cddb.com\|title=CDDB.com WHOIS, DNS, & Domain Info - DomainTools\|work=]\|access-date=2016-03-26}}</ref>
			\| revenue = $98.76 million (2014)<ref name="Hoovers"/>
			\| hq_location_city = ]
			\| hq_location_country = ]
			}}
			'''Gracenote, Inc.''' is a company and service that provides music, video, and sports ] and ] (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies worldwide.<ref>{{cite web\|url=https://www.bloomberg.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=2431179\|title=Gracenote, Inc. Private Company Information\|work=Businessweek\|publisher=Bloomberg L.P.}}</ref> Formerly ''']''' ("'''Compact Disc Data Base'''"), Gracenote maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio ]s and ]. From 2008 to 2014, it was owned by ], later sold to ], and has been owned since 2017 by ]. In 2019, Nielsen Holdings announced plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, Nielsen Global Connect (later known as ] and sold) and Nielsen Global Media. In October 2022, Nielsen Holdings (by then consisting of the Global Media business), including the Gracenote subsidiary was acquired by a private equity consortium.

			== History ==
	'''Gracenote''' is a commercial enterprise which maintains and licenses a database containing information about the contents of audio CDs. The database is accessible online over the Internet. ] many computer software applications that are capable of playing CDs use Gracenote's ] or similar services such as ]'s ], or open-source projects such as ] and ]. These programs generally offer the option of contributing track listings, and most of the track listings in the Gracenote database are voluntary contributions by individual users of CD-player software.
			Gracenote began in 1993 as an open-source project involving a CD player program named xmcd and an associated database named ]. xmcd and CDDB were created by Ti Kan and Steve Scherf. Because CDs do not contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents, Kan and Scherf devised a technology that identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A TOC, or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. Its original database was created from and continues to receive voluntary contributions from users. This led to a ] when Gracenote became commercialized.

			On April 22, 2008, ] announced that it would acquire Gracenote for $260 million.<ref> {{webarchive \|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100604174219/http://www.gracenote.com/company_info/press/042208/ \|date=June 4, 2010 }}</ref> The acquisition was completed on June 2, 2008.<ref> {{webarchive \|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100516050155/http://www.gracenote.com/company_info/press/060208/ \|date=May 16, 2010 }}</ref>
	==Background==

			On September 9, 2010, Gracenote received its one-billionth piece of data, with a submission about the ] release of ]' '']''.<ref name="billion">{{cite news \|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/04/business/media/04link.html?_r=1&src=busln&pagewanted=all \|title=Obsessions With Minutiae Thrive as Databases \|last=Cohen \|first=Noam \|newspaper=] \|date=2010-10-03 \|access-date=2010-10-04}}</ref>
	Gracenote began in ] as an ] project involving a CD player program named xmcd and an associated database named ]. xmcd and CDDB were created by ] and ]. Because CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see ]), Kan and Scherf devised a piece of software which identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A ], or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets.

			On December 23, 2013, Sony announced it would sell Gracenote to ] for $170 million. The acquisition closed in February 2014: Gracenote was aligned with the ] division which focused on TV and Movie metadata and IDs.<ref name=variety-tribuneacquire>{{cite web\|title=Tribune Closes $170 Mil Cash Deal to Acquire Sony's Gracenote\|url=https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/tribune-closes-170-mil-deal-to-acquire-sonys-gracenote-1201084243/\|website=Variety\|access-date=31 January 2015}}</ref><ref name=wsj-tribgracenote>{{cite news\|title=Tribune Buys Gracenote From Sony\|url=https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304020704579276363168307266\|access-date=31 January 2015\|work=The Wall Street Journal}}</ref>
	Some computer users who have copied ] from their turntables onto ] have been astonished to find their computers correctly displaying the titles and track listings when these ] are played on their computer. This happens when a commercial ] is a ] version of an ], containing the same tracks in the same order. If the track offsets of the homemade CD match the track timings of the commercial ] to within a second, the CDDB database can identify the ] successfully.

			On June 12, 2014, ] merged with Gracenote to form one company under the Gracenote name.<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.rapidtvnews.com/2014061234059/tribune-to-merge-media-services-into-gracenote-operations.html\|title=Tribune to merge Media Services into Gracenote operations\|author=Michelle Clancy\|work=Rapid TV News\|access-date=5 June 2015\|archive-date=3 April 2015\|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150403142205/http://www.rapidtvnews.com/2014061234059/tribune-to-merge-media-services-into-gracenote-operations.html\|url-status=dead}}</ref>
	==Commercialization and controversy==

			On July 9, 2014, Tribune Media Company purchased What's-ON, a provider of TV data and advanced search offerings covering India and the Middle East for $27 million.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://techcrunch.com/2014/07/09/tribune-whats-on/\|title=Tribune Digital Ventures Acquires Indian Electronic Program Guide Provider What's On\|last=Lawler\|first=Ryan\|website=TechCrunch\|access-date=2016-04-06}}</ref>
	In ], Kan and Scherf incorporated CDDB into a privately held company with investment from ], a high-tech venture firm. CDDB was then renamed Gracenote. The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who received no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, ] project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. Many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free.

			On September 3, 2014, Gracenote acquired ], a Los Angeles{{En dash}}based provider of film and TV data and information. Baseline had previously been owned by the ] from 2006{{En dash}}2011 after which it was sold back to its original owners. This $50 million purchase deepened Gracenote's existing video datasets and added the Studio System database, a subscription-based resource for the Hollywood content creation and distribution communities, to its line-up of offerings.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://variety.com/2014/digital/news/tribune-medias-gracenote-acquires-baseline-for-50-million-cash-1201296710/\|title=Tribune Media's Gracenote Acquires Baseline for $50 Million Cash\|last=Spangler\|first=Todd\|website=Variety\|language=en-US\|access-date=2016-04-06}}</ref>
	] Gracenote claims that its database contains information on almost 4 million CDs. The reliability both of this statement and of the database itself have been challenged. Because the information going into the database has not been subjected to quality control, duplicate entries are very common. David Jennings, in an article entitled "How many CDs are there in the world?" gives an example of a six-CD set in which "two of the six CDs appear twice in the database, and one appears three times." An article on the AtomicPop website cites Ty Roberts, chief technology officer of Gracenote, as saying that there are approximately 500,000 individual CD titles commercially released and available for sale today in the United States.

			On October 2, 2014, Gracenote purchased Australia-based TV and movie data company HWW for $19 million US to expand its Asia Pacific presence and international offerings.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://venturebeat.com/2014/10/02/gracenote-targets-australia-with-19m-buy-up-of-tv-movie-data-provider-hww/\|title=Gracenote targets Australia with $19M buy-up of TV & movie data provider HWW\|website=VentureBeat\|access-date=2016-04-06}}</ref>
	==Lawsuits==

			On May 28, 2015, Gracenote acquired Amsterdam-based Infostrada Sports and Halifax-based SportsDirect, providers of music, video and sports data.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://www.multichannel.com/news/gracenote-puts-54m-two-sports-data-firms-390926\|title=Gracenote Puts Up $54M for Two Sports Data Firms\|website=www.multichannel.com\|access-date=2019-08-25}}</ref>
	The commercialization of CDDB by Gracenote also caused friction with its former licensees. In ], Gracenote sued ] for breach of contract when Roxio tried to switch to ]. The case was settled in ].

			On December 20, 2016, Tribune Media announced that it was selling Gracenote to ] for $540 million in cash.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/20/nielsen-acquires-gracenote\|title=Nielsen will acquire Tribune-owned Gracenote for $560M\|access-date=2016-12-20\|website=www.techcrunch.com}}</ref> The deal officially closed on February 1, 2017.<ref>{{cite news \| newspaper=Nielsen Press Release \| date=February 1, 2017 \| title=Nielsen Completes Acquisition of Gracenote \| url=http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2017/nielsen-completes-acquisition-of-gracenote.html?_r=0 }}</ref> In September 2017, Gracenote partnered with Connekt and Ensequence to deliver real-time offers on smart TVs.<ref>{{Cite news\|url=https://www.rapidtvnews.com/2017092048899/gracenote-teams-with-connekt-ensequence-to-deliver-real-time-offers-on-smart-tvs.html\|title=Gracenote teams with Connekt, Ensequence to deliver real-time offers on smart TVs\|last=O'Halloran\|first=Joseph\|work=Rapid TV News\|access-date=2017-10-17\|language=en-gb}}</ref>
	====Gracenote v. Musicmatch====

			On November 7, 2019, Nielsen announced that it was splitting into two separate publicly traded companies.<ref>{{Cite web \|last=Cullen \|first=Terri \|date=2019-11-07 \|title=Research firm Nielsen to split into two separate publicly traded companies \|url=https://www.cnbc.com/2019/11/07/nielsen-nlsn-to-split-into-two-publicly-traded-companies.html \|access-date=2024-04-17 \|website=CNBC \|language=en}}</ref> Gracenote fell under the company's Global Media business.
	In ], Gracenote sued another former licensee, ], for breach of contract and patent violations. Musicmatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote. The Northern District Court in California ruled on ], ] in favor of Musicmatch. The case was settled in ] after Musicmatch received summary judgement on all of Gracenote's patent claims.

			After divestiture of ] (the former ACNielsen consumer research business) in 2021, Nielsen became solely a media audience measurement and analytics firm including Gracenote.<ref>{{Cite web \|last=Lafayette \|first=Jon \|date=2021-03-05 \|title=Nielsen Completes $2.7 Billion Sale of Global Connect Business \|url=https://www.nexttv.com/news/nielsen-completes-dollar27-billion-sale-of-global-connect-business \|access-date=2024-08-29 \|website=] \|language=en}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web \|last=Lafayette \|first=Jon \|date=2022-10-11 \|title=Nielsen Completes $16 Billion Sale to Private Equity Consortium \|url=https://www.nexttv.com/news/nielsen-completes-dollar16-billion-sale-to-private-equity-consortium \|access-date=2024-08-29 \|website=] \|language=en}}</ref>
	A summary judgement found that Musicmatch's CDDB replacement service does not violate Gracenote's patents. The court also found significant evidence that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently. In a subsequent bench trial, the court found largely in favor of Gracenote, citing no evidence of fraudulent activity on Gracenote's part. Additionally, the court reversed its findings on numerous points in the summary judgement. The case was then to have continued on to to a jury trial to determine whether Music Match was in violation of its contract with Gracenote. The case was dropped by both sides during jury selection when Yahoo, one of Gracenote's customers, announced its pending purchase of MusicMatch. A summarized overview of the case is available at the website within Mr. Robert D. Becker's list of representative cases. Mr. Becker was one of Musicmatch's lawyers during the case.

			In October 2022, Nielsen and its subsidiaries (including Gracenote) were purchased by a private equity consortium led by affiliates of ] and ] in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $16 billion, including the assumption of debt.<ref name=":0" />
	A growing group of companies continue to enter media identification and metadata marketplace.

	==~~Competition~~==		== Products ==
			{{Cleanup section\|reason=Long, confusing, not well sourced\|date=May 2022}}
			Gracenote is known for MusicID, a music recognition software which identifies compact discs and delivers artist metadata and cover art to the desktop. The Gracenote database includes music genre and mood information, TV show descriptions, episode information, and channel line-ups, movie cast and crew information, and sports statistics and results. Companies including music services, TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and automakers use Gracenote data to power their content, universal search, navigation, linking, discovery and personalized recommendations abilities.{{cn\|date=March 2020}}

			Gracenote's music recognition technologies compare digital music files to a worldwide database of music information, enabling digital audio devices to identify songs. The company licenses its technologies to developers of consumer electronics devices and online media players, who integrate the technologies into media players, home and car stereos, and digital music devices.<ref name="Hoovers">{{cite web\|url=http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/company-profile.gracenote_inc.7f295723145ef70e.html\|title=Gracenote, Inc. Company profile\|work=Hoover's}}</ref>
	Many of Gracenote's small former licensees moved to non-commercial services such as ] because of restrictive terms and anger over the privatization of the company. Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as ]'s ] and ], and have moved to the commercial service provided by ].

			It provides software and ] to businesses which enables their customers to manage and search digital media. Gracenote provides its media management technology and global media database of ] information to the ], automobile, ], home, and ] markets. Several software applications which were capable of playing CDs (e.g. ] and ],) used Gracenote's ] technology. ], once a major licensee, no longer has access to Gracenote; the legacy media player program lost access to Gracenote when ] and Winamp were sold by AOL in 2014.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=http://forums.winamp.com/showpost.php?p=2995107&postcount=2\|website=Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums \|title=CDDB problems (Gracenote Services No Longer Work In Winamp: Reason Why Explained)\|access-date=2017-01-12}}</ref> Redevelopment of Winamp continues by its new owner ] who have said future Winamp versions will have access to an online music database.<ref>Winamp Official Forum</ref>{{nonspecific\|date=January 2023}}
	The ] media recognition service was launched in late 2004 by ]. The service allows for the recognition of DVDs and digital audio files such as MP3s, as well as CD recognition, and directly competes with Gracenote in the software and embedded device markets globally.

			In 2014 ] bought Gracenote from ].<ref name="Hoovers"/> In December 2016, Tribune announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Gracenote to ] for $560 million.<ref>{{cite web \| website=] \| date=December 20, 2016 \| last=Lieberman \| first=David \| title=Tribune Media Agrees To Sell Gracenote Data Services To Nielsen For $560M \| url=https://deadline.com/2016/12/tribune-media-agrees-sell-gracenote-data-services-nielsen-1201873799/ \| publisher=Pensky Media}}</ref> The purchase was completed on February 1, 2017.
	] is also another music identification service that is open source and created by community contributions.

			With the acquisition by Tribune Media in 2014 and subsequent acquisitions of What's-ON, HWW, Baseline, SportsDirect, and Infostrada Sports, Gracenote has expanded its core data product beyond music into video and sports.

			Gracenote's early product line-up consisted of MusicID, Mobile MusicID, Music Enrichment, Discover, Playlist, Playlist Plus, Media VOCS, Classical Music Initiative, and Link. In April 2007, Gracenote launched the first<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.techvibes.com/blog/metrolyrics-get-authorized\|title=MetroLyrics get Authorized\|work=techvibes.com\|access-date=5 June 2015}}</ref> legal lyrics offering in the U.S. that was sold to ] in 2013.

			Gracenote's current Music offerings fall into three major categories: Music Recognition, Music Data, and Music Discovery. Its music recognition product called MusicID was originally developed as a CD track-identification system. Gracenote also operates a digital file identification service that uses audio fingerprinting technology to identify digital music files such as MP3s and deliver track-level metadata, album art, and links to complementary content and services. Its music data offering provides information describing Genre, Mood, Era, Origin and Tempo for tens of millions of songs.<ref name=lat-rhythm>{{cite web\|title=Gracenote unveils new Internet radio technology\|url=https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-gracenote-rhythm-internet-radio-20140103,0,5415866.story\|work=Los Angeles Times\|access-date=5 January 2014}}</ref><ref name=wsj-rhythm>{{cite web\|title=Gracenote to Help Launch Music Services\|url=https://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2014/01/03/gracenote-to-help-launch-music-services/\|work=Wall Street Journal\|access-date=5 January 2014}}</ref><ref>{{cite web\|title=What is Gracenote and Why Should Musicians Use It\|url=https://www.bisondisc.com/what-is-gracenote-and-why-should-musicians-use-it/\|work=Bison Disc\|access-date=14 August 2017}}</ref>

			Gracenote Auto puts Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology into the car's audio system to identify music playing from various sources including AM/FM and satellite radio, CDs or streaming services and deliver relevant metadata and cover art. In December 2015, Gracenote launched its first audio technology, Gracenote Dynamic EQ, designed to help automakers and OEMs automatically tune connected car audio systems to the optimal equalizer settings for individual songs based on genre, mood and release date.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=https://www.forbes.com/sites/dougnewcomb/2015/12/30/gracenotes-dynamic-eq-automatically-tunes-car-stereo-systems-one-song-at-a-time/\|title=Gracenote's Dynamic EQ Automatically Tunes Car Stereo Systems One Song At A Time\|website=Forbes\|access-date=2016-04-06}}</ref>

			Gracenote's video platform called On Entertainment consists of TV listings and schedules for approximately 85 countries and 35 languages as well as TV and Movie data and related-imagery information for six million TV shows and movies. On Entertainment is supported by standardized TMS IDs for TV shows, movies, and celebrities. These IDs enable universal search across linear TV, OTT and VOD libraries and make possible "season pass" DVR recordings.{{cn\|date=March 2020}}

			Gracenote Sports provides live scores, play-by-play data, historical results and records, schedules, player profiles, and athlete biographies for 4,500 leagues and competitions such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, Premier League, F1, Bundesliga, Tour de France, Wimbledon, and the Olympics. Gracenote's Podium product tracks all Olympic competition results and rankings at elite and junior levels as well as historical Olympic data going back to the very first modern games in 1896. In September 2015, the company announced DVR Extend which enables TV providers to dynamically adjust DVR settings to ensure live sports game recordings do not get cut off in the event they go past scheduled broadcast times.<ref>{{Cite web\|url=http://www.twice.com/news/video/gracenote-dvrs-extend-record-time-if-sports-game-goes-overtime/58537\|title=Gracenote: DVRs To Extend Record Time If Sports Game Goes Into Overtime\|website=www.twice.com\|access-date=2016-04-06}}</ref>

			== Customers ==
			], ], ], ] and ] all use or have used Gracenote's CD track identification services.<ref>{{cite web \|url=http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=61068 \|title=How iTunes remembers audio CDs \|work=iTunes KB}}</ref><ref>{{cite web\|url=http://www.gracenote.com/sec062706/SonySecurityNotification.html \|title=Gracenote Security Update June 27th, 2006 \|quote=Affected Products: Sony CONNECT Player, Sony SonicStage Ver.3.3/3.4, Sony SonicStage Mastering Studio Ver.2.1/2.2 \|url-status=dead \|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100124145437/http://www.gracenote.com/sec062706/SonySecurityNotification.html \|archive-date=2010-01-24 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web \|url=http://www.spotify.com/uk/about/local-music/ \|title=Local Music Files \|work=Spotify \|quote=Thanks to our collaboration with the good people at Gracenote®, your MP3s can be made whole again.}}</ref> <ref>{{cite web \|url=http://www.coastmastering.com/metadata \|title=Uploading Your CD Metadata to Gracenote \|quote=Affected Products: Windows Media Player, Groove Music}}</ref> In addition, Gracenote provides or provided its products to a number of other services including online services like ], AOL, ], ], ], ], ], ];<ref>{{cite web\|url=http://music.google.com/about/terms.html\|title=Google Play Legal Information\|work=google.com\|access-date=5 June 2015}}</ref>{{Failed verification\|date=September 2018}}, home and automotive products such as those from ], ], or ]; mobile music applications from Samsung and others,<ref name="SamMMC">For more information, see Samsung Music Center: {{Webarchive\|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20071002023556/http://uk.samsungmobile.com/sg/pcstudio/music.jsp \|date=2007-10-02 }}</ref> ] (TrackID, Sony Movies/Video & TV SideView App for Xperia Through Gracenote Video Explore and Sony Music Walkman App for Xperia),<ref>{{cite web\|url=https://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/02/16/sony_ericsson_divorce_final/\|title=Official: Sony and Ericsson are divorced\|work=theregister.co.uk\|access-date=5 June 2015}}</ref> and the ACR technology into the car audio systems for Tesla, BMW, Nissan and several other car makers.

			== Controversy ==
			{{main\|Gracenote licensing controversy}}

			In 1998, CDDB was purchased by ], a consumer electronics manufacturer, and operated as a business unit within the American company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient and in July 2000 was renamed Gracenote. The CDDB database license was later changed to include new terms. For instance, any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup. Then, in March 2001, only licensed applications were provided access to the Gracenote database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) were no longer available, so programmers using Gracenote services were required to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1).

			This has been controversial, as the original CDDB database was created out of anonymous contributions, initially via the ] xmcd CD player program. Many listing contributors believed that the database was open-source as well because, in 1997, cddb.com's download and support pages had said it was released under the GPL. CDDB claims that the license grant was an error.

			== See also ==
			* ]
			* ]

			== Notes and references ==
			{{Reflist\|2}}

	== External links ==		== External links ==
			*
	*
			*
	*
			*
	*

	*
			{{Nielsen}}
	*
	** {{musicbrainz wiki\|Gracenote}}
	* Reliability of Gracenote database questioned
	* Gracenote official estimates 500,000 CD titles currently available for sale in the U. S.
	*

	]		]
	]		]
			]
			]
			]
			]

Latest revision as of 10:10, 3 December 2024

American metadata company For other uses, see Grace note (disambiguation).

This article contains promotional content. Please help improve it by removing promotional language and inappropriate external links, and by adding encyclopedic text written from a neutral point of view. (January 2017) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Gracenote, Inc.

Gracenote headquarters in Emeryville
Formerly	Compact Disc Data Base (1998–2000)
Company type	Subsidiary
Founded	October 5, 1998; 26 years ago (1998-10-05)
Headquarters	Emeryville, California, United States
Key people	Sujit Dasmunshi(General Manager) Tim Cutting (CRO) Trent Wheeler (CPO) Roger Rached (CTO)
Products	Music Data Video Data Sports Data Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) Technology Digital Video Fingerprinting Acoustic Fingerprinting
Revenue	$98.76 million (2014)
Number of employees	1,700+ (2016)
Parent	Nielsen
Website	www.gracenote.com

Gracenote, Inc. is a company and service that provides music, video, and sports metadata and automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies to entertainment services and companies worldwide. Formerly CDDB ("Compact Disc Data Base"), Gracenote maintains and licenses an Internet-accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records. From 2008 to 2014, it was owned by Sony, later sold to Tribune Media, and has been owned since 2017 by Nielsen Holdings. In 2019, Nielsen Holdings announced plans to split into two separate publicly traded companies, Nielsen Global Connect (later known as NielsenIQ and sold) and Nielsen Global Media. In October 2022, Nielsen Holdings (by then consisting of the Global Media business), including the Gracenote subsidiary was acquired by a private equity consortium.

History

Gracenote began in 1993 as an open-source project involving a CD player program named xmcd and an associated database named CDDB. xmcd and CDDB were created by Ti Kan and Steve Scherf. Because CDs do not contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents, Kan and Scherf devised a technology that identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A TOC, or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. Its original database was created from and continues to receive voluntary contributions from users. This led to a licensing controversy when Gracenote became commercialized.

On April 22, 2008, Sony announced that it would acquire Gracenote for $260 million. The acquisition was completed on June 2, 2008.

On September 9, 2010, Gracenote received its one-billionth piece of data, with a submission about the Compact Disc release of Swans' My Father Will Guide Me Up a Rope to the Sky.

On December 23, 2013, Sony announced it would sell Gracenote to Tribune Media for $170 million. The acquisition closed in February 2014: Gracenote was aligned with the Tribune Media Services division which focused on TV and Movie metadata and IDs.

On June 12, 2014, Tribune Media Services merged with Gracenote to form one company under the Gracenote name.

On July 9, 2014, Tribune Media Company purchased What's-ON, a provider of TV data and advanced search offerings covering India and the Middle East for $27 million.

On September 3, 2014, Gracenote acquired Baseline, a Los Angeles–based provider of film and TV data and information. Baseline had previously been owned by the NY Times from 2006–2011 after which it was sold back to its original owners. This $50 million purchase deepened Gracenote's existing video datasets and added the Studio System database, a subscription-based resource for the Hollywood content creation and distribution communities, to its line-up of offerings.

On October 2, 2014, Gracenote purchased Australia-based TV and movie data company HWW for $19 million US to expand its Asia Pacific presence and international offerings.

On May 28, 2015, Gracenote acquired Amsterdam-based Infostrada Sports and Halifax-based SportsDirect, providers of music, video and sports data.

On December 20, 2016, Tribune Media announced that it was selling Gracenote to Nielsen Holdings for $540 million in cash. The deal officially closed on February 1, 2017. In September 2017, Gracenote partnered with Connekt and Ensequence to deliver real-time offers on smart TVs.

On November 7, 2019, Nielsen announced that it was splitting into two separate publicly traded companies. Gracenote fell under the company's Global Media business.

After divestiture of NielsenIQ (the former ACNielsen consumer research business) in 2021, Nielsen became solely a media audience measurement and analytics firm including Gracenote.

In October 2022, Nielsen and its subsidiaries (including Gracenote) were purchased by a private equity consortium led by affiliates of Elliott Investment Management and Brookfield Business Partners in an all-cash transaction valued at approximately $16 billion, including the assumption of debt.

Products

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Gracenote is known for MusicID, a music recognition software which identifies compact discs and delivers artist metadata and cover art to the desktop. The Gracenote database includes music genre and mood information, TV show descriptions, episode information, and channel line-ups, movie cast and crew information, and sports statistics and results. Companies including music services, TV providers, consumer electronics manufacturers and automakers use Gracenote data to power their content, universal search, navigation, linking, discovery and personalized recommendations abilities.

Gracenote's music recognition technologies compare digital music files to a worldwide database of music information, enabling digital audio devices to identify songs. The company licenses its technologies to developers of consumer electronics devices and online media players, who integrate the technologies into media players, home and car stereos, and digital music devices.

It provides software and metadata to businesses which enables their customers to manage and search digital media. Gracenote provides its media management technology and global media database of digital entertainment information to the mobile, automobile, portable, home, and PC markets. Several software applications which were capable of playing CDs (e.g. Media Go and iTunes,) used Gracenote's CDDB technology. Winamp, once a major licensee, no longer has access to Gracenote; the legacy media player program lost access to Gracenote when SHOUTcast and Winamp were sold by AOL in 2014. Redevelopment of Winamp continues by its new owner Radionomy who have said future Winamp versions will have access to an online music database.

In 2014 Tribune Media Company bought Gracenote from Sony Corporation of America. In December 2016, Tribune announced that it had reached an agreement to sell Gracenote to Nielsen Holdings for $560 million. The purchase was completed on February 1, 2017.

With the acquisition by Tribune Media in 2014 and subsequent acquisitions of What's-ON, HWW, Baseline, SportsDirect, and Infostrada Sports, Gracenote has expanded its core data product beyond music into video and sports.

Gracenote's early product line-up consisted of MusicID, Mobile MusicID, Music Enrichment, Discover, Playlist, Playlist Plus, Media VOCS, Classical Music Initiative, and Link. In April 2007, Gracenote launched the first legal lyrics offering in the U.S. that was sold to LyricFind in 2013.

Gracenote's current Music offerings fall into three major categories: Music Recognition, Music Data, and Music Discovery. Its music recognition product called MusicID was originally developed as a CD track-identification system. Gracenote also operates a digital file identification service that uses audio fingerprinting technology to identify digital music files such as MP3s and deliver track-level metadata, album art, and links to complementary content and services. Its music data offering provides information describing Genre, Mood, Era, Origin and Tempo for tens of millions of songs.

Gracenote Auto puts Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) technology into the car's audio system to identify music playing from various sources including AM/FM and satellite radio, CDs or streaming services and deliver relevant metadata and cover art. In December 2015, Gracenote launched its first audio technology, Gracenote Dynamic EQ, designed to help automakers and OEMs automatically tune connected car audio systems to the optimal equalizer settings for individual songs based on genre, mood and release date.

Gracenote's video platform called On Entertainment consists of TV listings and schedules for approximately 85 countries and 35 languages as well as TV and Movie data and related-imagery information for six million TV shows and movies. On Entertainment is supported by standardized TMS IDs for TV shows, movies, and celebrities. These IDs enable universal search across linear TV, OTT and VOD libraries and make possible "season pass" DVR recordings.

Gracenote Sports provides live scores, play-by-play data, historical results and records, schedules, player profiles, and athlete biographies for 4,500 leagues and competitions such as the NFL, MLB, NBA, NHL, Premier League, F1, Bundesliga, Tour de France, Wimbledon, and the Olympics. Gracenote's Podium product tracks all Olympic competition results and rankings at elite and junior levels as well as historical Olympic data going back to the very first modern games in 1896. In September 2015, the company announced DVR Extend which enables TV providers to dynamically adjust DVR settings to ensure live sports game recordings do not get cut off in the event they go past scheduled broadcast times.

Customers

iTunes, Media Go, Sonicstage, Groove Music and Windows Media Player all use or have used Gracenote's CD track identification services. In addition, Gracenote provides or provided its products to a number of other services including online services like Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL, AmazonMP3, Spotify, Winamp, MetroLyrics, Pandora, Google Music;, home and automotive products such as those from Alpine, Bose, or Panasonic; mobile music applications from Samsung and others, Sony Mobile Communication (TrackID, Sony Movies/Video & TV SideView App for Xperia Through Gracenote Video Explore and Sony Music Walkman App for Xperia), and the ACR technology into the car audio systems for Tesla, BMW, Nissan and several other car makers.

Controversy

Main article: Gracenote licensing controversy

In 1998, CDDB was purchased by Escient, a consumer electronics manufacturer, and operated as a business unit within the American company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient and in July 2000 was renamed Gracenote. The CDDB database license was later changed to include new terms. For instance, any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup. Then, in March 2001, only licensed applications were provided access to the Gracenote database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) were no longer available, so programmers using Gracenote services were required to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1).

This has been controversial, as the original CDDB database was created out of anonymous contributions, initially via the open source xmcd CD player program. Many listing contributors believed that the database was open-source as well because, in 1997, cddb.com's download and support pages had said it was released under the GPL. CDDB claims that the license grant was an error.

Notes and references

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Sony Corporation of America Completes Gracenote Acquisition Archived May 16, 2010, at the Wayback Machine
Cohen, Noam (2010-10-03). "Obsessions With Minutiae Thrive as Databases". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-10-04.
"Tribune Closes $170 Mil Cash Deal to Acquire Sony's Gracenote". Variety. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
"Tribune Buys Gracenote From Sony". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 31 January 2015.
Michelle Clancy. "Tribune to merge Media Services into Gracenote operations". Rapid TV News. Archived from the original on 3 April 2015. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
Lawler, Ryan. "Tribune Digital Ventures Acquires Indian Electronic Program Guide Provider What's On". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
Spangler, Todd. "Tribune Media's Gracenote Acquires Baseline for $50 Million Cash". Variety. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
"Gracenote targets Australia with $19M buy-up of TV & movie data provider HWW". VentureBeat. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
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"Nielsen Completes Acquisition of Gracenote". Nielsen Press Release. February 1, 2017.
O'Halloran, Joseph. "Gracenote teams with Connekt, Ensequence to deliver real-time offers on smart TVs". Rapid TV News. Retrieved 2017-10-17.
Cullen, Terri (2019-11-07). "Research firm Nielsen to split into two separate publicly traded companies". CNBC. Retrieved 2024-04-17.
Lafayette, Jon (2021-03-05). "Nielsen Completes $2.7 Billion Sale of Global Connect Business". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved 2024-08-29.
^ Lafayette, Jon (2022-10-11). "Nielsen Completes $16 Billion Sale to Private Equity Consortium". Broadcasting & Cable. Retrieved 2024-08-29.
"CDDB problems (Gracenote Services No Longer Work In Winamp: Reason Why Explained)". Winamp & SHOUTcast Forums. Retrieved 2017-01-12.
Winamp Official Forum
Lieberman, David (December 20, 2016). "Tribune Media Agrees To Sell Gracenote Data Services To Nielsen For $560M". Deadline Hollywood. Pensky Media.
"MetroLyrics get Authorized". techvibes.com. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
"Gracenote unveils new Internet radio technology". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
"Gracenote to Help Launch Music Services". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 5 January 2014.
"What is Gracenote and Why Should Musicians Use It". Bison Disc. Retrieved 14 August 2017.
"Gracenote's Dynamic EQ Automatically Tunes Car Stereo Systems One Song At A Time". Forbes. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
"Gracenote: DVRs To Extend Record Time If Sports Game Goes Into Overtime". www.twice.com. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
"How iTunes remembers audio CDs". iTunes KB.
"Gracenote Security Update June 27th, 2006". Archived from the original on 2010-01-24. Affected Products: Sony CONNECT Player, Sony SonicStage Ver.3.3/3.4, Sony SonicStage Mastering Studio Ver.2.1/2.2
"Local Music Files". Spotify. Thanks to our collaboration with the good people at Gracenote®, your MP3s can be made whole again.
"Uploading Your CD Metadata to Gracenote". Affected Products: Windows Media Player, Groove Music
"Google Play Legal Information". google.com. Retrieved 5 June 2015.
For more information, see Samsung Music Center: Samsung Multimedia Manager Archived 2007-10-02 at the Wayback Machine
"Official: Sony and Ericsson are divorced". theregister.co.uk. Retrieved 5 June 2015.

External links

v t e Nielsen Holdings
Units	Gracenote Nielsen Audio Nielsen Media Research
Former services and units	NielsenIQ National Consumer Panel Nielsen BookScan (outside the United States) Nielsen Business Media Nielsen Broadcast Data Systems Nielsen SoundScan Nielsen VideoScan

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