| Revision as of 03:10, 28 November 2006 editScherf (talk | contribs)92 edits Repaired article with negative POV with more impartial edit. Preserved edit war tag, the "see also" section and the "ja:Gracenote" tag, whatever that's for.← Previous edit | Revision as of 09:01, 28 November 2006 edit undoThe Kinslayer (talk | contribs)7,008 edits Reverted back to version the majority agree on, instead of the version one Gracenote employee with an agenda wants.Next edit → | ||
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| '''Gracenote''' is a |
'''Gracenote''' is a commercial enterprise which maintains and licenses a database containing information about the contents of audio CDs. The database is accessible online over the Internet. Computer software applications such as ] that are capable of playing CDs use Gracenote's ] or similar commercial services such as ]'s ] and ], or open-source projects such as ] and ]. These programs generally offer the option of contributing track listings, and most of the track listings in the Gracenote database are voluntary contributions by individual users of CD-player software. | ||
| Additionally, Gracenote operates a digital file identification service which allows digital music files to be identified. As well as a media management service for media management such as the generation of playlists, and recommendation of music. | |||
| Gracenote's database is mainly created via the contributions of its many users. If the music is not available in the Gracenote database, the service requests the user to input information such as the artist, album, and song names related to the music. Gracenote also receives some music information from third pary database companies and record labels. | |||
| ==Background== | ==Background== | ||
| 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 included with the application. The database within the xmcd application is the original CDDB. 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. The service quickly outgrew Scherf's ability to host and a larger server, hosting facilities, and an advertising business model was provided by an ex-pat Scot living in Texas, Graham Toal. | |||
| Gracenote has its roots in an ] project that began in ] involving a CD player program named ''xmcd'' developed by ] and an associated database named ] developed by ]<ref name="WSJ">{{cite news|title=Three Veterans Advise The Next Tech Wave: It's All About Business | publisher=The Wall Street Journal | date=December 31, 2001 | author=Jason Fry | url=http://www.ibiblio.org/tkan/software/cddb_wsj_12.31.01.pdf | format=PDF | accessdate=2006-10-13}}</ref>. Because CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see ]), Kan's software included the ability to look up CDs based on ] information stored at the beginning of each disc<ref name="WSJ" />. A TOC is a list of sector numbers, also known as ''offsets'', corresponding to the start of each track on any given CD. Because the offsets on a CD tend to be unique, they can be used for identifying CDs with a high degree of certainty. Fuzzy logic is used to heuristically compare TOCs that are similar but not exact matches, a common case for popular discs with many different batches manufactured at various times and places. The end result is a highly accurate method of identifying compact discs. | |||
| CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see ]), Kan developed software which identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A ], or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets. | |||
| ⚫ | Some computer users who have copied ] from their turntables onto ] have been |
||
| ⚫ | 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. | ||
| Gracenote’s pioneering work in compact disc recognition happened at just the right time to help enable the digital music revolution. The ability to recognize CDs and locate album text facilitated the easy, automatic generation of digital audio files (such as ]) in large quantities from one’s personal CD collection, a process known as ]. Without the ability to automatically name audio files, converting CDs into audio files would be a manual and onerous task. CD recognition made this possible, enabling the average user to convert personal CD collections to digital audio form without having to repurchase that same music again in a new format. | |||
| ⚫ | ==Commercialization and controversy== | ||
| ===Evolution of Gracenote=== | |||
| In ], the service was purchased by ], a high-tech venture firm and operated as a business unit within the ] based company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient in July of 2000 and renamed Gracenote (). The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who received no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, ] project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. Many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free. | |||
| ], Gracenote claims that its database contains information on almost 4 million CDs. The reliability both of this statement and of the database itself have been challenged. Because the information going into the database has not been subjected to quality control, duplicate entries are very common. David Jennings, in an article entitled "How many CDs are there in the world?" gives an example of a six-CD set in which "two of the six CDs appear twice in the database, and one appears three times." An article on the Seattle Times website cites Ty Roberts, chief technology officer of Gracenote, as saying that there are approximately 500,000 individual CD titles commercially released and available for sale today in the United States. | |||
| Gracenote began as a CD recognition service, but has since introduced a wide variety of digital media recognition technologies and related services <ref>http://www.gracenote.com/gn_products/</ref> for the global market. The first of these was MusicID File, released in ] and based on technology purchased from Cantametrix, which offers recognition of digital audio files such as MP3s and other popular file formats. In ] Gracenote purchased audio recognition technology from ] that is highly tolerant of noise and allows for the recognition of music over a cell phone microphone. This service was rolled out as Mobile MusicID. Gracenote technology 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. Gracenote products are used by millions of consumers worldwide. In ] Gracenote announced <ref>http://gracenote.com/corporate/press/article.html/date=2006071700</ref> that it had signed agreements licensing lyrics rights from many of the world’s leading music publishers, for the first time enabling the legal use of song lyrics in consumer electronic devices, PC applications and web services. | |||
| ==Lawsuits Against Licensees== | |||
| Gracenote also offers ] versions of many of its products and services. | |||
| The commercialization of CDDB by Gracenote also caused friction with its former licensees. In ], Gracenote sued ] for breach of contract when Roxio tried to switch to ]. The case was settled in ]. | |||
| ⚫ | ==Commercialization== |
||
| In ], Kan, Scherf and ], a partner who joined the project in ], sold the assets of CDDB to ], a producer of high-end consumer electronics. CDDB was later renamed Gracenote. The move was controversial to some, because the CDDB database was built on the voluntary submission of CD track data provided by individual users. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program and CDDB server software were open-source, ] projects, and many contributors assumed that the database was as well. Though Gracenote has never charged end users for access to the database through its online service, it does charge commercial entities a fee for the benefit of using its service. | |||
| ⚫ | ====Gracenote v. Musicmatch==== | ||
| In ], ], a clone of the Gracenote CDDB service, was created by former CDDB users who wanted a noncommercial alternative. The track listing database freedb used to seed its new service was based on the data previously released for public use by CDDB. | |||
| In ], Gracenote sued another former licensee, ], for breach of contract and patent violations. Musicmatch filed a counter-suit against Gracenote. The Northern District Court in California ruled on ], ] in favor of Musicmatch. The case was settled in ] after Musicmatch received summary judgement on all of Gracenote's patent claims. | |||
| ===iTunes=== | |||
| A summary judgement found that Musicmatch's CDDB replacement service does not violate Gracenote's patents. The court also found significant evidence that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently. is available online. Later, the court issued a decision that Gracenote did not obtain its patents fraudulently, but the decision that Musicmatch does not violate any of Gracenote's patents was clear. | |||
| The ] ] ] application is the most prominent user of the Gracenote service today. iTunes has traditionaly utilized the Gracenote service to identify CDs<ref>{{cite web | url=http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=iTunesWin/7.0/en/525.html | title=iTunes for Windows 7.0 Help: Finding CD information on the Internet | publisher=apple.com | accessdate=2006-10-13 }}</ref>. As of late ] it also uses Gracenote to help locate cover art for audio files previously ripped through iTunes. | |||
| There has been speculation that Yahoo! had been holding off its decision to purchase Musicmatch for nearly seven months until the August 26th court order was issued. According to this speculation, the court decision for Yahoo!'s purchase of Musicmatch. The purchase of Musicmatch by Yahoo! was announced only two weeks after the August 26th court decision. Musicmatch and Gracenote settled shortly thereafter. | |||
| ==Legal History== | |||
| In ], Gracenote sued ] and its parent ] for breach of contract when Roxio switched to freedb while continuing to use Gracenote’s trademarks, allegedly violating its contract with Gracenote in the process. The case was settled in ] <ref>http://www.gracenote.com/corporate/legal/gracenote_v_adaptec_roxio.pdf</ref>. Though terms were not disclosed, Roxio became a licensee of Gracenote. | |||
| Until the Musicmatch case, Gracenote attempted to aggressively use its patents in an attempt to enforce a monopoly in commercial CD indentification services. The inability of Gracenote to enforce its patent in the Musicmatch case opened the market for competition, and a growing global group of companies continue to enter media identification and metadata marketplace. | |||
| ⚫ | ====Gracenote v. Musicmatch==== | ||
| A summarized overview of the case is available at the website within Mr. Robert D. Becker's list of representative cases. Mr. Becker was one of Musicmatch's lawyers during the case. | |||
| In ], Gracenote filed suit in the Northern District Court in Oakland, California, 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. 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 found that Gracenote was not entitled to summary judgment with respect to its claims that MusicMatch’s replacement service violated Gracenote’s patents. The court also found evidence that Gracenote may have engaged in inequitable conduct in obtaining its patents (as described below, the Court reversed itself on this issue in a later court 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. | |||
| ==Competition== | |||
| 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>. | |||
| Many of Gracenote's small former licensees moved to non-commercial services such as ] because of restrictive terms and anger over the privatization of the company. Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as ]'s ] and ], and have moved to the commercial service provided by ]. | |||
| ==Similar services== | |||
| The ] service is a clone of the original CDDB service. It is based on the last server software and data packages that the CDDB project released for public use, and is largely unchanged. It is used mostly by freeware and shareware PC applications. | |||
| The ] |
The ] media recognition service was launched in late 2004 by ]. The service allows for the recognition of DVDs and digital audio files such as MP3s, as well as CD recognition, and directly competes with Gracenote in the software and embedded device markets globally. | ||
| ] is |
] is another music identification service that is open source and created by community contributions. ] is a commercial service which identifies music, and is reliant on the MusicBrainz project. | ||
| ==See also== | ==See also== | ||
| * ] | * ] | ||
| ==References== | |||
| <div class="references-small"> | |||
| <!--See http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Footnotes for an explanation of how to generate footnotes using the <ref(erences/)> tags--> | |||
| <references/> | |||
| </div> | |||
| == External links == | == External links == | ||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| * | * | ||
| * | * - links to PDF files of some of the court documents from the Roxio and Musicmatch cases. | ||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| ** {{musicbrainz wiki|Gracenote}} | |||
| * | |||
| * Reliability of Gracenote database questioned | |||
| * | |||
| * | * Gracenote official estimates 500,000 CD titles currently available for sale in the U. S. | ||
| * | |||
| * | |||
| * | * | ||
| * | |||
| ] | ] | ||
| ] | ] | ||
| ] | |||
| ] | ] | ||
Revision as of 09:01, 28 November 2006
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| File:Gracenote logo.png | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1998 |
| Headquarters | Emeryville, California, USA |
| Products | Digital music recognition technology |
| Number of employees | 95 (2006) |
| Website | www.gracenote.com |
Gracenote is a commercial enterprise which maintains and licenses a database containing information about the contents of audio CDs. The database is accessible online over the Internet. Computer software applications such as iTunes that are capable of playing CDs use Gracenote's CDDB or similar commercial services such as All Media Guide's AMG LASSO and MusicIP, or open-source projects such as freedb and MusicBrainz. These programs generally offer the option of contributing track listings, and most of the track listings in the Gracenote database are voluntary contributions by individual users of CD-player software.
Additionally, Gracenote operates a digital file identification service which allows digital music files to be identified. As well as a media management service for media management such as the generation of playlists, and recommendation of music.
Gracenote's database is mainly created via the contributions of its many users. If the music is not available in the Gracenote database, the service requests the user to input information such as the artist, album, and song names related to the music. Gracenote also receives some music information from third pary database companies and record labels.
Background
Gracenote began in 1993 as an open source project involving a CD player program named xmcd. The xmcd player was developed by Ti Kan, and had the ability to store and recognize CDs from a database included with the application. The database within the xmcd application is the original CDDB. 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 Steve Scherf, a friend of Mr. Kan was recruited to build a server to store the CD information in a network database. The service quickly outgrew Scherf's ability to host and a larger server, hosting facilities, and an advertising business model was provided by an ex-pat Scot living in Texas, Graham Toal.
CDs do not generally contain any digitally-encoded information about their contents (see CD-Text), Kan developed software which identifies and looks up CDs based on TOC information stored at the beginning of each disc. A TOC, or Table of Contents, is a list of offsets corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets.
Some computer users who have copied vinyl LPs from their turntables onto CD-Rs have been surprised to find their computers correctly displaying the titles and track listings when these CD-Rs are played on their computer. This happens when a commercial CD is a remastered version of an LP, containing the same tracks in the same order. If the track offsets of the homemade CD match the track timings of the commercial CD to within a second, the CDDB database can identify the CD successfully.
Commercialization and controversy
In 1998, the service was purchased by Escient, a high-tech venture firm and operated as a business unit within the Indiana based company. CDDB was then spun out of Escient in July of 2000 and renamed Gracenote (press release). The maneuver was and remains controversial, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users, who received no compensation for their work. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, GPL project, and many listing contributors assumed that the database was free as well. However, at some point the code for xmcd was modified to append copyright notices to all submissions. How visible or open this was to contributors remains a matter of debate. Many contributors of track listings were angered at the transfer of these listings to a profit-making entity which proceeded to make money by charging license fees for access to a database of track listings which individuals had contributed for free.
As of 2005, Gracenote claims that its database contains information on almost 4 million CDs. The reliability both of this statement and of the database itself have been challenged. Because the information going into the database has not been subjected to quality control, duplicate entries are very common. David Jennings, in an article entitled "How many CDs are there in the world?" gives an example of a six-CD set in which "two of the six CDs appear twice in the database, and one appears three times." An article on the Seattle Times website cites Ty Roberts, chief technology officer of Gracenote, as saying that there are approximately 500,000 individual CD titles commercially released and available for sale today in the United States.
Lawsuits Against Licensees
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.
Gracenote v. Musicmatch
In 2002, Gracenote sued another 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 case was settled in 2004 after Musicmatch received summary judgement on all of Gracenote's patent claims.
A summary judgement found that Musicmatch's CDDB replacement service does not violate Gracenote's patents. The court also found significant evidence that Gracenote may have obtained its patents fraudulently. The court order is available online. Later, the court issued a decision that Gracenote did not obtain its patents fraudulently, but the decision that Musicmatch does not violate any of Gracenote's patents was clear.
There has been speculation that Yahoo! had been holding off its decision to purchase Musicmatch for nearly seven months until the August 26th court order was issued. According to this speculation, the court decision "may have cleared the financial picture" for Yahoo!'s purchase of Musicmatch. The purchase of Musicmatch by Yahoo! was announced only two weeks after the August 26th court decision. Musicmatch and Gracenote settled shortly thereafter.
Until the Musicmatch case, Gracenote attempted to aggressively use its patents in an attempt to enforce a monopoly in commercial CD indentification services. The inability of Gracenote to enforce its patent in the Musicmatch case opened the market for competition, and a growing global group of companies continue to enter media identification and metadata marketplace.
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.
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 company. Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Musicmatch Jukebox, and 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, and directly competes with Gracenote in the software and embedded device markets globally.
MusicBrainz is another music identification service that is open source and created by community contributions. MusicIP is a commercial service which identifies music, and is reliant on the MusicBrainz project.
See also
External links
- All Media Guide (AMG)
- AMG's LASSO
- freedb
- Gracenote
- Gracenote's Legal Page - links to PDF files of some of the court documents from the Roxio and Musicmatch cases.
- MusicBrainz
- How many CDs are there? Reliability of Gracenote database questioned
- Gracenote official estimates 500,000 CD titles currently available for sale in the U. S.
- Article about Gracenote's business in Japan
- Gracenote Defends Its Evolution - an interview by Wired of Steve Scherf
- Unabridged Wired interview - posted by Steve Scherf, one of the founders of CDDB