This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Vskelton (talk | contribs) at 17:26, 26 July 2006 (removed links to years (2001, 2002, etc.)). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 17:26, 26 July 2006 by Vskelton (talk | contribs) (removed links to years (2001, 2002, etc.))(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff) For grace notes in music, see grace note.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. As of 2005 many computer software applications that are capable of playing CDs use Gracenote's CDDB or similar services such as All Media Guide's AMG LASSO, or open-source projects such as freedb and MusicBrainz. 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.
Background
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 generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see CD-Text), Kan and Scherf devised a clever technology which 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. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets.
Some computer users who have copied vinyl LPs from their turntables onto CD-Rs have been astonished to find their computers correctly displaying the titles and track listings when these CD-Rs are played on their computer. This happens when a commercial CD is a remastered version of an LP, containing the same tracks in the same order. If the track offsets of the homemade CD match the track timings of the commercial CD to within a second, the CDDB database can identify the CD successfully.
Commercialization and controversy
In 1998, Kan and Scherf incorporated CDDB into a privately held company with investment from Escient, 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, GPL project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. 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.
As of 2005 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.
Lawsuits
The monetization of CDDB (which was always offered as a commercial service since its inception) by Gracenote may also have caused friction with its licensees, some of whom preferred “free forever” over paying a reasonable royalty for Gracenote’s service and technology. In 2001, Gracenote sued Roxio and its parent, Adaptec for breach of contract, as well as trademark infringement and other claims relating to inducement of infringement after Roxio switched from CDDB to freedb, while continuing to display Gracenote’s CDDB mark in a manner likely to cause confusion among end-users as to the actual source of the metadata received following a CD lookup. The case was settled in 2001, and Roxio became a licensee, paying reasonable royalty rates to Gracenote ever since. Napster, which Roxio purchased the assets of, is also a licensee of Gracenote’s, paying royalties since 2002.
Gracenote v. Musicmatch
In 2002, Gracenote was sued for declaratory judgment in San Diego (Southern District of California) by its former licensee, Musicmatch. Gracenote subsequently sued Musicmatch in the Northern District of California, alleging breach of contract, trademark infringement, and patent infringement. Musicmatch then voluntarily dropped its declaratory judgment action, countersuing Gracenote in the Northern District, where the actions were consolidated before Hon. Claudia Wilken in Federal Court in Oakland.
The Northern District Court in California issued a preliminary ruling on August 26, 2004 in favor of Musicmatch on certain of its summary judgment claims. However, the Court then VACATED this August 26th ruling in its entirety on November 2nd, 2004. In the August Order (later vacated), the Court did note there was evidence that could indicate that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently; however, following a four-day trial on this issue of “inequitable conduct” by Gracenote, on October 6th, 2004, the Court ruled conclusively in Gracenote’s favor that there had been no inequitable conduct on the part of Gracenote in obtaining any of the patents-in-suit. The Court Order is available online.
The Court also ruled in Gracenote’s favor that there had indeed been intentional breaches of the contract by Musicmatch, and that Musicmatch had repeatedly infringed Gracenote’s CDDB trademark. The case was settled in 2004 and although the Court was not required as part of the settlement to vacate its Summary Judgment Order of August 26th, 2004, it nonetheless did so.
MusicMatch was purchased by Yahoo! in the fall of 2004; Yahoo! has been (and continues to be) a royalty-paying licensee of Gracenote’s since the spring of 2004 for the Yahoo! Music Engine.
Competition
The AMG LASSO media recognition service was launched in late 2004 by All Media Guide. 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.
MusicBrainz is also another music identification service that is open source and created by community contributions.
External links
- All Media Guide (AMG)
- AMG's LASSO
- freedb
- Gracenote
- MusicBrainz
- How many CDs are there? Reliability of Gracenote database questioned
- Article about Gracenote's business in Japan