Gracenote and Muze Partner to Create Integrated Offering
Gracenote and Muze today announced a multi-year partnership to offer the industry’s most comprehensive and accurate global media identification and rich content solution for consumer electronics and mobile phone devices, as well as PC applications. Offering a comprehensive collection of content for entertainment products currently available in North America, Europe and other parts of the world, Muze provides album art, album reviews and artist biographies for the industry’s most influential and popular artists of all time. Integrating Muze’s award-winning editorial content with Gracenote’s industry-leading music identification technology, services and global information database will allow digital entertainment companies to easily offer their customers an enhanced media experience anywhere they ship products in the world.
The fully integrated solution lets consumers play digital music and automatically receive not only detailed track-level information, including artist, album, track and genre information, plus release year and record label, but also extended content such as album reviews, artist biographies and sanctioned cover art. The worldwide reach provided by Muze and Gracenote enables music information and related content to be delivered in a way that is specific and relevant to each user in every region of the world.
“Digital media product developers want a unified and global solution for advanced media identification linked to music information, editorial content and album cover art. This partnership between Gracenote and Muze creates a one-stop-shop for every manufacturer to easily integrate a single worldwide solution instead of working with multiple partners,” said Craig Palmer, CEO of Gracenote.
“The combined Muze and Gracenote product makes each consumer’s time spent with their music richer and more meaningful,” said Bill Stensrud, CEO, Muze Inc. “Deploying Muze’s editorial content and deep artist links through Gracenote’s MusicID(TM) technology and services, will increase the value of digital media and help drive sales of new media products.”
The Gracenote-Muze partnership is valuable for home theater, CE, mobile, PC and automotive entertainment markets. For example, in a home theater environment, information about an artist could be displayed on the television while a song is playing on the stereo. Mobile users could view album art on their cell phone while playing a song. Moreover, drivers could navigate through their music collection by simply pressing the appropriate album cover on their touch-screen device, which is easier, faster and safer than scrolling through a long list of text-only titles.
Gracenote’s MusicID is the recognized leader in global music identification with over 150 million unique users in over 200 countries and territories, and implementations embedded in popular applications and devices such as Apple iTunes and Pioneer Automotive Entertainment systems, as well as Panasonic and Sony Home A/V products. MusicID enables consumers to identify CDs and individual digital music files and then delivers accurate and standardized artist, album and track information from Gracenote’s Global Media Database of over 4 million CDs and 55 million tracks.
Muze is recognized as the worldwide market leader in aggregating, normalizing, enhancing and publishing information related to music, movies, video games and books. The company’s precise product level data and rich editorial content supports retailers in merchandising their physical and virtual stores effectively, while providing their customers with information to make a purchase decision. Under the Gracenote-Muze partnership, content is constantly updated and linked to CE devices and applications, enabling consumers to always get the most up-to-date information.
Together, Muze and Gracenote offer the only truly global solution that combines music identification technology and services, metadata, album cover art, album reviews and artist biographies in one unified system. All content will be licensed and hosted by Gracenote and delivered through the Gracenote Media Management System, so service providers will be able to work with a single source for this integrated digital entertainment solution.
About Gracenote
Gracenote is a leader in global digital entertainment technology. Formerly known as CDDB, Gracenote provides businesses with critical embedded software and metadata that enable consumers to better manage, enjoy and discover digital media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, Gracenote also has offices in New York, Tokyo, Berlin and Seoul. Gracenote’s solutions are embedded in leading media players such as Apple iTunes, Yahoo Music Engine, RealNetworks Rhapsody, Napster and AOL Winamp, as well as software applications 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 KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musiwave (Portugal), Oi (Brazil) and Golden Bytes (Benelux). For more information about Gracenote, please refer to www.gracenote.com/corporate/.
About Muze Inc.
Muze is the leading source of entertainment product information for music, books, films and games. Since 1991, Muze has provided hundreds of companies with the most comprehensive and accurate entertainment content available. Whether in store, at home or on the go, Muze content drives commerce by providing detailed information about entertainment products, turning browsers into buyers. More than 250 companies rely on Muze’s rich entertainment content to sell their products. In fact, Muze is the backbone of online commerce for major players in the entertainment retail business including Yahoo!, eBay, Tower Records, Musicland, Best Buy, Overstock and RealNetworks. Muze product information also drives commerce by providing in-store solutions for companies such as Virgin Megastores, Transworld Entertainment, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Hastings and others. Muze is based in New York City. To learn more about Muze please visit www.muze.com; or email us at MuzePress@muze.com.