Gracenote

 

Long before the age of iPods and iTunes, Scott Jones had an idea. In 1996, he envisioned a company, first named Escient that would change the landscape of digital music and entertainment forever. He understood what pieces needed to be in place to turn his idea into reality and knew it was an immense undertaking. He embarked on an aggressive strategy that included purchasing several companies, intellectual property, and technologies while organically building the complex “glue” technology that cemented all the valuable pieces together.

Scott searched the entire globe to find and acquire core music recognition technologies including CDDB, ION, the Quintessential Player, and Cantametrix to carefully construct the company that is now known as Gracenote, the undisputed leader in global digital entertainment technology.

Scott’s vision was fulfilled. Over the past several years, Scott has led Gracenote as its Chairman to become a leading player in digital technology. Awarded several valuable U.S. patents, Gracenote is a music management system, specializing in music recognition, database management and content delivery—allowing individual users to download, manage and enjoy music. Scott is responsible for raising significant capital from top-tier investors, recruiting a talented management team, contributing technology and strategically directing Gracenote to pursue market segments that are the foundation of the company's success. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Gracenote also has offices in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Seoul.

HOW GRACENOTE WORKS: The Gracenote Media Database has information for approximately 55 million tracks and over four million CDs. It has been used by more than 150 million individuals worldwide totaling six billion searches over the past eight years. In 2006, the company penned a deal allowing Gracenote to become one of the first companies to offer legal downloads of millions of song lyrics.

Gracenote licenses access to its database and other services to online music services and hardware providers that enable individual users to explore the world of digital entertainment. Gracenote's content delivery engine provides the ability to aggregate and deliver rich third-party content that is directly related to music as it is playing. Gracenote became the Web's first "music browser" by allowing its licensees (including RealNetworks and Yahoo!) to recognize MP3s as well as CDs and to receive information about artists on the screen while users listen to music. By providing player partners, application developers and device makers the ability to serve targeted content in context to the music listening experience, Gracenote enables its partners to generate new revenue streams.

Digital Top 10: The Gracenote Digital Top 10 list represents the most-played albums on the Internet, aggregated weekly from millions of listeners worldwide using media players powered by Gracenote. Viewers can also find the Digital Top 10 for 18 categories ranging from rock to country.

Video ID: Gracenote VideoIDSM uses state of the art recognition technology and access to Gracenote's massive media database to accurately identify and organize DVD libraries, enabling advanced features and functionality for DVD players, set-top boxes and PC-based applications. This can be used to provide parental controls to restrict access to specific content. Viewers can sort, categorize and select a DVD by genre, director, actors and other means.

GRACENOTE CLIENTS: Clients include, among many others: Apple Computer, Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, RealNetworks and RealPlayer, as well as software application for Creative and iRiver portable devices. Gracenote's technology powers leading home and automobile consumer electronics brands such as Alpine, Denon and Marantz, Kenwood, Panasonic, Philips, Pioneer, Samsung, Sony and Yamaha, as well as international mobile music applications for KTF (Korea), Musiwave (Portugal), Oi (Brazil) and Golden Bytes (Benelux).

More information is available at www.gracenote.com