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As written this page appears to be a shill for AMG. {{unsigned2|06:26, 6 April 2005|68.127.173.199}} | |||
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== Controversy == | |||
: Please be specific about your complaints or the POV tag will be removed. ] 03:19, 7 Apr 2005 (UTC) | |||
I have removed the part about losing Microsoft as a customer as I could not find anything in Google searches or Google news. Please do not place it back until you have a verifiable source. While I do not know exactly why their is an edit war going on, I'm going to step in and try and help clean things up. I'm here at the request of nobody and do not favor any side. Although, adding information without sources or proof will not help you. --] 22:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
This article seems to be balanced. What is the problem that the POV tag is addressing? {{unsigned2|00:39, 24 April 2005|Fatandhappy}} | |||
== |
== External Links == | ||
I have removed external links to any competitor, they are fine for talking about them in the article; but, it should be kept to a minimum. See ] and ] for an example both talk about each other in article which is fine; but, no mention in external links. --] 22:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
The POV tag inserted by the anonymous writer was removed since there is no reason given for inserting it in the first place. If there is reason for placing a POV tag, reinsert it and give a clear reason for placing it. {{unsigned2|00:49, 24 April 2005|Fatandhappy}} | |||
== GPL == | |||
:Compare this to the AMG page. It's is more balanced than it used to be but is still biased toward AMG.{{unsigned2|06:48, 26 May 2005|64.220.148.208}} (edit -- now that it has been reverted, it is back to being a shill for AMG).{{unsigned2|06:51, 7 June 2005|64.220.148.208}} | |||
'']'' | |||
:I see this issue as now resolved. --] 22:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
== Gracenote vs Musicmatch == | |||
Please be specific regarding the issues. If there is anything factually incorrect about the article, please, please cite and clarify.{{unsigned2|10:06, 26 May 2005|Fatandhappy}} | |||
'']'' | |||
== Mr. Becker's CV, Court Documents, Other Legal Issues== | |||
:First, the CD database does actually have 3 million + CDs. And where is the source that says there are only 600,000 CDs ever released? Gracenote database contains many personal mixes, bootlegs, and promo CDs, as well as CD singles and magazine CDs, and even CDs ripped from mp3s recorded from vinyl.{{unsigned2|06:51, 7 June 2005|64.220.148.208}} | |||
] | |||
The database also contains large numbers of duplicates and spelling errors, which you failed to mention. Now that the controversy over the number of actual CDs as opposed to various versions of entries about the same CDs in the database has been cited by Dpbsmith, are there any other specific problems with the article? {{unsigned2|11:02, 9 June 2005|Kenta}} | |||
:I have addressed everything in your post, if you have problems with how I addressed it start another little thing and refer to this subpage as needed. --] 18:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
== Please stop reverting everything I add == | |||
== Competition == | |||
This article is about Gracenote, and I am the founder. I know the details of its founding. I know the details of its products. I know the details of its legal history. I have changed the text to remove numerous factual errors in all of these aspects and more. More than once my changes have been reverted wholesale as "unverifiable". The facts that are supposedly unverifiable are either easy to verify if you bother to look, or are obvious for other reasons. (For example, the statement that commercialization of Gracenote bothered its former licensees, such as Roxio. That fails logic. How could there have been licensees before Gracenote was commercialized?) | |||
This sentence: | |||
I have left in mentions of controversy and legal issues, in the interest of fairness and completeness. However, those subjects should not dominate, and I have changed them so that they have an appropriate level of emphasis. And correctness. I was there, and it's just plain | |||
wrong for this page to point to non-final court rulings that were overturned or superseded, as if they hadn't been. | |||
* ''Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as Musicmatch Jukebox, and have moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide.'' | |||
I will be adding more interesting content in the future, of the sort that people expect to see on a page dedicated to a particular topic. | |||
To all users with a chip of some sort on their shoulder: please cease to vandalize this page in the guise of removing "unverifiable content". I know more than any single person on this topic and AM the primary source of verification for anything Gracenote-related. -- ] 03:07, 12 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
has several issues. I have seen no proof that several large commercial licensees have dropped Gracenote and moved to AMG's service. Please provide documentation. (I'm not being disingenuous here. I don't actually remember for sure, but I do doubt that any big players went to AMG at all.) Musicmatch did leave, but they did not go to AMG. They started their own service, called CDi. See the musicmatch privacy page and scroll down to section 2. See the explanation of CDi and how it ties in with their application. It is essentially a service and protocol of their own devising. But it should be noteworthy that Yahoo has been working on migrating musicmatch users to their own player, which uses Gracenote. ] 00:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
=== Please stop deleting properly sourced materials === | |||
:Please see and search for AMG. --] 01:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
Misplaced Pages is neither an advertising nor a promotional medium. Please do not use it as such. You are right that factual errors should be corrected. Removing sourced information that happens to be inconvenient for you (for example, links to court documents and barrister's websites), however, is not proper Misplaced Pages behavior. If you really are Mr. Scherf, please add useful, properly sourced information that befits Misplaced Pages, not a sales brochure. And please stop your attempts to whitewash history. -- ] 14:38, 13 September 2006 (UTC) | |||
The musicmatch player uses the CDi service, a service of their own devising, as I noted. They have licensed ''data only'' from AMG, and that is not the only source of their data. They have their own data as well. So the CD lookup service they use is their own, and much of the data is their own. Only part of the data came from AMG, and no service from AMG. The page I linked to says this, ''The Musicmatch Jukebox contains Musicmatch CD lookup (CDI) service for compact disc identification.'' I think it's pretty clear that they are using CDi, their own service, not Lasso, AMG's service. The link you provide only discusses AMG data, nothing else about AMG. So the text that says they moved over to AMG's service is incorrect. I provide these links to prove my point, but believe me when I say I know this, because they are a customer and it also all came out in the lawsuit anyway... Even if for some reason you do not believe this, then please cite a source that specifically states they are using the ] service. ] 01:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
== To Mr. Scherf == | |||
: Simonkoldyk, although Scherf earlier claims that Microsoft never dropped Gracenote/CDDB, here is a link to an Escient press release regarding the purchase of CDDB . So it seems that Microsoft did drop Gracenote after the commercialization, after all. Regarding Musicmatch, there is no evidence that the Musicmatch player, a different player than the Yahoo! Player, is using Gracenote. The CDi service appears to be alive and well and functioning without problem. ] 02:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
Mr Scherf, Misplaced Pages strongly discourages anyone from writing or editing articles about themselves, and especially in any controversial situation, one party to the controversy is not likely to have the sort of objectivity needed for an encyclopedic report. | |||
I can sympathize with your frustration if completely, and objectively demonstrable, facts are being misrepresented about your company. | |||
For crying out loud, the Microsoft Deluxe CD Player used two services, none of them CDDB: Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com. Tunes.com was a licensee of CDDB at the time of the Escient press release and had their own service with (some) CDDB data inside it, that's all. Get yourself a copy of WIndows 98 and try it out for yourself, and you'll see the tunes.com logo when it does a lookup. Or read one of the zillions of web links on the topic. Keep scratching at those straws... | |||
The "Misplaced Pages" way to deal with this is for you to post a comment here in Talk, with polite arguments '''and links to objective reference sources''' -- and request that someone else look into the issue and correct any statement you believe is factually wrong. | |||
WRT to your comment about musicmatch using CDi, when did I ever dispute that? I agree with you, musicmatch uses CDi. The point is that they do not use AMG Lasso. ] 02:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
It will take longer to get any errors fixed, but the fixes will be more durable. {{unsigned2|13:03, 13 October 2006|75.7.11.91}} | |||
FYI, here's a link to the press release for the Microsoft player and Tunes.com: . ] 03:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
: Thank you for agreeing that Microsoft did use CDDB with its CD Deluxe product. It appears from the Tunes.com release that you linked to describes the additional content (Rolling Stones info, commerce links, etc.) and that the recognition is coming from CDDB, though it does not mention. For crying out loud, Scherf, in the Escient press release it clearly states, '''''The CDDB database currently provides music CD identification information to more than 25 officially-supported players, including the new Microsoft(R) Deluxe CD Player (MSFT), as well as the Notify CD Player, Quintessential CD Player, Discplay 4, and Xmcd.''''' Do you dispute the factuality your own company's press release (since CDDB was a division of Escient at the time)? And do you debate that Microsoft dropped support for CDDB by building its own service shortly after the commercilization of CDDB? | |||
== Vandalism == | |||
: WRT, the current article does not state that Musicmatch uses AMG Lasso; it states that it moved to '''''the commercial service provided by All Media Guide'''''. According to the ] article, the company provides services to companies like Musicmatch. Can you provide a source that shows this as incorrect? Who is "scratching at straws" here? Please kindly keep the rudeness out of the discussion. ] 04:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
I agree with your opinion, in general. However, this is a special case. This page has been subjected to blanket reversions by vandals who apparently care nothing about the facts. It seemingly matters not at all that recent edits to this page have corrected glaring errors in the legal section, with numerous citations of court documents to back it all up, for example. The blanket reversion made just about a day ago by an anonymous vandal put back an older version of the page with totally incorrect information (not to mention unsubstantiated opinion), with a total lack of regard for the fully substantiated newer text that obviates and disproves the older text. | |||
I think the Microsoft press release was pretty clear, they used Tunes.com. Tunes licensed CDDB data in addition to their own, but not the CDDB service. | |||
That's the kind of blatant attacks against this page that I'm talking about. There is nothing durable about this page. Adding links to actual facts has had no bearing on the frequency of blanket reversions and other malicious edits by vandals back to bad information. Forgive me if I say that the Misplaced Pages way is failing here, even if it (questionably) manages to work elsewhere on Misplaced Pages. It depends on contributors who are truly interested in the accurate, apolitical, factual presentation of information, without an agenda. Without that, it cannot work, and that's why it's not working here. {{unsigned2|15:29, 16 October 2006|Scherf}} | |||
These facts are not in dispute. Yes, that Escient press release is overblown, and I have no doubt that the marketing person who cranked that one out loved the thought of saying MS was a customer. That doesn't change the fact that the Deluxe CD app used Tunes.com's service, not CDDB's service. In fact, the communication protocol used by Deluxe CD player and Tunes.com was of Microsoft's own device, and didn't even slightly resemble the CDDB protocol that the CDDB service used. Play semantics all you want, but the fact is that Microsoft used Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com's service. | |||
You might refer to the Wired article if you still don't believe the MS stuff. It's stated pretty plainly that Microsoft did not want to use CDDB directly, and instead ended up using CDDB through third party vendor (i.e. Tunes.com). | |||
As far as musicmatch is concerned, the musicmatch player uses CDI, a commercial service provided by musicmatch for musicmatch. They do not use the AMG service. So the article is wrong. Part of their database consists of AMG data, and that's it. These are all semantic games. If you want the article to contain truth, why not say that "musicmatch moved over to its own CD lookup service, CDi, that partially contained AMG data in addition to data collected by musicmatch"? Anything else is misleading. For that matter, why not say "Microsoft stopped using Tunes.com, a service that licensed CDDB data to supplement its own database"? ] 04:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
== This article has a POV problem == | |||
===Edited=== | |||
M. Scherf (or M. "Sooahs"), | |||
Please read and comment. --] 04:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
The new text in the competition section seems okay, except "licensee" should probably be "licensees, ". ] 05:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
I strongly disagree with your opinion. You have removed a number of citations from reputable and verifiable sources and replaced them with links to documents that in many cases do not support the the text. You have also created an article which is not neutral. Specifically, you have removed well documented and discussed sections such as: | |||
:Fixed. --] 05:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
* text and links which describe the controversy caused by your commercialization of the service | |||
* text and links which describe the controversy over the actual numbers of CDs in your database | |||
* text and links which describe the results of the lawsuit with Musicmatch | |||
amongst other verified bits of information which were in the previous edit to the article. | |||
:: Simonkoldyk, thanks again for working on this. The new section could mention that many smaller CDDB licensees moved to freedb after the commercialization. This is supported by looking at the lists of supported appliations on the and the . Just a quick scan of these two pages shows that a applications such as Audiograbber, CD-DA Xtractor, Feurio, InCDius, and others had already made the move after Gracenote commercialized and changed its license terms. | |||
Misplaced Pages is not a soapbox. As mentioned above, Misplaced Pages strongly discourages writing about one's self (or one's company). If you have changes that you feel need to be made, you are best served by following the Misplaced Pages policies, and letting others make changes based on discussion in this talk area. If you feel the article is unjust, feel free to make comments here and start a civilized discussion. Currently your comments merely display anger and do not discuss any facts, and could be interpreted as less than civil. ] 13:35, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
:: In the part that refers to Microsoft, it should mention that shortly thereafter, Microsoft dumped CDDB altogether to build their own CD recogniton service based on ] and other databases for identifying CD's in Windows Media Player. | |||
== Explain please == | |||
This page is supposed to be about Gracenote. What is wrong with listing the products/services Gracenote produces? What is wrong with describing what that company is and does? By reading the original text, one might conclude that Gracenote only produces controversy and lawsuits. There was no mention of any product or service other than CD recognition, which is now only a small part of what Gracenote does. I am unclear why describing what Gracenote actually does is inappropriate for the Gracenote page, and how that is considered standing up on a soapbox? | |||
:: The section on Musicmatch has a couple of minor tweaks necessary. CDi is mispelled (the last i is supposed to be lowercase). The CDi identification service was developed based on the ] database, with additional data being submitted by the Musicmatch users, similar to what Microsoft did with ]. The AMG service called Lasso does not seem to have been released until after Musicmatch was found to not be infringing on Gracenote's patents in 2004, more than 2 years later. Thanks again for your patience. ] 08:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
This is a Gracenote page, not the AMG page, the freedb page, or anyone else's page. Such competitors do not belong in the introduction, taking up the majority of the section. The are now mentioned in the body and listed at the end as well. That's the appropriate placement. I would rather not even mention them on a page dedicated to Gracenote, but concede that they should be present in a reasonable context. It is not reasonable to have them dominate the introduction to an article about Gracenote. | |||
The section is more accurate and fair as-is, capitalization error aside. It took a long time to arrive at what is fair common ground. The section is not perfect, but I am willing to accept it. Please try and show some good faith. ] 09:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
The controversy surrounding Gracenote's creation is still in the text. It was not removed. However, it doesn't need dominate the page. Gracenote has over 100 million distinct users with probably half that active at any one time; with that many people using the service, there will always be a small fraction that are disgruntled, whether you're talking about Gracenote or anything else. Unfortunately, that small fraction (including you, apparently) is using this page as a place to air their grievances. So the controversy section was blown way out of proportion. | |||
== Moved Discussions == | |||
As for the number of CDs in the database, we have a page at that clearly states the number of CDs Gracenote's database covers. This is an actual count of the database. Our own studies of the number of lookups against this database shows that over 60% of the entries are looked up on a regular basis by multiple individuals. If these are not real CDs, then how can people be looking them up? That's 3 million active CDs worldwide, at the very least, with over 5.2 million registered CDs, be they commercial, demo, bootleg or home burn. Our page states the count clearly. Are you disputing that? Where is the evidence that this is in error or is a fabrication? It is totally absurd to think that Gracenote would just make up these numbers and publish them. For Pete's sake, freedb has something like 2 million CDs in their database and they have a lot less users than Gracenote. Where is your evidence that this is wrong- hard evidence - aside from the fact that someone who posted here wanted to stir up controversy? | |||
As this page is getting very long and very complicated I have started to move each topic that gets long to its own subpage so that parties interested in certain things can deal with those without having to go through the entire page, also for me to follow everything. Also I archived some past posts as you can see in the archive at the top. --] 18:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
And as for the legal page, I'm not really sure how to respond to what you've said. The text that was put there was incomplete and blatantly incorrect. Blatantly. That text was replaced with a correct description of events, as well as links to actual court documents to support that description. The new text contains no interpretation or opinion. It is simply a straightforward explanation of the seven court documents linked to from the page. That stated, I am very curious to hear your explanation of why these documents do not support the text? And I am also very curious to hear your explanation of how the old text supported such claims to the effect that "Gracenote's loss" in the case has opened up the market to competitors. That's especially interesting, considering that the court document clearly states that Gracenote did not lose. As for the link to Becker's CV, that was removed because, as proven by the court documents, it is incorrect. This should not come as a surprise. This is the CV of a lawyer who was on the opposing side in the case, and has no incentive to note that he lost the case on his resume. The court documents prove that the information was wrong, and therefore it should not be on the page. | |||
==Mediation Cabal== | |||
I cannot fathom how you can continue to make these arguments in the face of overwhelming facts which show them to be entirely false. I can't help but conclude that these are simply tactics to stir things up here, or perhaps befuddle editors who may not take the time to really look into your claims. Regardless, the fact is that the Misplaced Pages guidelines are just that - guidelines. Anyone may edit here, discouraged or not. If this page had even a semblance of impartiality to it, and actually contained a preponderance of factual text, we wouldn't be having this discussion. I'd be happy to let others manage the page. But the fact is that this page, not to mention many others on Misplaced Pages, are under attack from people with agendas who see Misplaced Pages as a venue for striking at others. Others may sit by and allow misinformation ranging from non-fact to libel to be perpetrated against them, but I don't take that view. We've had our discussions here, and we've posted links and lots of corrections, but it's gotten exactly nowhere. Given the amount of vandalism here, we have no choice but to actively keep the page factual. | |||
Hi everyone, I'm from the Mediation Cabal. I'm sorry it took so long for us to respond, but, well, none of us are being paid to do this and backlogs happen. | |||
On a last note, I would note that some quite good text has been posted here by individuals that I do not know personally. They have taken it upon themselves to contribute to the page. I'm not sure why their edits should not be given credence, just because you assume it's really someone affiliated with Gracenote in every case. The user "msooahs", however, is a legal intern at Gracenote who took the time to gather the court documents and write the legal text for the page. This was initiated independent of my contributions here. That work was initiated by our counsel because the page was so totally incorrect, and it was only after they saw that I had been contributing to the page that they notified me of their intent. So even that work was done without my involvement. (I must also note that msooahs knew nothing about Gracenote's legal history until digging into the court documents. They speak for themselves, and so it matters little who posted them here.) | |||
Do you still want a mediator? If not, just say so and we can leave it at that - if any party refuses mediation, it can't work, and you can always re-request mediation at a later date if need be. If so, then I'll do my best to assist. | |||
Finally, more than one person here has mentioned the "Misplaced Pages way" and complained that somehow I and others have not been following it. I would ask that you who have complained examine your own actions very closely before making such statements. The Misplaced Pages guidelines say you should not revert text, yet you have done so, often times across the contributions of multiple independent users (not just against me). The guidelines say many other things as well that have been violated here by those who claim to be acting true to the guidelines. I have described only a portion of it here. The total disregard for the guidelines, as well as a disregard for fact and truth here is utterly appalling. One can only conclude that those who have been perpetrating the vandalism against this page know all of this already, but are trying to hide behind the guidelines as if they have been acting in good faith. Such "Rovian" tactics have no place here. ] 17:37, 16 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
If mediation is required, it would be helpful if one or more parties could provide a brief summary of exactly which parts of the article need to be edited. The impression gleaned from edit histories and talk subpages can be a bit fragmented. By "brief", I mean brief - no need to go into the justification, just what the positions are. | |||
==Explanation and Response== | |||
Although we can use the ] if need be, I suggest replying on this talk page for now. --]<sup>]</sup> 00:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
Your response is a wonderful example of why people should not write about themselves in Misplaced Pages. | |||
:I appreciate that you are volunteering, and understand the delay. I'm actually pleasantly surprised, given that an editor here (I forget who) said that probably no mediator would volunteer to take this up. With the help of Simonkoldyk, we've actually begun to make some progress on some of the blatant errors here. But things have stalled, and there are two remaining issues that need addressing. The text in the musicmatch section does not reflect the actual events, which is the main problem here. I am not an attorney, and cannot explain in simple terms exactly what's wrong. Our counsel wrote and approved the text I previously posted here, text that was reverted consistently, despite supporting court documents. Our GC wants it fixed, because it misrepresents the facts, and I have been attempting to do this at his request. We are not looking to whitewash history, as some have claimed, but the supported facts need to be represented here. | |||
<blockquote>Scherf wrote: "...Gracenote only produces controversy and lawsuits."</blockquote> | |||
Though you may be in denial as one of the creators of the original CDDB and employee of Gracenote, Gracenote is in fact a highly controversial company in many ways and one which aggressively pursues lawsuits against its clients. These facts were well documented in the original article. Gosh Scherf, the controversy over your commercialization and the lawsuits was Slashdotted, written up in numerous articles, blogged, and privately discussed throughout the digital media and the internet world. Placing factual information about the products Gracenote produces is not the problem you have created. The problem is that you (and your minions) have deleted other "good, well researched contributions of many users" in order to further your own agenda of minimizing the reality that Gracenote is controversial. | |||
:The second issue is the overall tone of this article. The page is dominated by Gracenote detractors, who have resisted our attempts to even describe what Gracenote does in the article. I am admittedly partial to Gracenote, but how silly is that? Gracenote has made some major headlines lately, including huge press over lyrics licensing, and even huger headlines over supplying myspace.com with content filtering technology. There are ''hundreds'' of articles on that, and one cannot dispute that it deserves some mention here. But because the page is dominated by people whose goal is apparently to allow NO favorable information to make its way into the Gracenote page, it will be impossible to achieve through normal channels. | |||
<blockquote>Scherf wrote: "...Gracenote would just make up these numbers and publish them."</blockquote> | |||
Scherf, you are in denial again. The controversy is quite real. Much of Gracenote's (and other user-created services') data is likely to be multiple versions of the same CD. Just because you claim to have 5.2 million entries in your database does not mean there are really 5.2 million CDs released in the world. Gracenote has many variations in the spellings (and misspellings) of the same CDs. The misspelled data which you aggregated was used to help close down Napster (the original one). The controversy over your claims of millions of CDs was also well documented in the original article, and you (or your employee) deleted it. | |||
:We realize that Misplaced Pages frowns on biased parties editing articles, but I would argue that these people are just as biased in the opposite direction. I had hoped that mediation would be possible, but several of them posted things to the mediation request that make it clear they won't negotiate in good faith. If you can suggest any way to arrive at a fair page that corrects the two things I have mentioned here, I would be happy to hear it. We have tried to fix the page, openly without hiding behind anonymity, though normal channels, and it hasn't worked. Any approach taken to fix the page must be durable and not require a lot of attention, or there's not much point to it. I have basically already given up and handed the problem back to Gracenote's PR/legal folks, but I'll listen to suggestions. ] 00:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
<blockquote>Scherf wrote: "..."Gracenote's loss" in the case has opened up the market to competitors."</blockquote> | |||
Gracenote sought damages for patent infringement against Musicmatch, and only received a settlement based on a relatively minor contract issue. That is all that the documents say. It is interesting that you deleted the CV information from Musicmatch's lawyer and insinuate that he is not being accurate or truthful because he is somehow has no incentive to do so. Lawyers in California (and other states in the USA) have strict requirements regarding advertising accurately and truthfully, under severe penalty. It is also interesting that none of the Gracenote lawyers from the case mention anything about winning the case, they merely mentioned that they represented Gracenote. If Gracenote did so well by the case, wouldn't your lawyers mention the fact. Are you trying to say that Gracenote's lawyers are somehow different or better than Musicmatch lawyers? Perhaps more ethical? It would seem highly unlikely. Occam's razor would seem to dictate that the lawyers accurately describe the results of the case because of stringent legal requirements. According to the Musicmatch lawyer's CV, "The parties agreed to settle the case after Musicmatch obtained summary judgment on all patent claims." One should probably conclude from this quote as well as the court documents posted the case did not go well for Gracenote. This case was well publicized and has far reaching implications for Gracenote, its competitors, and its customers. Trying to minimize this issue in Misplaced Pages by deleting other users' "good, well researched" information is not proper behavior. | |||
:FYI, I think this is the last version I edited . The musicmatch section contains the facts of the case and presents them in a neutral way, without spin for or against. But spin aside, the most important thing is that it presents the events and does not omit important facts (not suppositions presented as fact), like the fact that the summary judgements were vacated by the court. Note that the article also contains mentions of controversy and competitors, but again does not spin them one way or another. Nor do they dominate the page, as with previous versions of the page. If we can approach something like this through mediation, then I'm for it. ] 01:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
<blockquote>Scherf wrote: "...befuddle editors who may not take the time to really look into your claims. "</blockquote> | |||
One should not doubt this is your intention, but I will assume that you are writing in good faith. My impression is that Wikipedians are generally intelligent and dilligent, and they are not so easily "befuddled" by such "Rovian tactics" as yours. Accusing Wikipedians of being somehow disgruntled with your company is just plain straight old ]. It seems more likely that you are financially motivated to have no "]" information in your famous/infamous organization's article. In the meantime, this article should be returned to its original pre-Gracenote Spin Rewrite version. If you would like to have changes made such as adding product information, please do so. But please, please do not delete the facts, and Scherf, do not mess up the carpet with your dirty, dirty shoes. ] 14:29, 18 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
== |
== Reference and POV check == | ||
So I read the latest version of the article and found it rather anti-Gracenote in places, and the older version cited by Steve Scherf to be overly promotional. Both versions have some facts not mentioned in the other. I have just finished creating a hybrid version, removing POV statements but adding facts from both sides. I checked the supplied references and corrected some inaccuracies in the claims made. There remain some unreferenced claims, which I have marked as "citation(s) needed". I would invite interested parties to either find references to support these claims, or to move them to this talk page for further analysis. In particular, if no reference can be found that says that Gracenote claims to have "almost 4 million CDs" or some similarly allegedly inflated number, then the entire "Database size controversy" section should be removed, because a one-sided controversy...isn't. -- ] 01:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
I won't bother to debate further. Your laymans understanding of law is deeply flawed, as is your knowledge of history and the technology on many points here. I could spend all day explaining every major and minor error in the text that you and (presumably) others have pushed, but even trying to deal with the glaring errors here has been fruitless. So I'll stop trying. I'll end here with a quote from your text: | |||
:Beland, while I agree with you, I think we can go even further. The question is not whether Gracenote made such claims in the past or not (they clearly did, per the cites given below), but whether or not there is an actualy "controversy" surrounding this. I think it is fairly clear that due to a variety of factors, the number of unique CDs in terms of "the music contained" and the number of unique CDs in terms of "the measurements used to identify CDs in this system" will be very different, perhaps due to different pressings, different masters, borderline cases (fuzzy data), etc. I fail so see why this would be controversial, but really whether or not I or anyone else here finds it controversial is very different from whether there is any source in any reliable publication which has ever found it controversial.--] 00:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC) | |||
<blockquote>"Scherf, do not mess up the carpet with your dirty, dirty shoes"</blockquote> | |||
Here are some references to the Gracenote claims of having "almost 4 million CDs" in 2005: | |||
I think this illustrates why people with chips on their shoulder should not write about things of which they are incapable of being impartial. Nobody who knows the actual history, not the /. history or the myths created by crazy things posted here and there on the web, often in "fringe" publications, but the actual history, would accuse me of being "dirty". If that's the way you feel, you have no business posting here. Leave it to someone who is capable of looking at both sides, and is not afraid to have their opinion changed by facts that contradict their unwavering beliefs. To live up to what you seem to be saying about me, you (and others) should recuse yourself from further editorial responsibility. {{unsigned2|22:23, 20 October 2006|Scherf}} | |||
* Dec. 7th, 2003: in the : Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "Over 2.1 million" CDs and "Over 28 million" songs. | |||
* Feb. 14th, 2004: in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "2,525,147" CDs and "32,329,447" songs. | |||
* Nov. 14th, 2004: in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,178,603" CDs and "40,649,164" songs. | |||
* Feb. 5th, 2005: in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,421,152" CDs and "43,759,562" songs. | |||
* April 13th, 2005: in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,604,453" CDs and "46,073,017" songs. | |||
* July 20th, 2005: in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,845,158" CDs and "49,130,187" songs. | |||
* Jan. 5th 2006: in the Internet Archive claims that "Gracenote Global Media Database Now Spans over 55 Million Tracks and Over 4 Million CDs". | |||
The addition of nearly 2 million CDs to the Gracenote database in a little over two years is incredible, especially in the light of that state that "Well over 100,000 album titles - both new and re-issues - were released in 2004". Gracenote was claiming to have accumulated new CDs in its database over the two years at a rate that is 10X the rate of both new CD releases and re-issues of old CDs during that period. ] 12:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC) | |||
: I hope it's not too late to point out the fallacy in the reasoning above: the number of CDs and the number of albums bear little relation to each other '''except that''' each album corresponds to ''at least'' one CD. The number of CDs would include double- and triple-albums (not to mention the odd compilation with four or more), singles and others. In particular many audio-books released on CD cover many CDs: '']''—the first (and shortest) book—covers '''seven''' CDs and the subsequent (rather longer) books even more. The reference being touted above as definitive fails to mention any of these other sources of CD; it refers to "album titles", gliding over the fact that sometimes several versions of an album are released. The reasoning is therefore fundamentally flawed: I can see no reason why the number of CDs should be unrealistic. HTH HAND —] | ] 06:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC) | |||
== Enough == | |||
: Please stop editing topics in which you are personally involved. Misplaced Pages policy is very clear on this. If you have a problem with the content of this article, please suggest changes on the Talk page, backing them up with sources. ] 22:35, 20 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
We have letters to the Foundation going back ''months'' from these guys, they have tried to fix the problems they perceive with the article (] ticket is 2006102310010844 and others exist I believe, and have been reverted or rebuffed at every turn. They have been really, really patient, and we have completely failed to show them proper respect. By that I don' mean we should remove everything they don't like, or let them write the article, but if they express reservations with the content, especially the interpretation of lawsuits, controversies and the like, and they do so in a calm, patient, reasonable and non-confrontational manner, which they have, then we should at least do them the courtesy of listening to them. | |||
: I agree with AlistairMcMIllan. If this article is missing information, or is incorrect, Scherf, you should point it out on this discussion page and let the Misplaced Pages community make the decision to edit. I have tried to add back in impartial information based on your edits and comments. Since you obviously are not an impartial party to Gracenote, you should follow Misplaced Pages policy.] 03:58, 21 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
Please, we can do better than this. Obviously sources are going to tend to be online, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes grinding an axe. We can, I think, do a much better job of accurately recording Gracenote, and not erring too far on the side of criticism. After all, to be fair, the Gracenote / CDDB system works well for a lot of people; most users, where they are conscious of the system at all, seem to like it. | |||
== Compromise == | |||
So: let's discuss here and work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources. Please. <b>]</b> <small>(])</small> 23:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC) | |||
Hello. I see there seems to be a contentious dispute going on here. I have left a little note on the talk pages of everyone who seems to be involved reminding them to ]. I would like to try to help resolve this dispute. I'm not real familiar with the music industry, and today is the first time I've heard of Gracenote, so you will all have to be very patient with me and help me understand. I've read the comments here on the talk page, and dug through the page history. It looks to me like some of the differences aren't really as big as you seem to think they are. | |||
== Towards a more balanced article == | |||
I've created a subpage in my userspace and copied the text of this article as of , the current version when I first looked at the page. I've begun comparing it to past versions and trying to work out a neutral, balanced version that I hope everyone can agree on. I haven't gotten very far yet because I'm trying to be meticulous. So far I've only worked on the first paragraph. The page is ]. Please look at my changes to that first paragraph and tell me what you think. Let's avoid editing this main article for a few days or a week or so, and work on that temporary page. Let's keep discussion on this main talk page however. When we're all happy with the temporary page, let's copy it back to the main page. | |||
As is noted by JzG/Guy... a lot of the negative/opinionated content has been removed from the article with the goal to "work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources." That seems like an excellent goal to me. I am pasting in (below) the sections which have been removed from the article. I think there is a lot of good content below and that we should restore it in a way which is fair, balanced, acurate, not hostile, etc...--] 13:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC) | |||
Some of the changes I made to the first paragraph; | |||
# changed ''which maintains and licenses'' to ''which is known for maintaining and licensing''. Some of ]'s versions indicated that that is not the only thing they do. However, it is what they are primarily known for. Other things they do can (and should!) be listed elsewhere in the article. | |||
#''accessible online over the Internet'' is redundant. I eliminated ''online''. | |||
#Took out "such as iTunes" because when I think of a computer software application I think of something like Windows MediaPlayer. When I think of iTunes, I think of an iPod. It seemed like an unnecesarily confusing way of phrasing that sentence, and I didn't think it needed an example. | |||
#Got rid of the list of competitors in that same sentence. Scherf is right that they are getting undue weight in the intro; but what struck me even more then that is the fact that having them in there made that sentence unreadably confusing. I left one example of another service that does the same thing, All Media Guide's AMG LASSO. I think it is appropriate to note that Gracenote is not the only company providing this service, and to name their '''primary''' competitor (but ONLY one competitor). Let me know if I picked the wrong one to leave in. | |||
<pre> | |||
I think that's all the changes I made. Let me know what you think of those changes, and my idea for working towards a compromise. I won't be working on this article any more tonight, but I'll be back tomorrow. ~ ] <small>(] / ])</small> 20:36, 26 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
==History== | |||
Gracenote began in ] as an ] project involving a CD player | |||
:It may technically qualify as NPOV, but the emphasis seems wrong for true NPOV. First, neither Gracenote nor any other competitor is mentioned in the first paragraph of the ] article - the assymetry is telling. Second, of a bunch of other corporate pages I just checked (], ], ] - at least as controversial, ] - ditto, ] - similar story of user-created data becoming commericalized over some contributor objections) most do not refer to major controversies or competitors in their first paragraphs. I can't find a "corporate biography" style guide, but the proposal ] is surely on point here. Disclaimer: I am an employee of Gracenote, so I will not be doing any editing of this article myself, painful though it is to read it. ] 01:48, 8 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
program named xmcd. The xmcd player was developed by ] and had the | |||
ability to store and recognize CDs from a database. Xmcd users regularly sent | |||
additional CD information to Mr. Kan for inclusion in the database via email. By | |||
1995, the database had become unwieldy and ], a friend of Mr. | |||
Kan, was recruited to build a server to store the CD information in a network | |||
database. Later, hosting facilities and an advertising business model were | |||
provided by an ex-patriate Scot living in ], Graham | |||
Toal.<ref>http://www.ibiblio.org/tkan/xmcd/cddb_wsj_12.31.01.pdf</ref> | |||
As CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their | |||
== Dear Kenta (whoever you are)== | |||
contents (see ]), Kan developed software which identifies and looks up | |||
If your goal is to provide an impartial, factual and accurate information about Gracenote, then why do you, in addition to making edits which are inaccurate and not at all supported by any facts, deprive the users of Misplaced Pages to read the court rulings for themselves? If you are adament on your position, then why do you feel the need to remove all information relating to the litigation section which is clearly public information??? {{unsigned|69.238.229.18}} | |||
CDs based on ] or "Table of Contents" | |||
information stored at the beginning of each disc. The TOC lists the offsets | |||
(locations on disk) corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The | |||
matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets. | |||
The CDDB technology became popular in the 1990s, as it allowed ]s to be | |||
: The link to the Gracenote legal site with legal documents is available on the bottom of the page. The document as it stands is well documented. I noticed that you not only changed the legal section, but also changed and deleted a large portion of the rest of the article, as well, so I have reverted it. ] 14:05, 29 October 2006 (UTC) | |||
automatically annotated with artist, album, title, and other information during | |||
the process of ] from CD. | |||
Some computer users who have copied ] from their | |||
== POV Edits by Sooahs == | |||
turntables onto ]s have been surprised to find their computers correctly | |||
displaying the titles and track listings when these ]s 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.{{Facts|date=February | |||
2007}} | |||
In 2005, Gracenote purchased audio recognition technology from Philips that is | |||
I reverted the article back to the last version made by Euchiasmus. ], a Gracenote employee, has made large deletions which skew the article's POV to benefit the company. If there are specific factual discrepancies with the article, please discuss in the talk page. I agree with the protection of this page. Employees of the company should not edit directly, but should make comments on the discussion page. ] 22:05, 9 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
highly tolerant of noise and allows for the recognition of music over a cell | |||
phone microphone. It markets this service, which is used in music and video | |||
players, PC software, home consumer electronics products, mobile music | |||
applications, cell phone handsets, and automobile audio and navigation systems, | |||
as "Mobile MusicID". | |||
<ref>http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/050830-audiofp.html | |||
</ref> | |||
In ] Gracenote announced | |||
: Regardless of factual accuracy, the current article is biased in its overall structure because of emphasis. See my talk page entry above (under "Compromise") for examples from the first paragraph of POV. Sooah's first paragraph (which you reverted) was closer to NPOV than the current one, although some later paragraphs had more POV than is appropriate. Can you please explain what was POV about at least Sooah's first paragraph? By the way, why are you reverting changes, rather than trying to improve them? I understand that you feel that any contribution by a Gracenote employee is suspect, but are blanket reversions really the best response? Please take another look at "Working Towards NPOV" in ] and rethink your approach to this article. ] 02:19, 11 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
<ref>http://gracenote.com/corporate/press/article.html/date=2006071700</ref> | |||
that it had licensed ] from some of the major music publishing | |||
companies, to expand its services. | |||
==Licensing controversy== | |||
: Thank you for being ], and for acknowledging Sooah's version of the article had significant POV issues. The reason I reverted the article to the the version immediately prior to Sooah's version is simply because Sooah had reverted the entire article to the version Sooah originally rewrote (in its entirety) previously. As you noted, blanket reversions are not the best response, especially by someone who may be biased, such as an employee of the company that is the subject of the article. I merely reverted to the version that others had been editing before Sooahs reverted to the October 26th version. Personally, I have tried to avoid editing the article since ], another Gracenote employee, left me a note on my user talk page two times which I felt to be a personal attack, as well as offensive and insulting. Other, non-Gracenote employee Wikipedians may edit this article at will and remove any POV, if in fact there is any POV issue. Wholesale reversions by employees of the company are not appropriate, and this has been noted several times by a number of users. Please ask that Sooahs (and others at Gracenote) read ] and other Misplaced Pages policy pages at the office when you meet. Additionally, can you please note where any factual errors occur in the article? It would make it easier to note these errors so that others may edit to correct the discrepancies. The "structure" of the article is something evolved over a period of years and through the efforts of number of Misplaced Pages editors, viewing Gracenote from the outside - the way that Misplaced Pages funtions best. ] 12:54, 12 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
In ], the service was purchased by ], a consumer electronics | |||
== Is it OK for Gracenote Employees to Edit ONUnicorn's ]?== | |||
manufacturer and operated as a business unit within the ] based | |||
Because that would really improve the climate around here, and give us a way to make our point without pissing people off.] 02:31, 11 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient and then in July of 2000 renamed | |||
:That's one reason why I started it; but I didn't think anyone had paid any attention to my comment at all. ~ ''''']'''''<sup>(]|])</sup> 14:55, 13 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
Gracenote.<ref>{{cite press release| | |||
url=http://web.archive.org/web/20000919013049/www2.cddb.com/press/2000072400. | |||
html| title=CDDB Re-launches as Gracenote With New Products| date=July 24, 2000| | |||
publisher=cddb.com}} (currently offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref> | |||
In ], ], an ] clone of the Gracenote CDDB service, | |||
:I reverted Scherf's reversion to the latest Voice of All version. Scherf had reverted the entire article back to an old version posted by Sooahs. This is frustrating since a Gracenote employee (founder?) made the revisions immediately after Voice of All unprotected the page. ] 00:08, 21 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
was created by former CDDB users who wanted a non-commercial alternative. The | |||
track listing database freedb used to seed its new service was based on the data | |||
released for public use by CDDB. | |||
The CDDB database license was changed, and some programmers complained that the | |||
:Agreed, this is frustrating. Just reverted the article to fix user:Scherf's revisionism which deleted most of the original article and replaced with POV a company press-release type of article. User:Scherf has been requested numerous times to point out the inaccuracies in the article, but has yet to do so. I am at a loss to identify the ] to which Scherf refers. ] 15:59, 24 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
new license included certain terms that they couldn't accept: if one wanted to | |||
access CDDB, one was not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database, and any | |||
programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the | |||
lookup.<ref name="whydb">{{cite web | | |||
url=http://freedb.org/modules.php?name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=2 | | |||
title=Why freedb.org? | work=freedb | accessdate = 2006-05-09 }}</ref> The | |||
service was also no longer a free for everyone, requiring commercial developers | |||
(not end-users) to pay an "initial fee", as well as a license fee based on the | |||
usage of the servers and support. {{Fact|date=February 2007}} | |||
In ], ], Gracenote banned all unlicensed applications from | |||
::I'm sorry, I'm not interested in a Gracenote page that has numerous factual errors, and contains gratuitous negativity. Fatandhappy can say all he/she/it wants about being civil and how blanket reversions are bad. That does not explain why Fatandhappy and others have continually reverted all text anyone adds here to correct errors in a supported way, but just doesn't happen to be negative. They are determined to keep negative text in place simply because they are detractors of Gracenote. It makes little sense for Gracenote employees to be barred from posting here when people from the opposite extreme (much more extreme in the negative than Gracenote supporters have been in the positive) are free to perpetuate negative commentary at will. I do not accept that as valid Misplaced Pages policy, and the guidelines clearly support my view. As long as people with negative POV problems continue to post here, I am obliged to do the same. To Fatandhappy: Pay all the lip service to the rules that you like, Fatandhappy, but you have consistently reverted things that were supported with links to facts, while in your comments claiming they were not. You have also reverted corrections to logical impossibilities, also while inexplicably claiming they were unsupported. I have filed a request for mediation for the Gracenote article with you listed as one of the requested participants, and you posted negative comments to the discussion in an apparent attempt to scuttle the mediation. You have shown that you cannot edit the Gracenote article in good faith, and your apparent rejection of mediation is further evidence that you are not interested in being impartial. You should recuse yourself from further editing of this page, as should Kenta and others who have engaged in negative, nonfactual editing. If you are truly impartial, how about adding links to Gracenote in all of the competitor pages you and others have injected here? And put those links at the top of the link list, instead of links to their own websites, like you have done here. Also, remove all mention of those competitors' products by name (or at all) like you have done here. How about consolidating all of the AMG pages into one page, especially the ones devoted to entire products alone? How about listing all of the legal actions they have been involved in, especially the ones they started and the ones they lost. AMG has had its share, which is how it got its reputation for shady acquisition of data. Look it up if you are really, truly interested in impartiality. And once you have done all of these things, then you will have shown your impartiality (but not necessarily your ability to deal in facts). Until then, please cut the facade you are trying to put up here in the discussion. At least I am not hiding who I am and what my goals are. ] 02:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
accessing their database. New licenses for CDDB1 (the original version of CDDB) | |||
:::And that is the issue. Misplaced Pages is not a free advertising service for your company. If you don;t like the criticism, tough. It has sources. If you've got an issue with that, you should be filing complaints against the websites that the statements originate from, not the people who are quoting them here to provide a balanced article. As for some bias, personally, I had no idea what gracenote was when I first came here. The article is only 'overly negative' in your biased eyes. You may find it hard to take criticism, but tough, this is an encyclopedia that provides ALL VERIFIABLE POINTS OF VIEW, not just a corporate endorsed point of view about their product. As for competitors being mentioned, the only way you could possibly be concerned about it is if it was stealing potential business away when people view the article, meaning that you are using it as an advert which Wiki is ]. As an encyclopedia, we are supposed to provide links to related subjects in a 'if you found this interesting, you may also be interested in reading about' kind of fashion. ] 10:09, 28 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
were no longer available, so programmers using Gracenote services were required | |||
::I wouldn't give a rat's you-know-what about criticism here, if it were only factual. I have pointed out numerous inconsistencies here, but nobody seems to care. They prefer the negative "facts" over the "positive" facts, because, gee, we don't want these Gracenote people to benefit from this page... Here's a little something for you to think about. We don't care about advertising, and this is hardly the place we'd go if we wanted to advertise. The reputation of Misplaced Pages would quash any such desire anyway, even if it were something we wanted. What we DO want is something that does not spread misinformation about Gracenote, which this page does. When we have people coming to us asking, "I thought XYZ, but it says something else on Misplaced Pages", it's a problem. And as a person who seems interested in the quality and improvement of Misplaced Pages, I would think that you would be interested in fixing those things. The text you and others keep putting up, apparently only because, god forbid, my text shouldn't stand no matter what, is CHOCK FULL of errors and logical inconsistencies. For example, why, oh why, does this statement continue to persist in your edit: "commercialization of CDDB by Gracenote also caused friction with its former licensees"? I have said here at least once that this statement makes no sense, because before the commercialization of CDDB there were no licensees - how could there have been?! So how could commercializing CDDB have angered these nonexistent licensees?! Come to your senses. You are reacting emotionally to the fact that some person with a perceived POV bias is posting, and you are inexplicably willing to blindly accept obviously broken text as a result of that emotional response. USE YOUR BRAIN. I would rather not spend even a millisecond more here fighting with you people, but there seems to be nobody willing to actually check up on the factual issues here. I am perplexed why links to things that have been proven to be incomplete and misleading, such as the link to the "summarization" on Becker's page, continue to persist in your edits. I am guessing that you are not a lawyer and do not understand (or have not even bothered to read) the 7 legal documents we provided links to, but if you spend the time to understand them (or to have a lawyer explain them to you) you will see what I mean. What about the statement that large licensees like Microsoft dropped Gracenote? Where is that statement supported anywhere on the web? Did you read the Wired article linked to from the page? How about the full transcript of the Wired interview also linked to? If you had read those, you would understand that Microsoft was never a licensee, so the claim that they dropped Gracenote is totally impossible and false. Microsoft initially used third parties (who in turn used a wide variety of data sources, sometimes their own hand-entered data), not CDDB/Gracenote for its "Deluxe CD Player" product. And when they stopped supporting that application and rolled out Windows Media Player with CD lookup support, they used their own service. And in the same statement it talks about MusicMatch no longer using Gracenote. Never mind that MusicMatch is now Yahoo, and Yahoo is a Gracenote licensee; so that statement is misleading at best, because they are now, in effect, a licensee. Perhaps that statement is meant to be historical, but that's already discussed in the legal section, and they no longer exist as a company. I could go on, but as I've said before, I don't have all day and there is an error in just about every other sentence. You people are CLUELESS on this topic, and as a result are spreading misinformation in a manner unjustly harmful to Gracenote, and indirectly to Misplaced Pages as well. You may not care about the former, but you should care about the latter. Spend some time looking at the facts and see if perhaps the version supported by msooahs, myself and a few others here (whom I do not actually know) might have a bit of wisdom for you. You might also pay a bit of attention to the overall tone and impartiality, because the version you have been pushing has worse POV problems than the one I support. Look back in the discussion here a bit and you will see that the intro text we support was judged by at least one editor here to be more neutral than the one you and Fatandhappy have been pushing. Also, if you spend a little time looking way back in the edit history, you will see blanket reversions by the people you're supporting, with misleading and irrelevant comments, way before this edit war started. It didn't matter if edits were small or large, nor did it matter if they were supported with links to supporting information, they would revert it with misleading statements of "unverifiable". Fatandhappy is the king of falsely crying "unverifiable", and it's the bad faith actions of this and other editors that has led to the problems here. Before you or others cast your lot with them, why not think about what I've said here a bit first? ] 22:01, 28 November 2006 (UTC) | |||
to switch to CDDB2 (a new version incompatible with CDDB1 and hence with | |||
freedb).<ref name="whydb" /> | |||
The maneuver was controversial, and remains so to this day, because the CDDB | |||
database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by | |||
thousands of individual users. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd | |||
CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, [[GNU General | |||
Public License|GPL]] project. 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<ref>{{cite web| | |||
url=http://web.archive.org/web/19970624152112/www5.cddb.com/software.html| | |||
title=CDDB Downloads| publisher=cddb.com}} (currently offline, accessed via | |||
archive.org)</ref> <ref>{{cite web| | |||
url=http://web.archive.org/web/19970624152217/www5.cddb.com/news.html| | |||
title=CDDB News, Information and Support| publisher=cddb.com}} (currently | |||
offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref>. CDDB claims that license grant was an | |||
error, and had modified the website in 1998 to avoid mention of the database's | |||
copyright status.<ref>{{cite web| | |||
url=http://web.archive.org/web/19980506031126/www.cddb.com/info/info.html| | |||
title=Technical information and FAQ for the CDDB project| | |||
publisher=cddb.com}}</ref> | |||
==Competition == | |||
The commercialization of the CDDB prompted the creation of open-source | |||
initiatives ] and ]. Competing commercial services | |||
include ]'s ] and ]. | |||
==Customers== | |||
] is a popular software program using Gracenote's CD track | |||
identification service. As of late ] iTunes also uses the company's | |||
services to locate cover art for audio files previously | |||
].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} | |||
]'s ] no longer uses the Gracenote database and has | |||
started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used | |||
the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of | |||
Gracenote's licensees, | |||
Tunes.com.<ref>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1998_August_11 | |||
/ai_21005542</ref><ref>http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/jun98/ | |||
tunejtpr.mspx</ref> Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and | |||
metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using | |||
databases and services from ]. | |||
==Lawsuits== ===Gracenote v. Roxio=== In ], Gracenote sued ] and | |||
its parent ]<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_adaptec_roxio.pdf</ref> for "breach of contract, patent | |||
infringement, trademark infringement and other violations of Federal | |||
law"<ref>{{cite press release| | |||
url=http://web.archive.org/web/20010519154828/http://www.gracenote.com/press/ | |||
2001051000.html | title=Gracenote Files Lawsuit Against Roxio, Inc.| | |||
publisher=cddb.com| date=May 10, 2001}} (currently offline, accessed via | |||
archive.org)</ref> when Roxio tried to switch to ].<ref>{{cite news | | |||
title = Gracenote under pressure | publisher = CNET News.com | date = 2001 | url | |||
= http://news.com.com/2100-1023-257529.html | accessdate = 2006-11-29}} </ref> | |||
Roxio filed countersuit against Gracenote for fraudulently obtaining a patent, | |||
misuse of said patent, antitrust behaviour, and breach of contract.<ref>{{cite | |||
press release| | |||
url=http://investor.napster.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=45004| title= Roxio | |||
Answers and Countersues in Gracenote Lawsuit| accessdate=2006-12-02}}</ref> The | |||
case was settled in ]. The terms were not disclosed, but Roxio became a | |||
licensee of | |||
Gracenote.<ref>http://investor.napster.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=68888</ | |||
ref> | |||
===Gracenote v. Musicmatch=== | |||
In ], Gracenote filed suit against ], another former | |||
licensee, for breach of contract and patent | |||
violations.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/gracenote_v_musicmatch. | |||
pdf</ref> MusicMatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote.<ref>A summarized | |||
overview of the case is available at the Manatt website within Mr. Robert D. | |||
Becker's list of representative cases. Mr. Becker was one of Musicmatch's | |||
lawyers during the case. | |||
http://www.manatt.com/Attorneys.aspx?id=1437&full=451</ref> On August 26, 2004, | |||
the Court issued its ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment | |||
regarding their patent infringement claims. | |||
<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_musicmatch_08_26_2004_order.pdf</ref> In its ruling, the court ruled | |||
that MusicMatch had not infringed Gracenote's patents, and invalidated one of | |||
Gracenote's patents. The court left open the question of the validity of the | |||
other patent, and the question of whether or not Gracenote engaged in | |||
inequitable conduct in obtaining its patents (allegedly fraudulent withholding | |||
of information about prior art from the ]). As | |||
described below, the Court later vacated this order. On August 27, 2004, the | |||
Court issued its ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment | |||
regarding their breach of contract and related | |||
claims.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_musicmatch_08_27_2004_order.pdf</ref> In its ruling, the Court found | |||
that MusicMatch did breach its contract with Gracenote. | |||
Subsequently, following a four day bench trial on the issue of inequitable | |||
conduct, the Court ruled in Gracenote’s favor that there had been no inequitable | |||
conduct on the part of Gracenote in obtaining any of the | |||
patents-in-suit.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_musicmatch_ruling_re_inequitable_conduct.pdf</ref> | |||
The case was to have continued to a jury trial, but was settled when ], | |||
one of Gracenote’s customers, announced its pending purchase of | |||
MusicMatch.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_musicmatch_settled.pdf</ref> The Court also vacated the summary | |||
judgment order it had issued on August 26, | |||
2004.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ | |||
gracenote_v_musicmatch_order_to_vacate.pdf</ref> | |||
Some | |||
observers<ref>http://news.com.com/Yahoo+to+launch+its+own+music+player/2100- | |||
1027_3-5372075.html</ref> speculated that Yahoo! had been holding off on | |||
finalizing its purchase of Musicmatch until the Gracenote patent claims were | |||
resolved. | |||
</pre> | |||
== Replace disambiguation notice == | |||
{{tl|editprotected}} | |||
Could | |||
<pre>{{for|grace notes in music|grace note}}</pre> | |||
be replaced with | |||
<pre>{{other|Grace note (disambiguation)}}</pre> | |||
Thanks! ]<sup>]</sup> § 21:51, 9 June 2007 (UTC) | |||
:] '''Done'''. Cheers. --] 00:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC) | |||
== Reasonable Edits == | |||
{{tl|Editprotected}} | |||
Gracenote kindly requests the following edits to Misplaced Pages's Gracenote page. | |||
1) Please remove the following paragraph: | |||
"Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox no longer uses the Gracenote database and has started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of Gracenote's licensees, Tunes.com. Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using databases and services from All Media Guide." | |||
Gracenote requests the removal of the above paragraph for a number of reasons. First, Yahoo has ceased distribution of Musicmatch (see http://www.musicmatch.com/YMJ/welcome.htm). Furthermore, the paragraph unfairly gives the impression that Yahoo Music no longer uses Gracenote's services. However, Yahoo Music is one of Gracenote’s best customers and uses Gracenote’s services in the Yahoo! Music Jukebox. | |||
In addition, there should be no reference to All Media Guide on Gracenote's page. Gracenote understands that a simple mentioning of competitors is common practice (Coca-Cola/Pepsi pages); however, there is no mentioning of Gracenote on All Media Guide's page. In the interest of fairness, a reference to All Media Guide, especially one inaccurately portraying that it stole a couple of Gracenote’s customers, should be removed from Gracenote’s page. | |||
Ultimately, the paragraph incorrectly indicates that Microsoft and Musicmatch dropped Gracenote in exchange for All Media Guide, and whether Microsoft and Musicmatch use All Media Guide is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote. | |||
2) The page currently gives the impression that Gracenote has only one customer (iTunes), when in fact, Gracenote has many. A recent press release discloses the following, " Gracenote powers leading services including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL Winamp; home and automotive products from Alpine, Panasonic, Phillips and Sony; and mobile music applications from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musicwave (Europe), and others." See for example: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/article.html/date=2007040. | |||
3) Also, Gracenote recently launched the first legal lyrics offering in the U.S. This resulted in huge media attention. See, for example, the attached press release from BBC news: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/20070424BBC.html. The Gracenote page should refer to this new service. | |||
4) The Microsoft link under "References" should be removed (^ http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/jun98/tunejtpr.mspx). It is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote. | |||
5) Please remove "for-profit" when describing Gracenote in the first sentence. The description has loaded meaning. Most entries for companies are descriptive of what the company does like "is a technology firm based out of ..." or the like. Perhaps this plays into the current edit lock, but I think the current statement violates NPOV. | |||
Thank you for your assistance. ] 18:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)B.Symes | |||
:I've reduced the protection on the page to allow anyone to edit it. However you should beware of Misplaced Pages's ] policy; you're in no way violating it by just editing this article, but please make sure all edits keep in-line with the ] and that any addition of information is ]. Cheers. --] 20:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC) | |||
== Why do we need Gracenote? == | |||
Looked elsewhere for this information (obviously not well enough), so figured I'd ask the venerable Misplaced Pages community. | |||
Why is the (full) track information not just embedded in CD's? If the answer is: "It is", then why do we need this Gracenote website? I've heard of innacuracies, but that's not my beef. | |||
It's this: I went up to the country over the Christmas period, and figured I'd use some of the time to import some CD's into my Mac Powerbook. The farmhouse I was staying in (which was in the middle of nowhere) had no internet connection - no houses even remotely nearby with open wireless connections to hitch a ride on. | |||
So I began importing the first CD. Because my computer was not online, the CD imported itself into itunes as "Track 01, Track 02" etc.. Now of course this is really annoying: having songs on one's computer called "Track 01", etc. is almost useless. My computer needed to be online in order to access the Gracenote database that itunes uses as a default. However, again it seems to me that surely the CD manufacturers / producers could just embed this information into the CD, without the need for an outside web source for verification. | |||
If this is covered elsewhere, I apologise. But surely I have a point? | |||
] (]) 12:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC) | |||
In short, the Format of the file system that is used on CDs is very old and didn't have the ability to embed this information into the CD. Newer CDs have CD Text support which the manufacturers *do* use to provide track information, but as far as I know, it is not nearly as complete as the ID3 tags on MP3. I don't know if iTunes supports pulling information from CD Text (or if your CD had CD Text on it), but there are certainly consumer products that use the information (all aftermarket in-car audio decks, and some home stereos for instance) <small>—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 05:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)</small><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> | |||
What an old question... But I think now trackID makes the sense, right? <span class="plainlinks"></span> 17:38, 22 October 2014 (UTC) | |||
== Grargh == | |||
The new "fair and balanced" article has ''no mention whatsoever'' of gracenote stealing cddb from the public. Are we really sure wikipedia isn't for sale? <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 03:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> | |||
agreed. I came to the wikipedia entry for gracenote after noticing that one or two of my privately-published music CDs, with no CD Text or ISRC codes embedded, were showing up in my i-tunes with the correct titles & durations. being an engineer, I quickly surmised that the t.o.c. was being used to "guesstimate" the information out of a user-driven database.... & that some altruistic fan of my band's music had done the typing/upload. | |||
after all, anyone even half-awake will have noticed that a) i-tunes offers the ability to submit this information if it is missing from gracenote & b) that the system is often foxed by CDs with one long track, giving a number of possible near-matches. | |||
I came to the page seeking confirmation of this mechanism's workings, but it seems that everyone is now fighting over the history of what should probably be (ironically) as "free" & "democratic" as wikipedia itself. when is a fact not a fact, eh? | |||
duncan 23 october 2008 10:10BST <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding ] comment added by ] (]) 09:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)</span><!-- Template:UnsignedIP --> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> | |||
== Lack of controversy frustrating == | |||
I was looking up Gracenote hoping to find out more about (1)a list of competitors and (2)its various controversies, which was big news a few years ago (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/02/1955245) but the article is shockingly bare and almost feels like an advertisement for Gracenote. Something as simple as a link to a page describing the controversy (or its sordid legal history) would be quite helpful. | |||
If anyone came here for the same information I did, I found a revision with some useful info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Gracenote&oldid=91698238 | |||
-- ] (]) 17:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC) | |||
:*The ] ] lawsuits are definitely conspicuously absent and as a 1996-1998 era contributor I'd rather like to see this covered as it was previously -- <u style="text-decoration:none; font-family: papyrus;">] <small>]]</small></u> 16:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC) | |||
:It seems to this humble editor the article is heavily biased. It even fails to reflect the whole freedb afair. I think the editing of the article by ] is akin to writing autobiographies. The article itself show the heavy bias that this has created. Can someone please include not controversial, but factual statements? That is, value their inclusion because of their veracity, or rather, verifiability, rather than their allude. Check ], ] and ]. ] (]) 06:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC) | |||
== Extremely biased article == | |||
I just wanted to add my voice to the others that this article seems to be missing very important facts. While it may be inconvenient for Gracenote to include some information, I regret to say this is an encyclopedia and not an advertising outlet. Although I do appreciate the notice at the top at least explaining the article is being edited by someone "close to" the company. | |||
There's a difference between stating the facts from a neutral point of view, and not saying anything because it puts the company in a bad light. In my view the information should be out there so at the very least someone can edit them so they are as neutral as possible. Understandably because of Gracenote's actions in the past people are quick to put them in as bad a light as possible; so could we not reach a consensus on how the information should be put? | |||
My view is the fact the topic is so hotly debated shows it should be mentioned to some capacity. ] (]) 10:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC) | |||
: The users ] and ] (possibly the same person) have repeatedly removed the section on controversy and put advertising material pointing exclusively to Gracenote's product web sites into the article. I'm reverting this once more now. ] (]) 12:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC) | |||
: In view of the company's past actions, it is ''not possible'' to put CDDB/Gracenote in a "good light" without being biased. Anyone familiar with the situation even before this Misplaced Pages article was started knows the general facts in the case. Gracenote reneged on a promise, then had its attorneys lie about it in court. Trying to sugar-coat the story to put Gracenote in a "good light" would be non-NPOV and would be in violation of Misplaced Pages policies. The only way to avoid "problems" would be to remove all articles pertaining to Gracenote and CDDB from Misplaced Pages, but I doubt anyone would suggest doing that. Just present the documented facts and let readers form their own opinions. — ]<sup>] ]</sup> 18:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC) | |||
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== Neutrality/Primary sources templates == | |||
Greetings all - I deleted these templates since they've been in place for well over five years with significant edits. Specifically, I don't see any proliferation of primary sources, or anything that obviously screams "POV!" jumping out at me. Feel free to revert and let's have a chat here if you think this is in error. | |||
Thanks! ]] 22:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC) | |||
:Yet the entire article reads like a PR piece. That is not neutral. Plus sourcing license notices in the terms of use of respective services as being evidence they use it are also primary sources. <span style="border:1px solid #445A38;padding:1px;">] ] </span> 22:06, 12 January 2017 (UTC) | |||
::You're probably going to be a little bit more detailed. "Reads like a PR piece" is rather subjective, especially given PR pieces don't generally contain a full history, notes on lawsuits, acquisitions, and so forth. Also, if I understand correctly, a "primary source" would be Gracenote saying "X uses us". Another company saying "we use Gracenote" is primary how? ]] 22:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC) | |||
::For reference, here's the relevant section of ]: | |||
::{{Quote|'''Advertising, marketing or public relations.''' Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. Misplaced Pages articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify notable organizations which are the topic of the article. Misplaced Pages neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Misplaced Pages:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Misplaced Pages to do so. See also Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest and WP:Paid.}} | |||
::Could you point out where in the article there is biased style, a lack of objectivity, or puffery? Let's fix it. ]] 22:49, 12 January 2017 (UTC) | |||
The style is not biased, the style is nearly perfect. The CONTENT is what's biased. The question of whether Gracenote's existence is even legitimate is one of the most notable features of the organization, because of the methods by which it changed its status and its license. The existence of that controversy is one of the main reasons that Gracenote has any notability at all. Presenting that controversy as part of the lead paragraph is essential to allowing readers a balanced view, because the company's very existence remains controversial. ] (]) 04:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC) | |||
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== update the gracenote logo == | |||
The logo currently displayed is old (the red version). The latest Gracenote logo is blue, as seen on www.gracenote.com <!-- Template:Unsigned --><small class="autosigned">— Preceding ] comment added by ] (] • ]) 00:17, 13 December 2017 (UTC)</small> <!--Autosigned by SineBot--> | |||
: {{done}} - ] (]) 22:30, 30 April 2019 (UTC) |
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Controversy
I have removed the part about losing Microsoft as a customer as I could not find anything in Google searches or Google news. Please do not place it back until you have a verifiable source. While I do not know exactly why their is an edit war going on, I'm going to step in and try and help clean things up. I'm here at the request of nobody and do not favor any side. Although, adding information without sources or proof will not help you. --Simonkoldyk 22:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
External Links
I have removed external links to any competitor, they are fine for talking about them in the article; but, it should be kept to a minimum. See Coca-Cola and Pepsi for an example both talk about each other in article which is fine; but, no mention in external links. --Simonkoldyk 22:25, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
GPL
- I see this issue as now resolved. --Simonkoldyk 22:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Gracenote vs Musicmatch
Mr. Becker's CV, Court Documents, Other Legal Issues
- I have addressed everything in your post, if you have problems with how I addressed it start another little thing and refer to this subpage as needed. --Simonkoldyk 18:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Competition
This sentence:
- Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as Musicmatch Jukebox, and have moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide.
has several issues. I have seen no proof that several large commercial licensees have dropped Gracenote and moved to AMG's service. Please provide documentation. (I'm not being disingenuous here. I don't actually remember for sure, but I do doubt that any big players went to AMG at all.) Musicmatch did leave, but they did not go to AMG. They started their own service, called CDi. See the musicmatch privacy page here and scroll down to section 2. See the explanation of CDi and how it ties in with their application. It is essentially a service and protocol of their own devising. But it should be noteworthy that Yahoo has been working on migrating musicmatch users to their own player, which uses Gracenote. Steve Scherf 00:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Please see and search for AMG. --Simonkoldyk 01:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The musicmatch player uses the CDi service, a service of their own devising, as I noted. They have licensed data only from AMG, and that is not the only source of their data. They have their own data as well. So the CD lookup service they use is their own, and much of the data is their own. Only part of the data came from AMG, and no service from AMG. The page I linked to says this, The Musicmatch Jukebox contains Musicmatch CD lookup (CDI) service for compact disc identification. I think it's pretty clear that they are using CDi, their own service, not Lasso, AMG's service. The link you provide only discusses AMG data, nothing else about AMG. So the text that says they moved over to AMG's service is incorrect. I provide these links to prove my point, but believe me when I say I know this, because they are a customer and it also all came out in the lawsuit anyway... Even if for some reason you do not believe this, then please cite a source that specifically states they are using the AMG Lasso service. Steve Scherf 01:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Simonkoldyk, although Scherf earlier claims that Microsoft never dropped Gracenote/CDDB, here is a link to an Escient press release regarding the purchase of CDDB referring to Microsoft's Deluxe CD Player formerly using CDDB. So it seems that Microsoft did drop Gracenote after the commercialization, after all. Regarding Musicmatch, there is no evidence that the Musicmatch player, a different player than the Yahoo! Player, is using Gracenote. The CDi service appears to be alive and well and functioning without problem. Fatandhappy 02:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
For crying out loud, the Microsoft Deluxe CD Player used two services, none of them CDDB: Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com. Tunes.com was a licensee of CDDB at the time of the Escient press release and had their own service with (some) CDDB data inside it, that's all. Get yourself a copy of WIndows 98 and try it out for yourself, and you'll see the tunes.com logo when it does a lookup. Or read one of the zillions of web links on the topic. Keep scratching at those straws...
WRT to your comment about musicmatch using CDi, when did I ever dispute that? I agree with you, musicmatch uses CDi. The point is that they do not use AMG Lasso. Steve Scherf 02:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
FYI, here's a link to the press release for the Microsoft player and Tunes.com: . Steve Scherf 03:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Thank you for agreeing that Microsoft did use CDDB with its CD Deluxe product. It appears from the Tunes.com release that you linked to describes the additional content (Rolling Stones info, commerce links, etc.) and that the recognition is coming from CDDB, though it does not mention. For crying out loud, Scherf, in the Escient press release it clearly states, The CDDB database currently provides music CD identification information to more than 25 officially-supported players, including the new Microsoft(R) Deluxe CD Player (MSFT), as well as the Notify CD Player, Quintessential CD Player, Discplay 4, and Xmcd. Do you dispute the factuality your own company's press release (since CDDB was a division of Escient at the time)? And do you debate that Microsoft dropped support for CDDB by building its own service shortly after the commercilization of CDDB?
- WRT, the current article does not state that Musicmatch uses AMG Lasso; it states that it moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide. According to the All Media Guide article, the company provides services to companies like Musicmatch. Can you provide a source that shows this as incorrect? Who is "scratching at straws" here? Please kindly keep the rudeness out of the discussion. Fatandhappy 04:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I think the Microsoft press release was pretty clear, they used Tunes.com. Tunes licensed CDDB data in addition to their own, but not the CDDB service. These facts are not in dispute. Yes, that Escient press release is overblown, and I have no doubt that the marketing person who cranked that one out loved the thought of saying MS was a customer. That doesn't change the fact that the Deluxe CD app used Tunes.com's service, not CDDB's service. In fact, the communication protocol used by Deluxe CD player and Tunes.com was of Microsoft's own device, and didn't even slightly resemble the CDDB protocol that the CDDB service used. Play semantics all you want, but the fact is that Microsoft used Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com's service. You might refer to the Wired article if you still don't believe the MS stuff. It's stated pretty plainly that Microsoft did not want to use CDDB directly, and instead ended up using CDDB through third party vendor (i.e. Tunes.com).
As far as musicmatch is concerned, the musicmatch player uses CDI, a commercial service provided by musicmatch for musicmatch. They do not use the AMG service. So the article is wrong. Part of their database consists of AMG data, and that's it. These are all semantic games. If you want the article to contain truth, why not say that "musicmatch moved over to its own CD lookup service, CDi, that partially contained AMG data in addition to data collected by musicmatch"? Anything else is misleading. For that matter, why not say "Microsoft stopped using Tunes.com, a service that licensed CDDB data to supplement its own database"? Steve Scherf 04:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Edited
Please read and comment. --Simonkoldyk 04:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The new text in the competition section seems okay, except "licensee" should probably be "licensees, ". Steve Scherf 05:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Fixed. --Simonkoldyk 05:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
- Simonkoldyk, thanks again for working on this. The new section could mention that many smaller CDDB licensees moved to freedb after the commercialization. This is supported by looking at the lists of supported appliations on the May 1999 Gracenote site and the November 2001 freedb site. Just a quick scan of these two pages shows that a applications such as Audiograbber, CD-DA Xtractor, Feurio, InCDius, and others had already made the move after Gracenote commercialized and changed its license terms.
- In the part that refers to Microsoft, it should mention that shortly thereafter, Microsoft dumped CDDB altogether to build their own CD recogniton service based on All Media Guide and other databases for identifying CD's in Windows Media Player.
- The section on Musicmatch has a couple of minor tweaks necessary. CDi is mispelled (the last i is supposed to be lowercase). The CDi identification service was developed based on the All Media Guide database, with additional data being submitted by the Musicmatch users, similar to what Microsoft did with Windows Media Player. The AMG service called Lasso does not seem to have been released until after Musicmatch was found to not be infringing on Gracenote's patents in 2004, more than 2 years later. Thanks again for your patience. Fatandhappy 08:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
The section is more accurate and fair as-is, capitalization error aside. It took a long time to arrive at what is fair common ground. The section is not perfect, but I am willing to accept it. Please try and show some good faith. Steve Scherf 09:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Moved Discussions
As this page is getting very long and very complicated I have started to move each topic that gets long to its own subpage so that parties interested in certain things can deal with those without having to go through the entire page, also for me to follow everything. Also I archived some past posts as you can see in the archive at the top. --Simonkoldyk 18:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Mediation Cabal
Hi everyone, I'm from the Mediation Cabal. I'm sorry it took so long for us to respond, but, well, none of us are being paid to do this and backlogs happen.
Do you still want a mediator? If not, just say so and we can leave it at that - if any party refuses mediation, it can't work, and you can always re-request mediation at a later date if need be. If so, then I'll do my best to assist.
If mediation is required, it would be helpful if one or more parties could provide a brief summary of exactly which parts of the article need to be edited. The impression gleaned from edit histories and talk subpages can be a bit fragmented. By "brief", I mean brief - no need to go into the justification, just what the positions are.
Although we can use the dedicated mediation page if need be, I suggest replying on this talk page for now. --Sam Blanning 00:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
- I appreciate that you are volunteering, and understand the delay. I'm actually pleasantly surprised, given that an editor here (I forget who) said that probably no mediator would volunteer to take this up. With the help of Simonkoldyk, we've actually begun to make some progress on some of the blatant errors here. But things have stalled, and there are two remaining issues that need addressing. The text in the musicmatch section does not reflect the actual events, which is the main problem here. I am not an attorney, and cannot explain in simple terms exactly what's wrong. Our counsel wrote and approved the text I previously posted here, text that was reverted consistently, despite supporting court documents. Our GC wants it fixed, because it misrepresents the facts, and I have been attempting to do this at his request. We are not looking to whitewash history, as some have claimed, but the supported facts need to be represented here.
- The second issue is the overall tone of this article. The page is dominated by Gracenote detractors, who have resisted our attempts to even describe what Gracenote does in the article. I am admittedly partial to Gracenote, but how silly is that? Gracenote has made some major headlines lately, including huge press over lyrics licensing, and even huger headlines over supplying myspace.com with content filtering technology. There are hundreds of articles on that, and one cannot dispute that it deserves some mention here. But because the page is dominated by people whose goal is apparently to allow NO favorable information to make its way into the Gracenote page, it will be impossible to achieve through normal channels.
- We realize that Misplaced Pages frowns on biased parties editing articles, but I would argue that these people are just as biased in the opposite direction. I had hoped that mediation would be possible, but several of them posted things to the mediation request that make it clear they won't negotiate in good faith. If you can suggest any way to arrive at a fair page that corrects the two things I have mentioned here, I would be happy to hear it. We have tried to fix the page, openly without hiding behind anonymity, though normal channels, and it hasn't worked. Any approach taken to fix the page must be durable and not require a lot of attention, or there's not much point to it. I have basically already given up and handed the problem back to Gracenote's PR/legal folks, but I'll listen to suggestions. Steve Scherf 00:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
- FYI, I think this is the last version I edited . The musicmatch section contains the facts of the case and presents them in a neutral way, without spin for or against. But spin aside, the most important thing is that it presents the events and does not omit important facts (not suppositions presented as fact), like the fact that the summary judgements were vacated by the court. Note that the article also contains mentions of controversy and competitors, but again does not spin them one way or another. Nor do they dominate the page, as with previous versions of the page. If we can approach something like this through mediation, then I'm for it. Steve Scherf 01:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Reference and POV check
So I read the latest version of the article and found it rather anti-Gracenote in places, and the older version cited by Steve Scherf to be overly promotional. Both versions have some facts not mentioned in the other. I have just finished creating a hybrid version, removing POV statements but adding facts from both sides. I checked the supplied references and corrected some inaccuracies in the claims made. There remain some unreferenced claims, which I have marked as "citation(s) needed". I would invite interested parties to either find references to support these claims, or to move them to this talk page for further analysis. In particular, if no reference can be found that says that Gracenote claims to have "almost 4 million CDs" or some similarly allegedly inflated number, then the entire "Database size controversy" section should be removed, because a one-sided controversy...isn't. -- Beland 01:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
- Beland, while I agree with you, I think we can go even further. The question is not whether Gracenote made such claims in the past or not (they clearly did, per the cites given below), but whether or not there is an actualy "controversy" surrounding this. I think it is fairly clear that due to a variety of factors, the number of unique CDs in terms of "the music contained" and the number of unique CDs in terms of "the measurements used to identify CDs in this system" will be very different, perhaps due to different pressings, different masters, borderline cases (fuzzy data), etc. I fail so see why this would be controversial, but really whether or not I or anyone else here finds it controversial is very different from whether there is any source in any reliable publication which has ever found it controversial.--Jimbo Wales 00:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Here are some references to the Gracenote claims of having "almost 4 million CDs" in 2005:
- Dec. 7th, 2003: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the : Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "Over 2.1 million" CDs and "Over 28 million" songs.
- Feb. 14th, 2004: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "2,525,147" CDs and "32,329,447" songs.
- Nov. 14th, 2004: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,178,603" CDs and "40,649,164" songs.
- Feb. 5th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,421,152" CDs and "43,759,562" songs.
- April 13th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,604,453" CDs and "46,073,017" songs.
- July 20th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,845,158" CDs and "49,130,187" songs.
- Jan. 5th 2006: Gracenote Press Release in the Internet Archive claims that "Gracenote Global Media Database Now Spans over 55 Million Tracks and Over 4 Million CDs".
The addition of nearly 2 million CDs to the Gracenote database in a little over two years is incredible, especially in the light of IFPI statistics for 2004 that state that "Well over 100,000 album titles - both new and re-issues - were released in 2004". Gracenote was claiming to have accumulated new CDs in its database over the two years at a rate that is 10X the rate of both new CD releases and re-issues of old CDs during that period. Fatandhappy 12:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
- I hope it's not too late to point out the fallacy in the reasoning above: the number of CDs and the number of albums bear little relation to each other except that each album corresponds to at least one CD. The number of CDs would include double- and triple-albums (not to mention the odd compilation with four or more), singles and others. In particular many audio-books released on CD cover many CDs: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone—the first (and shortest) book—covers seven CDs and the subsequent (rather longer) books even more. The reference being touted above as definitive fails to mention any of these other sources of CD; it refers to "album titles", gliding over the fact that sometimes several versions of an album are released. The reasoning is therefore fundamentally flawed: I can see no reason why the number of CDs should be unrealistic. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 06:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Enough
We have letters to the Foundation going back months from these guys, they have tried to fix the problems they perceive with the article (OTRS ticket is 2006102310010844 and others exist I believe, and have been reverted or rebuffed at every turn. They have been really, really patient, and we have completely failed to show them proper respect. By that I don' mean we should remove everything they don't like, or let them write the article, but if they express reservations with the content, especially the interpretation of lawsuits, controversies and the like, and they do so in a calm, patient, reasonable and non-confrontational manner, which they have, then we should at least do them the courtesy of listening to them.
Please, we can do better than this. Obviously sources are going to tend to be online, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes grinding an axe. We can, I think, do a much better job of accurately recording Gracenote, and not erring too far on the side of criticism. After all, to be fair, the Gracenote / CDDB system works well for a lot of people; most users, where they are conscious of the system at all, seem to like it.
So: let's discuss here and work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources. Please. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
Towards a more balanced article
As is noted by JzG/Guy... a lot of the negative/opinionated content has been removed from the article with the goal to "work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources." That seems like an excellent goal to me. I am pasting in (below) the sections which have been removed from the article. I think there is a lot of good content below and that we should restore it in a way which is fair, balanced, acurate, not hostile, etc...--Clay1039 13:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)
==History== Gracenote began in ] as an ] project involving a CD player program named xmcd. The xmcd player was developed by ] and had the ability to store and recognize CDs from a database. Xmcd users regularly sent additional CD information to Mr. Kan for inclusion in the database via email. By 1995, the database had become unwieldy and ], a friend of Mr. Kan, was recruited to build a server to store the CD information in a network database. Later, hosting facilities and an advertising business model were provided by an ex-patriate Scot living in ], Graham Toal.<ref>http://www.ibiblio.org/tkan/xmcd/cddb_wsj_12.31.01.pdf</ref> As CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see ]), Kan developed software which identifies and looks up CDs based on ] or "Table of Contents" information stored at the beginning of each disc. The TOC lists the offsets (locations on disk) corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets. The CDDB technology became popular in the 1990s, as it allowed ]s to be automatically annotated with artist, album, title, and other information during the process of ] from CD. Some computer users who have copied ] from their turntables onto ]s have been surprised to find their computers correctly displaying the titles and track listings when these ]s 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.{{Facts|date=February 2007}} In 2005, Gracenote purchased audio recognition technology from Philips that is highly tolerant of noise and allows for the recognition of music over a cell phone microphone. It markets this service, which is used in music and video players, PC software, home consumer electronics products, mobile music applications, cell phone handsets, and automobile audio and navigation systems, as "Mobile MusicID". <ref>http://www.research.philips.com/newscenter/archive/2005/050830-audiofp.html </ref> In ] Gracenote announced <ref>http://gracenote.com/corporate/press/article.html/date=2006071700</ref> that it had licensed ] from some of the major music publishing companies, to expand its services. ==Licensing controversy== In ], the service was purchased by ], a consumer electronics manufacturer and operated as a business unit within the ] based company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient and then in July of 2000 renamed Gracenote.<ref>{{cite press release| url=http://web.archive.org/web/20000919013049/www2.cddb.com/press/2000072400. html| title=CDDB Re-launches as Gracenote With New Products| date=July 24, 2000| publisher=cddb.com}} (currently offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref> In ], ], an ] clone of the Gracenote CDDB service, was created by former CDDB users who wanted a non-commercial alternative. The track listing database freedb used to seed its new service was based on the data released for public use by CDDB. The CDDB database license was changed, and some programmers complained that the new license included certain terms that they couldn't accept: if one wanted to access CDDB, one was not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database, and any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup.<ref name="whydb">{{cite web | url=http://freedb.org/modules.php?name=Sections&sop=viewarticle&artid=2 | title=Why freedb.org? | work=freedb | accessdate = 2006-05-09 }}</ref> The service was also no longer a free for everyone, requiring commercial developers (not end-users) to pay an "initial fee", as well as a license fee based on the usage of the servers and support. {{Fact|date=February 2007}} In ], ], Gracenote banned all unlicensed applications from accessing their 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 and hence with freedb).<ref name="whydb" /> The maneuver was controversial, and remains so to this day, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, [[GNU General Public License|GPL]] project. 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<ref>{{cite web| url=http://web.archive.org/web/19970624152112/www5.cddb.com/software.html| title=CDDB Downloads| publisher=cddb.com}} (currently offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref> <ref>{{cite web| url=http://web.archive.org/web/19970624152217/www5.cddb.com/news.html| title=CDDB News, Information and Support| publisher=cddb.com}} (currently offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref>. CDDB claims that license grant was an error, and had modified the website in 1998 to avoid mention of the database's copyright status.<ref>{{cite web| url=http://web.archive.org/web/19980506031126/www.cddb.com/info/info.html| title=Technical information and FAQ for the CDDB project| publisher=cddb.com}}</ref> ==Competition == The commercialization of the CDDB prompted the creation of open-source initiatives ] and ]. Competing commercial services include ]'s ] and ]. ==Customers== ] is a popular software program using Gracenote's CD track identification service. As of late ] iTunes also uses the company's services to locate cover art for audio files previously ].{{Fact|date=February 2007}} ]'s ] no longer uses the Gracenote database and has started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of Gracenote's licensees, Tunes.com.<ref>http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1998_August_11 /ai_21005542</ref><ref>http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/jun98/ tunejtpr.mspx</ref> Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using databases and services from ]. ==Lawsuits== ===Gracenote v. Roxio=== In ], Gracenote sued ] and its parent ]<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_adaptec_roxio.pdf</ref> for "breach of contract, patent infringement, trademark infringement and other violations of Federal law"<ref>{{cite press release| url=http://web.archive.org/web/20010519154828/http://www.gracenote.com/press/ 2001051000.html | title=Gracenote Files Lawsuit Against Roxio, Inc.| publisher=cddb.com| date=May 10, 2001}} (currently offline, accessed via archive.org)</ref> when Roxio tried to switch to ].<ref>{{cite news | title = Gracenote under pressure | publisher = CNET News.com | date = 2001 | url = http://news.com.com/2100-1023-257529.html | accessdate = 2006-11-29}} </ref> Roxio filed countersuit against Gracenote for fraudulently obtaining a patent, misuse of said patent, antitrust behaviour, and breach of contract.<ref>{{cite press release| url=http://investor.napster.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=45004| title= Roxio Answers and Countersues in Gracenote Lawsuit| accessdate=2006-12-02}}</ref> The case was settled in ]. The terms were not disclosed, but Roxio became a licensee of Gracenote.<ref>http://investor.napster.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=68888</ ref> ===Gracenote v. Musicmatch=== In ], Gracenote filed suit against ], another former licensee, for breach of contract and patent violations.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/gracenote_v_musicmatch. pdf</ref> MusicMatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote.<ref>A summarized overview of the case is available at the Manatt website within Mr. Robert D. Becker's list of representative cases. Mr. Becker was one of Musicmatch's lawyers during the case. http://www.manatt.com/Attorneys.aspx?id=1437&full=451</ref> On August 26, 2004, the Court issued its ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding their patent infringement claims. <ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_musicmatch_08_26_2004_order.pdf</ref> In its ruling, the court ruled that MusicMatch had not infringed Gracenote's patents, and invalidated one of Gracenote's patents. The court left open the question of the validity of the other patent, and the question of whether or not Gracenote engaged in inequitable conduct in obtaining its patents (allegedly fraudulent withholding of information about prior art from the ]). As described below, the Court later vacated this order. On August 27, 2004, the Court issued its ruling on the parties’ cross-motions for summary judgment regarding their breach of contract and related claims.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_musicmatch_08_27_2004_order.pdf</ref> In its ruling, the Court found that MusicMatch did breach its contract with Gracenote. Subsequently, following a four day bench trial on the issue of inequitable conduct, the Court ruled in Gracenote’s favor that there had been no inequitable conduct on the part of Gracenote in obtaining any of the patents-in-suit.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_musicmatch_ruling_re_inequitable_conduct.pdf</ref> The case was to have continued to a jury trial, but was settled when ], one of Gracenote’s customers, announced its pending purchase of MusicMatch.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_musicmatch_settled.pdf</ref> The Court also vacated the summary judgment order it had issued on August 26, 2004.<ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/ gracenote_v_musicmatch_order_to_vacate.pdf</ref> Some observers<ref>http://news.com.com/Yahoo+to+launch+its+own+music+player/2100- 1027_3-5372075.html</ref> speculated that Yahoo! had been holding off on finalizing its purchase of Musicmatch until the Gracenote patent claims were resolved.
Replace disambiguation notice
{{editprotected}}
Could
{{for|grace notes in music|grace note}}
be replaced with
{{other|Grace note (disambiguation)}}
Thanks! Gracenotes § 21:51, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
- Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC)
Reasonable Edits
{{Editprotected}} Gracenote kindly requests the following edits to Misplaced Pages's Gracenote page.
1) Please remove the following paragraph:
"Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox no longer uses the Gracenote database and has started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of Gracenote's licensees, Tunes.com. Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using databases and services from All Media Guide."
Gracenote requests the removal of the above paragraph for a number of reasons. First, Yahoo has ceased distribution of Musicmatch (see http://www.musicmatch.com/YMJ/welcome.htm). Furthermore, the paragraph unfairly gives the impression that Yahoo Music no longer uses Gracenote's services. However, Yahoo Music is one of Gracenote’s best customers and uses Gracenote’s services in the Yahoo! Music Jukebox.
In addition, there should be no reference to All Media Guide on Gracenote's page. Gracenote understands that a simple mentioning of competitors is common practice (Coca-Cola/Pepsi pages); however, there is no mentioning of Gracenote on All Media Guide's page. In the interest of fairness, a reference to All Media Guide, especially one inaccurately portraying that it stole a couple of Gracenote’s customers, should be removed from Gracenote’s page.
Ultimately, the paragraph incorrectly indicates that Microsoft and Musicmatch dropped Gracenote in exchange for All Media Guide, and whether Microsoft and Musicmatch use All Media Guide is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote.
2) The page currently gives the impression that Gracenote has only one customer (iTunes), when in fact, Gracenote has many. A recent press release discloses the following, " Gracenote powers leading services including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL Winamp; home and automotive products from Alpine, Panasonic, Phillips and Sony; and mobile music applications from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musicwave (Europe), and others." See for example: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/article.html/date=2007040.
3) Also, Gracenote recently launched the first legal lyrics offering in the U.S. This resulted in huge media attention. See, for example, the attached press release from BBC news: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/20070424BBC.html. The Gracenote page should refer to this new service.
4) The Microsoft link under "References" should be removed (^ http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/jun98/tunejtpr.mspx). It is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote.
5) Please remove "for-profit" when describing Gracenote in the first sentence. The description has loaded meaning. Most entries for companies are descriptive of what the company does like "is a technology firm based out of ..." or the like. Perhaps this plays into the current edit lock, but I think the current statement violates NPOV.
Thank you for your assistance. 209.10.41.94 18:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)B.Symes
- I've reduced the protection on the page to allow anyone to edit it. However you should beware of Misplaced Pages's conflict of interest policy; you're in no way violating it by just editing this article, but please make sure all edits keep in-line with the neutrality policy and that any addition of information is verifiable. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)
Why do we need Gracenote?
Looked elsewhere for this information (obviously not well enough), so figured I'd ask the venerable Misplaced Pages community. Why is the (full) track information not just embedded in CD's? If the answer is: "It is", then why do we need this Gracenote website? I've heard of innacuracies, but that's not my beef. It's this: I went up to the country over the Christmas period, and figured I'd use some of the time to import some CD's into my Mac Powerbook. The farmhouse I was staying in (which was in the middle of nowhere) had no internet connection - no houses even remotely nearby with open wireless connections to hitch a ride on. So I began importing the first CD. Because my computer was not online, the CD imported itself into itunes as "Track 01, Track 02" etc.. Now of course this is really annoying: having songs on one's computer called "Track 01", etc. is almost useless. My computer needed to be online in order to access the Gracenote database that itunes uses as a default. However, again it seems to me that surely the CD manufacturers / producers could just embed this information into the CD, without the need for an outside web source for verification.
If this is covered elsewhere, I apologise. But surely I have a point?
86.158.239.72 (talk) 12:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)
In short, the Format of the file system that is used on CDs is very old and didn't have the ability to embed this information into the CD. Newer CDs have CD Text support which the manufacturers *do* use to provide track information, but as far as I know, it is not nearly as complete as the ID3 tags on MP3. I don't know if iTunes supports pulling information from CD Text (or if your CD had CD Text on it), but there are certainly consumer products that use the information (all aftermarket in-car audio decks, and some home stereos for instance) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.251.99 (talk) 05:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)
What an old question... But I think now trackID makes the sense, right? Chief Executed Officer 17:38, 22 October 2014 (UTC)
Grargh
The new "fair and balanced" article has no mention whatsoever of gracenote stealing cddb from the public. Are we really sure wikipedia isn't for sale? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.204.149 (talk) 03:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)
agreed. I came to the wikipedia entry for gracenote after noticing that one or two of my privately-published music CDs, with no CD Text or ISRC codes embedded, were showing up in my i-tunes with the correct titles & durations. being an engineer, I quickly surmised that the t.o.c. was being used to "guesstimate" the information out of a user-driven database.... & that some altruistic fan of my band's music had done the typing/upload.
after all, anyone even half-awake will have noticed that a) i-tunes offers the ability to submit this information if it is missing from gracenote & b) that the system is often foxed by CDs with one long track, giving a number of possible near-matches.
I came to the page seeking confirmation of this mechanism's workings, but it seems that everyone is now fighting over the history of what should probably be (ironically) as "free" & "democratic" as wikipedia itself. when is a fact not a fact, eh?
duncan 23 october 2008 10:10BST —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.236.193 (talk) 09:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)
Lack of controversy frustrating
I was looking up Gracenote hoping to find out more about (1)a list of competitors and (2)its various controversies, which was big news a few years ago (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/02/1955245) but the article is shockingly bare and almost feels like an advertisement for Gracenote. Something as simple as a link to a page describing the controversy (or its sordid legal history) would be quite helpful.
If anyone came here for the same information I did, I found a revision with some useful info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Gracenote&oldid=91698238
-- 69.242.39.232 (talk) 17:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)
- The verifiably notable lawsuits are definitely conspicuously absent and as a 1996-1998 era contributor I'd rather like to see this covered as it was previously -- samj in 16:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)
- It seems to this humble editor the article is heavily biased. It even fails to reflect the whole freedb afair. I think the editing of the article by User:Gracenotes is akin to writing autobiographies. The article itself show the heavy bias that this has created. Can someone please include not controversial, but factual statements? That is, value their inclusion because of their veracity, or rather, verifiability, rather than their allude. Check WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:AB. MEEEEEEEEE! (talk) 06:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)
Extremely biased article
I just wanted to add my voice to the others that this article seems to be missing very important facts. While it may be inconvenient for Gracenote to include some information, I regret to say this is an encyclopedia and not an advertising outlet. Although I do appreciate the notice at the top at least explaining the article is being edited by someone "close to" the company.
There's a difference between stating the facts from a neutral point of view, and not saying anything because it puts the company in a bad light. In my view the information should be out there so at the very least someone can edit them so they are as neutral as possible. Understandably because of Gracenote's actions in the past people are quick to put them in as bad a light as possible; so could we not reach a consensus on how the information should be put?
My view is the fact the topic is so hotly debated shows it should be mentioned to some capacity. Gwatts88 (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)
- The users 209.10.41.94 and Thenin (possibly the same person) have repeatedly removed the section on controversy and put advertising material pointing exclusively to Gracenote's product web sites into the article. I'm reverting this once more now. Arndbergmann (talk) 12:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)
- In view of the company's past actions, it is not possible to put CDDB/Gracenote in a "good light" without being biased. Anyone familiar with the situation even before this Misplaced Pages article was started knows the general facts in the case. Gracenote reneged on a promise, then had its attorneys lie about it in court. Trying to sugar-coat the story to put Gracenote in a "good light" would be non-NPOV and would be in violation of Misplaced Pages policies. The only way to avoid "problems" would be to remove all articles pertaining to Gracenote and CDDB from Misplaced Pages, but I doubt anyone would suggest doing that. Just present the documented facts and let readers form their own opinions. — Quicksilver 18:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)
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External links modified
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Neutrality/Primary sources templates
Greetings all - I deleted these templates since they've been in place for well over five years with significant edits. Specifically, I don't see any proliferation of primary sources, or anything that obviously screams "POV!" jumping out at me. Feel free to revert and let's have a chat here if you think this is in error.
Thanks! Karunamon 22:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
- Yet the entire article reads like a PR piece. That is not neutral. Plus sourcing license notices in the terms of use of respective services as being evidence they use it are also primary sources. ViperSnake151 Talk 22:06, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
- You're probably going to be a little bit more detailed. "Reads like a PR piece" is rather subjective, especially given PR pieces don't generally contain a full history, notes on lawsuits, acquisitions, and so forth. Also, if I understand correctly, a "primary source" would be Gracenote saying "X uses us". Another company saying "we use Gracenote" is primary how? Karunamon 22:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
- For reference, here's the relevant section of WP:PROMO:
Advertising, marketing or public relations. Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. Misplaced Pages articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify notable organizations which are the topic of the article. Misplaced Pages neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Misplaced Pages:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Misplaced Pages to do so. See also Misplaced Pages:Conflict of interest and WP:Paid.
- Could you point out where in the article there is biased style, a lack of objectivity, or puffery? Let's fix it. Karunamon 22:49, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
The style is not biased, the style is nearly perfect. The CONTENT is what's biased. The question of whether Gracenote's existence is even legitimate is one of the most notable features of the organization, because of the methods by which it changed its status and its license. The existence of that controversy is one of the main reasons that Gracenote has any notability at all. Presenting that controversy as part of the lead paragraph is essential to allowing readers a balanced view, because the company's very existence remains controversial. TooManyFingers (talk) 04:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC)
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update the gracenote logo
The logo currently displayed is old (the red version). The latest Gracenote logo is blue, as seen on www.gracenote.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by CA Road Rider (talk • contribs) 00:17, 13 December 2017 (UTC)
- Done - AquilaFasciata (talk) 22:30, 30 April 2019 (UTC)