this article has multiple issues . please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . learn how and when to remove these template messages the neutrality of this article is disputed . relevant discussion may be found on the talk page . please do not remove this message until conditions to do so are met . april 2011 learn how and when to remove this template message this article relies too much on references to primary sources . please improve this by adding secondary or tertiary sources . june 2007 learn how and when to remove this template message learn how and when to remove this template message gracenote inc. type subsidiary founded october 5 1998 ; 18 years ago 1998 10 05 1 as cddb july 2000 2000 07 as gracenote headquarters emeryville california u.s. products music data video data sports data automatic content recognition acr technology digital video fingerprinting acoustic fingerprinting revenue 98.76 million 2014 2 number of employees 1 700 2016 parent tribune media website www.gracenote.com gracenote inc. provides music and video metadata and technologies to entertainment products and brands in the united states and internationally . 3 gracenote provides music recognition technologies that compare digital music files to a worldwide database of music information enabling digital audio devices to identify the songs . the company licenses its technologies to developers of consumer electronics devices and online media players who integrate the technologies into media players home and car stereos and digital music devices . 2 the company operates five business verticals music video sports automotive and video personalization . headquartered in emeryville california the company employs approximately 1 700 people in 20 offices around the world . gracenote is a division of tribune media company which owns and operates a sizable portfolio of television and digital properties which bring entertainment news and sports content to local and national audiences . gracenote is best known for musicid a music recognition solution that identifies compact discs and delivers artist metadata and cover art to the desktop . gracenote database includes music genre and mood information tv show descriptions episode information and channel line ups movie cast and crew information and sports statistics and results . companies including music services tv providers consumer electronics manufacturers and automakers use gracenote data to power their content recognition universal search navigation linking discovery and personalized recommendations functionality . formerly cddb compact disc data base gracenote maintains and licenses an internet accessible database containing information about the contents of audio compact discs and vinyl records . it provides software and metadata to businesses that enable their customers to manage and search digital media . gracenote provides its media management technology and global media database of digital entertainment information to the mobile automobile portable home and pc markets . several computer software applications that were capable of playing cds for example media go and itunes used gracenote s cddb technology . winamp once a major licensee no longer has access to gracenote ; the legacy media player program lost access to gracenote when shoutcast and winamp were sold by aol in 2014 citation needed . redevelopment of winamp continues by its new owner radionomy who have said that future winamp versions will have access to an online music database . 4 in 2014 tribune media company bought gracenote from sony corporation of america . 2 contents 1 history 2 products 3 customers 4 controversy 5 see also 6 notes and references 7 external links history edit gracenote 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 technology 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 . its original database was created from and continues to receive voluntary contributions from users . this led to a licensing controversy when gracenote became commercialized . on april 22 2008 sony announced that it would acquire gracenote for 260 million . 5 the acquisition was completed on june 2 2008 . 6 on september 9 2010 gracenote received its one billionth piece of data with a submission about the compact disc release of swans my father will guide me up a rope to the sky . 7 on december 23 2013 sony announced it would sell gracenote to tribune media for 170 million . the acquisition closed in february 2014 gracenote was aligned with the tribune media services division which focused on tv and movie metadata and ids . 8 9 on june 12 2014 tribune media services merged with gracenote to form one company under the gracenote name . 10 on july 9 2014 tribune media company purchased what s on a provider of tv data and advanced search offerings covering india and the middle east for 27 million . this acquisition expanded gracenote s international video data footprint and brought key recommendation technology into its ip portfolio . 11 on september 3 2014 gracenote acquired baseline a los angeles based provider of film and tv data and information . baseline had previously been owned by the ny times from 2006 2011 after which it was sold back to its original owners . this 50 million purchase deepened gracenote s existing video datasets and added the studio system database a subscription based resource for the hollywood content creation and distribution communities to its line up of offerings . 12 on october 2 2014 gracenote purchased australia based tv and movie data company hww for 19 million us to expand its asia pacific presence and international offerings . 13 on may 28 2015 gracenote launched a new sports vertical based on the 54 million acquisitions of amsterdam based infostrada sports and halifax based sportsdirect . this enabled the company to become a major provider of music video and sports data on a global scale . 14 products edit with the acquisition by tribune media in 2014 and subsequent acquisitions of what s on hww baseline sportsdirect and infostrada sports gracenote has expanded its core data product beyond music into video and sports . gracenote s early product line up consisted of musicid mobile musicid music enrichment discover playlist playlist plus media vocs classical music initiative and link . in april 2007 gracenote launched the first 15 legal lyrics offering in the u.s. that was sold to lyricfind in 2013 . gracenote s current music offerings fall into three major categories music recognition music data and music discovery . its music recognition product called musicid was originally developed as a cd track identification system . gracenote also operates a digital file identification service which uses audio fingerprinting technology to identify digital music files such as mp3s and deliver track level metadata album art and links to complementary content and services . its music data offering provides information describing genre mood era origin and tempo for tens of millions of songs . its music discovery product called rhythm delivers solutions enabling personalized playlist and radio station creation . 16 17 gracenote auto puts automatic content recognition acr technology into the car s audio system to identify music playing from various sources including am fm and satellite radio cds or streaming services and deliver relevant metadata and cover art . in december 2015 gracenote launched its first audio technology gracenote dynamic eq designed to help automakers and oems automatically tune connected car audio systems to the optimal equalizer settings for individual songs based on genre mood and release date . 18 gracenote s video platform called on entertainment consists of tv listings and schedules for approximately 85 countries and 35 languages as well as tv and movie data and related imagery information for six million tv shows and movies . on entertainment is supported by standardized tms ids for tv shows movies and celebrities . these ids enable universal search across linear tv ott and vod libraries and make possible season pass dvr recordings . gracenote sports provides live scores play by play data historical results and records schedules player profiles and athlete biographies for 4 500 leagues and competitions such as the nfl mlb nba nhl premier league f1 bundesliga tour de france wimbledon and the olympics . gracenote s podium product tracks all olympic competition results and rankings at elite and junior levels as well as historical olympic data going back to the very first modern games in 1896 . in september 2015 the company announced dvr extend which enables tv providers to dynamically adjust dvr settings to ensure live sports game recordings don t get cut off in the event they go past scheduled broadcast times . 19 customers edit itunes media go and sonicstage all use gracenote s cd track identification services . 20 21 22 in addition gracenote provides its products to a number of other services including online services from yahoo music jukebox aol amazonmp3 spotify winamp metrolyrics pandora google music 23 and tuneup media ; home and automotive products from alpine bose panasonic philips loewe and sony ; mobile music applications from samsung 24 sony mobile communication trackid 25 kddi japan ktf korea musicwave europe . popular lyrics website lyricwikia controversy edit main article gracenote licensing controversy in 1998 cddb was purchased by escient a consumer electronics manufacturer and operated as a business unit within the indiana based company . cddb was then spun out of escient and in july 2000 was renamed gracenote . the cddb database license was later changed to include new terms . for instance any programs using a cddb lookup had to display a cddb logo while performing the lookup . then in march 2001 only licensed applications were provided access to the gracenote 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 . this has been controversial as the original cddb database was created out of anonymous contributions initially via the open source xmcd cd player program . 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 . cddb claims that license grant was an error . see also edit list of online music databases automatic content recognition notes and references edit cddb.com whois dns & domain info domaintools . whois . retrieved 2016 03 26 . a b c gracenot inc. company profile . hoover s. gracenote inc. private company information . businessweek . bloomberg l.p. winamp official forum gracenote news sony corporation of america to acquire gracenote archived june 4 2010 at the wayback machine . sony corporation of america completes gracenote acquisition archived may 16 2010 at the wayback machine . cohen noam 2010 10 03 . obsessions with minutiae thrive as databases . the new york times . retrieved 2010 10 04 . tribune closes 170 mil cash deal to acquire sony s gracenote . variety . retrieved 31 january 2015 . tribune buys gracenote from sony . the wall street journal . retrieved 31 january 2015 . michelle clancy . tribune to merge media services into gracenote operations . rapid tv news . retrieved 5 june 2015 . lawler ryan ; contributor . tribune digital ventures acquires indian electronic program guide provider what s on . techcrunch . retrieved 2016 04 06 . spangler todd . tribune media s gracenote acquires baseline for 50 million cash . variety . retrieved 2016 04 06 . gracenote targets australia with 19m buy up of tv & movie data provider hww . venturebeat . retrieved 2016