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| Scherf remains on baoard as Gracenote's chief architect; other executives include CEO Craig Palmer and Chief Technology Officer Ty Roberts. In addition to CD recognition, Gracenote projects include Mobile MusicID, Playlist, Clean, Encode, and VideoID. | Scherf remains on baoard as Gracenote's chief architect; other executives include CEO Craig Palmer and Chief Technology Officer Ty Roberts. In addition to CD recognition, Gracenote projects include Mobile MusicID, Playlist, Clean, Encode, and VideoID. | ||
| ] Gracenote's web site lists database statistics of 3,469,292 CDs and 44,371,049 songs. These reflect music releases from around the world, although critics suggest that the numbers include some duplication as a result of minor differences between releases in different countries of the same album. | |||
| ==Controversy== | ==Controversy== | ||
| In ], Kan and Scherf sold the CDDB database to ], a high-tech venture firm, which founded Gracenote. The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who receive no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, ] project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. Rightly or wrongly, many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free. | In ], Kan and Scherf sold the CDDB database to ], a high-tech venture firm, which founded Gracenote. The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who receive no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, ] project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. Rightly or wrongly, many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free. | ||
| ] Gracenote claims that its database contains information on several million CDs. This number has been disputed, however, since user-entered databases such as Gracenotes have few quality controls to prevent duplicate entries of the same album with multiple incorrect spellings. Music industry experts have claimed that the actual number of released CDs globally since the introduction of the CD in the early 1980s is actually closer to six hundred thousand CDs, making Gracenote's claims seem dubious. | |||
| ==Lawsuits== | ==Lawsuits== | ||
Revision as of 21:58, 20 February 2005
- For the topic of grace notes in music, see ornament (music).
Background
Gracenote is a commercial enterprise which maintains and licenses a database containing the contents of CDs. The database is accessible online. As of 2005 many computer software applications that are capable of playing CDs use Gracenote's CDDB; among Gracenote's most notable customers is Apple, which uses Gracenote metadata for its iTunes service. These programs generally offer the option of contributing track listings, and most of the track listings in the Gracenote database are voluntary contributions by individual users of CD-player software.
It began in 1993 as an open-source project involving a CD player program named xmcd and an associated database named CDDB. xmcd and CDDB were created by Ti Kan and Steve Scherf. Because CDs do not contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents, Kan and Scherf devised a clever technology which identifies and looks up CDs based on nothing more than the number and timings of the tracks. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some imprecision in the track timings.
Some computer users who have copied vinyl LPs from their turntables onto CD-Rs have been astonished to find their computers correctly displaying the titles and track listings when these CD-R's are played on their computer. This happens when a commercial CD is a remastered version of an LP, containing the same tracks in the same order. If the track timings of the homemade CD match the track timings of the commercial CD to within a second, the CDDB database can identify the CD successfully.
Scherf remains on baoard as Gracenote's chief architect; other executives include CEO Craig Palmer and Chief Technology Officer Ty Roberts. In addition to CD recognition, Gracenote projects include Mobile MusicID, Playlist, Clean, Encode, and VideoID.
As of 2005 Gracenote's web site lists database statistics of 3,469,292 CDs and 44,371,049 songs. These reflect music releases from around the world, although critics suggest that the numbers include some duplication as a result of minor differences between releases in different countries of the same album.
Controversy
In 1998, Kan and Scherf sold the CDDB database to Escient, a high-tech venture firm, which founded Gracenote. The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who receive no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, GPL project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. Rightly or wrongly, many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free.
Lawsuits
The commercialization of CDDB by Gracenote also caused friction with its former licensees. In 2000, Gracenote sued Roxio for breach of contract when Roxio tried to switch to freedb. The case was settled in 2001. In 2002, Gracenote sued its former licensee, Musicmatch, for breach of contract and patent violations. Musicmatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote. The Northern District Court in California ruled on August 26, 2004 in favor of Musicmatch. The ruling found that Musicmatch's CDDB replacement service does not violate Gracenote's patents. The court also found significant evidence that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently. The Court Order is available online.
Competition
Many of Gracenote's small former licensees moved to non-commercial services such as freedb because of restrictive terms and anger over the privatization of the former GPL project. Several large commercial licensees also dumped Gracenote, such as Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Musicmatch Jukebox, have moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide.
The AMG LASSO media recognition service was launched in late 2004 by All Media Guide. The service allows for the recognition of DVDs and digital audio files such as MP3s, as well as CD recognition.