Talk:Gracenote

Controversy
I have removed the part about losing Microsoft as a customer as I could not find anything in Google searches or Google news. Please do not place it back until you have a verifiable source. While I do not know exactly why their is an edit war going on, I'm going to step in and try and help clean things up. I'm here at the request of nobody and do not favor any side. Although, adding information without sources or proof will not help you. --Simonkoldyk 22:09, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

GPL
See discussion
 * I see this issue as now resolved. --Simonkoldyk 22:36, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Gracenote vs Musicmatch
See discussion

Mr. Becker's CV, Court Documents, Other Legal Issues
See discussion


 * I have addressed everything in your post, if you have problems with how I addressed it start another little thing and refer to this subpage as needed. --Simonkoldyk 18:48, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Competition
This sentence:


 * Several large commercial licensees dropped Gracenote's service, such as Musicmatch Jukebox, and have moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide.

has several issues. I have seen no proof that several large commercial licensees have dropped Gracenote and moved to AMG's service. Please provide documentation. (I'm not being disingenuous here. I don't actually remember for sure, but I do doubt that any big players went to AMG at all.) Musicmatch did leave, but they did not go to AMG. They started their own service, called CDi. See the musicmatch privacy page here and scroll down to section 2. See the explanation of CDi and how it ties in with their application. It is essentially a service and protocol of their own devising. But it should be noteworthy that Yahoo has been working on migrating musicmatch users to their own player, which uses Gracenote. Steve Scherf 00:58, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Please see and search for AMG. --Simonkoldyk 01:35, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The musicmatch player uses the CDi service, a service of their own devising, as I noted. They have licensed data only from AMG, and that is not the only source of their data. They have their own data as well. So the CD lookup service they use is their own, and much of the data is their own. Only part of the data came from AMG, and no service from AMG. The page I linked to says this, The Musicmatch Jukebox contains Musicmatch CD lookup (CDI) service for compact disc identification. I think it's pretty clear that they are using CDi, their own service, not Lasso, AMG's service. The link you provide only discusses AMG data, nothing else about AMG. So the text that says they moved over to AMG's service is incorrect. I provide these links to prove my point, but believe me when I say I know this, because they are a customer and it also all came out in the lawsuit anyway... Even if for some reason you do not believe this, then please cite a source that specifically states they are using the AMG Lasso service. Steve Scherf 01:54, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Simonkoldyk, although Scherf earlier claims that Microsoft never dropped Gracenote/CDDB, here is a link to an Escient press release regarding the purchase of CDDB referring to Microsoft's Deluxe CD Player formerly using CDDB. So it seems that Microsoft did drop Gracenote after the commercialization, after all. Regarding Musicmatch, there is no evidence that the Musicmatch player, a different player than the Yahoo! Player, is using Gracenote. The CDi service appears to be alive and well and functioning without problem.  Fatandhappy 02:09, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

For crying out loud, the Microsoft Deluxe CD Player used two services, none of them CDDB: Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com. Tunes.com was a licensee of CDDB at the time of the Escient press release and had their own service with (some) CDDB data inside it, that's all. Get yourself a copy of WIndows 98 and try it out for yourself, and you'll see the tunes.com logo when it does a lookup. Or read one of the zillions of web links on the topic. Keep scratching at those straws...

WRT to your comment about musicmatch using CDi, when did I ever dispute that? I agree with you, musicmatch uses CDi. The point is that they do not use AMG Lasso. Steve Scherf 02:56, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

FYI, here's a link to the press release for the Microsoft player and Tunes.com:. Steve Scherf 03:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Thank you for agreeing that Microsoft did use CDDB with its CD Deluxe product. It appears from the Tunes.com release that you linked to describes the additional content (Rolling Stones info, commerce links, etc.) and that the recognition is coming from CDDB, though it does not mention. For crying out loud, Scherf, in the Escient press release it clearly states, The CDDB database currently provides music CD identification information to more than 25 officially-supported players, including the new Microsoft(R) Deluxe CD Player (MSFT), as well as the Notify CD Player, Quintessential CD Player, Discplay 4, and Xmcd. Do you dispute the factuality your own company's press release (since CDDB was a division of Escient at the time)? And do you debate that Microsoft dropped support for CDDB by building its own service shortly after the commercilization of CDDB?


 * WRT, the current article does not state that Musicmatch uses AMG Lasso; it states that it moved to the commercial service provided by All Media Guide. According to the All Media Guide article, the company provides services to companies like Musicmatch. Can you provide a source that shows this as incorrect? Who is "scratching at straws" here? Please kindly keep the rudeness out of the discussion. Fatandhappy 04:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I think the Microsoft press release was pretty clear, they used Tunes.com. Tunes licensed CDDB data in addition to their own, but not the CDDB service. These facts are not in dispute. Yes, that Escient press release is overblown, and I have no doubt that the marketing person who cranked that one out loved the thought of saying MS was a customer. That doesn't change the fact that the Deluxe CD app used Tunes.com's service, not CDDB's service. In fact, the communication protocol used by Deluxe CD player and Tunes.com was of Microsoft's own device, and didn't even slightly resemble the CDDB protocol that the CDDB service used. Play semantics all you want, but the fact is that Microsoft used Tunes.com and Musicboulevard.com's service. You might refer to the Wired article if you still don't believe the MS stuff. It's stated pretty plainly that Microsoft did not want to use CDDB directly, and instead ended up using CDDB through third party vendor (i.e. Tunes.com).

As far as musicmatch is concerned, the musicmatch player uses CDI, a commercial service provided by musicmatch for musicmatch. They do not use the AMG service. So the article is wrong. Part of their database consists of AMG data, and that's it. These are all semantic games. If you want the article to contain truth, why not say that "musicmatch moved over to its own CD lookup service, CDi, that partially contained AMG data in addition to data collected by musicmatch"? Anything else is misleading. For that matter, why not say "Microsoft stopped using Tunes.com, a service that licensed CDDB data to supplement its own database"? Steve Scherf 04:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Edited
Please read and comment. --Simonkoldyk 04:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The new text in the competition section seems okay, except "licensee" should probably be "licensees, ". Steve Scherf 05:00, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Fixed. --Simonkoldyk 05:06, 2 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Simonkoldyk, thanks again for working on this. The new section could mention that many smaller CDDB licensees moved to freedb after the commercialization. This is supported by looking at the lists of supported appliations on the May 1999 Gracenote site and the November 2001 freedb site. Just a quick scan of these two pages shows that a applications such as Audiograbber, CD-DA Xtractor, Feurio, InCDius, and others had already made the move after Gracenote commercialized and changed its license terms.


 * In the part that refers to Microsoft, it should mention that shortly thereafter, Microsoft dumped CDDB altogether to build their own CD recogniton service based on All Media Guide and other databases for identifying CD's in Windows Media Player.


 * The section on Musicmatch has a couple of minor tweaks necessary. CDi is mispelled (the last i is supposed to be lowercase). The CDi identification service was developed based on the All Media Guide database, with additional data being submitted by the Musicmatch users, similar to what Microsoft did with Windows Media Player. The AMG service called Lasso does not seem to have been released until after Musicmatch was found to not be infringing on Gracenote's patents in 2004, more than 2 years later. Thanks again for your patience. Fatandhappy 08:10, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

The section is more accurate and fair as-is, capitalization error aside. It took a long time to arrive at what is fair common ground. The section is not perfect, but I am willing to accept it. Please try and show some good faith. Steve Scherf 09:40, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Moved Discussions
As this page is getting very long and very complicated I have started to move each topic that gets long to its own subpage so that parties interested in certain things can deal with those without having to go through the entire page, also for me to follow everything. Also I archived some past posts as you can see in the archive at the top. --Simonkoldyk 18:49, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Mediation Cabal
Hi everyone, I'm from the Mediation Cabal. I'm sorry it took so long for us to respond, but, well, none of us are being paid to do this and backlogs happen.

Do you still want a mediator? If not, just say so and we can leave it at that - if any party refuses mediation, it can't work, and you can always re-request mediation at a later date if need be. If so, then I'll do my best to assist.

If mediation is required, it would be helpful if one or more parties could provide a brief summary of exactly which parts of the article need to be edited. The impression gleaned from edit histories and talk subpages can be a bit fragmented. By "brief", I mean brief - no need to go into the justification, just what the positions are.

Although we can use the dedicated mediation page if need be, I suggest replying on this talk page for now. --Sam Blanning(talk) 00:59, 4 December 2006 (UTC)


 * I appreciate that you are volunteering, and understand the delay. I'm actually pleasantly surprised, given that an editor here (I forget who) said that probably no mediator would volunteer to take this up. With the help of Simonkoldyk, we've actually begun to make some progress on some of the blatant errors here. But things have stalled, and there are two remaining issues that need addressing. The text in the musicmatch section does not reflect the actual events, which is the main problem here. I am not an attorney, and cannot explain in simple terms exactly what's wrong. Our counsel wrote and approved the text I previously posted here, text that was reverted consistently, despite supporting court documents. Our GC wants it fixed, because it misrepresents the facts, and I have been attempting to do this at his request. We are not looking to whitewash history, as some have claimed, but the supported facts need to be represented here.


 * The second issue is the overall tone of this article. The page is dominated by Gracenote detractors, who have resisted our attempts to even describe what Gracenote does in the article. I am admittedly partial to Gracenote, but how silly is that? Gracenote has made some major headlines lately, including huge press over lyrics licensing, and even huger headlines over supplying myspace.com with content filtering technology. There are hundreds of articles on that, and one cannot dispute that it deserves some mention here. But because the page is dominated by people whose goal is apparently to allow NO favorable information to make its way into the Gracenote page, it will be impossible to achieve through normal channels.


 * We realize that Wikipedia frowns on biased parties editing articles, but I would argue that these people are just as biased in the opposite direction. I had hoped that mediation would be possible, but several of them posted things to the mediation request that make it clear they won't negotiate in good faith. If you can suggest any way to arrive at a fair page that corrects the two things I have mentioned here, I would be happy to hear it. We have tried to fix the page, openly without hiding behind anonymity, though normal channels, and it hasn't worked. Any approach taken to fix the page must be durable and not require a lot of attention, or there's not much point to it. I have basically already given up and handed the problem back to Gracenote's PR/legal folks, but I'll listen to suggestions. Steve Scherf 00:52, 5 December 2006 (UTC)


 * FYI, I think this is the last version I edited . The musicmatch section contains the facts of the case and presents them in a neutral way, without spin for or against. But spin aside, the most important thing is that it presents the events and does not omit important facts (not suppositions presented as fact), like the fact that the summary judgements were vacated by the court. Note that the article also contains mentions of controversy and competitors, but again does not spin them one way or another. Nor do they dominate the page, as with previous versions of the page. If we can approach something like this through mediation, then I'm for it. Steve Scherf 01:05, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Reference and POV check
So I read the latest version of the article and found it rather anti-Gracenote in places, and the older version cited by Steve Scherf to be overly promotional. Both versions have some facts not mentioned in the other. I have just finished creating a hybrid version, removing POV statements but adding facts from both sides. I checked the supplied references and corrected some inaccuracies in the claims made. There remain some unreferenced claims, which I have marked as "citation(s) needed". I would invite interested parties to either find references to support these claims, or to move them to this talk page for further analysis. In particular, if no reference can be found that says that Gracenote claims to have "almost 4 million CDs" or some similarly allegedly inflated number, then the entire "Database size controversy" section should be removed, because a one-sided controversy...isn't. -- Beland 01:50, 7 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Beland, while I agree with you, I think we can go even further. The question is not whether Gracenote made such claims in the past or not (they clearly did, per the cites given below), but whether or not there is an actualy "controversy" surrounding this.  I think it is fairly clear that due to a variety of factors, the number of unique CDs in terms of "the music contained" and the number of unique CDs in terms of "the measurements used to identify CDs in this system" will be very different, perhaps due to different pressings, different masters, borderline cases (fuzzy data), etc.  I fail so see why this would be controversial, but really whether or not I or anyone else here finds it controversial is very different from whether there is any source in any reliable publication which has ever found it controversial.--Jimbo Wales 00:24, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Here are some references to the Gracenote claims of having "almost 4 million CDs" in 2005: The addition of nearly 2 million CDs to the Gracenote database in a little over two years is incredible, especially in the light of IFPI statistics for 2004 that state that "Well over 100,000 album titles - both new and re-issues - were released in 2004". Gracenote was claiming to have accumulated new CDs in its database over the two years at a rate that is 10X the rate of both new CD releases and re-issues of old CDs during that period. Fatandhappy 12:34, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
 * Dec. 7th, 2003: Gracenote CDDB product overview in the : Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "Over 2.1 million" CDs and "Over 28 million" songs.
 * Feb. 14th, 2004: Gracenote CDDB product overview  in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "2,525,147" CDs and "32,329,447" songs.
 * Nov. 14th, 2004: Gracenote CDDB product overview  in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,178,603" CDs and "40,649,164" songs.
 * Feb. 5th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview  in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,421,152" CDs and "43,759,562" songs.
 * April 13th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview  in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,604,453" CDs and "46,073,017" songs.
 * July 20th, 2005: Gracenote CDDB product overview  in the Internet Archive claims that Gracenote has "3,845,158" CDs and "49,130,187" songs.
 * Jan. 5th 2006: Gracenote Press Release in the Internet Archive claims that "Gracenote Global Media Database Now Spans over 55 Million Tracks and Over 4 Million CDs".
 * I hope it's not too late to point out the fallacy in the reasoning above: the number of CDs and the number of albums bear little relation to each other except that each album corresponds to at least one CD. The number of CDs would include double- and triple-albums (not to mention the odd compilation with four or more), singles and others. In particular many audio-books released on CD cover many CDs: Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone—the first (and shortest) book—covers seven CDs and the subsequent (rather longer) books even more. The reference being touted above as definitive fails to mention any of these other sources of CD; it refers to "album titles", gliding over the fact that sometimes several versions of an album are released. The reasoning is therefore fundamentally flawed: I can see no reason why the number of CDs should be unrealistic. HTH HAND —Phil | Talk 06:39, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Enough
We have letters to the Foundation going back months from these guys, they have tried to fix the problems they perceive with the article (OTRS ticket is 2006102310010844 and others exist I believe, and have been reverted or rebuffed at every turn. They have been really, really patient, and we have completely failed to show them proper respect.  By that I don' mean we should remove everything they don't like, or let them write the article, but if they express reservations with the content, especially the interpretation of lawsuits, controversies and the like, and they do so in a calm, patient, reasonable and non-confrontational manner, which they have, then we should at least do them the courtesy of listening to them.

Please, we can do better than this. Obviously sources are going to tend to be online, sometimes ephemeral, sometimes grinding an axe. We can, I think, do a much better job of accurately recording Gracenote, and not erring too far on the side of criticism. After all, to be fair, the Gracenote / CDDB system works well for a lot of people; most users, where they are conscious of the system at all, seem to like it.

So: let's discuss here and work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources. Please. Guy (Help!) 23:12, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

Towards a more balanced article
As is noted by JzG/Guy... a lot of the negative/opinionated content has been removed from the article with the goal to "work back in that which is unassailably neutral and robustly attributed to the very best sources." That seems like an excellent goal to me. I am pasting in (below) the sections which have been removed from the article. I think there is a lot of good content below and that we should restore it in a way which is fair, balanced, acurate, not hostile, etc...--Clay1039 13:12, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

History
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. 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. Later, hosting facilities and an advertising business model were provided by an ex-patriate Scot living in Texas, Graham Toal.

As 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 or "Table of Contents" information stored at the beginning of each disc. The TOC lists the offsets (locations on disk) corresponding to the start of each track on a CD. The matching is fuzzy and tolerates some variation in track offsets.

The CDDB technology became popular in the 1990s, as it allowed MP3s to be automatically annotated with artist, album, title, and other information during the process of ripping from CD.

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.

In 2005, Gracenote purchased audio recognition technology from Philips that is highly tolerant of noise and allows for the recognition of music over a cell phone microphone. It markets this service, which 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, as "Mobile MusicID".

In 2006 Gracenote announced that it had licensed lyrics from some of the major music publishing companies, to expand its services.

Licensing controversy
In 1998, the service 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 then in July of 2000 renamed Gracenote.

In 1999, freedb, an open source clone of the Gracenote CDDB service, was created by former CDDB users who wanted a non-commercial alternative. The track listing database freedb used to seed its new service was based on the data released for public use by CDDB.

The CDDB database license was changed, and some programmers complained that the new license included certain terms that they couldn't accept: if one wanted to access CDDB, one was not allowed to access any other CDDB-like database, and any programs using a CDDB lookup had to display a CDDB logo while performing the lookup. The service was also no longer a free for everyone, requiring commercial developers (not end-users) to pay an "initial fee", as well as a license fee based on the usage of the servers and support.

In March, 2001, Gracenote banned all unlicensed applications from accessing their 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 and hence with freedb).

The maneuver was controversial, and remains so to this day, because the CDDB database was and is built on the voluntary submission of CD track data by thousands of individual users. Initially, most of these were users of the xmcd CD player program. The xmcd program itself was an open-source, GPL project. 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, and had modified the website in 1998 to avoid mention of the database's copyright status.

Competition
The commercialization of the CDDB prompted the creation of open-source initiatives freedb and MusicBrainz. Competing commercial services include All Media Guide's AMG LASSO and MusicIP.

Customers
iTunes is a popular software program using Gracenote's CD track identification service. As of late 2006 iTunes also uses the company's services to locate cover art for audio files previously ripped.

Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox no longer uses the Gracenote database and has started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of Gracenote's licensees, Tunes.com. Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using databases and services from All Media Guide.

Lawsuits
===Gracenote v. Roxio=== In 2001, Gracenote sued Roxio and its parent Adaptec for "breach of contract, patent infringement, trademark infringement and other violations of Federal law" when Roxio tried to switch to freedb. Roxio filed countersuit against Gracenote for fraudulently obtaining a patent, misuse of said patent, antitrust behaviour, and breach of contract. The case was settled in 2002. The terms were not disclosed, but Roxio became a licensee of Gracenote. http://investor.napster.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=68888

Gracenote v. Musicmatch
In 2002, Gracenote filed suit against MusicMatch, another former licensee, for breach of contract and patent violations. 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. In its ruling, the court ruled that MusicMatch had not infringed Gracenote's patents, and invalidated one of Gracenote's patents. The court left open the question of the validity of the other patent, and the question of whether or not Gracenote engaged in inequitable conduct in obtaining its patents (allegedly fraudulent withholding of information about prior art from the Patent and Trademark Office). As described below, the Court later vacated this 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. In its ruling, the Court found that MusicMatch did breach its contract with Gracenote.

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.

The case was to have continued to a jury trial, but was settled when Yahoo, one of Gracenote’s customers, announced its pending purchase of MusicMatch. The Court also vacated the summary judgment order it had issued on August 26, 2004.

Some observers speculated that Yahoo! had been holding off on finalizing its purchase of Musicmatch until the Gracenote patent claims were resolved.

Replace disambiguation notice
editprotected

Could be replaced with Thanks! Grace notes T § 21:51, 9 June 2007 (UTC)
 * [[Image:Yes check.svg|20px]] Done. Cheers. --MZMcBride 00:55, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Reasonable Edits
Editprotected Gracenote kindly requests the following edits to Wikipedia's Gracenote page.

1) Please remove the following paragraph: "Yahoo's Musicmatch Jukebox no longer uses the Gracenote database and has started its own music identification service called CDi. Microsoft also used the Gracenote database at one point for its Deluxe CD Player product via one of Gracenote's licensees, Tunes.com.[1][2] Microsoft subsequently built its own media recognition and metadata service. Both Microsoft and Musicmatch built their services using databases and services from All Media Guide."

Gracenote requests the removal of the above paragraph for a number of reasons. First, Yahoo has ceased distribution of Musicmatch (see http://www.musicmatch.com/YMJ/welcome.htm). Furthermore, the paragraph unfairly gives the impression that Yahoo Music no longer uses Gracenote's services. However, Yahoo Music is one of Gracenote’s best customers and uses Gracenote’s services in the Yahoo! Music Jukebox.

In addition, there should be no reference to All Media Guide on Gracenote's page. Gracenote understands that a simple mentioning of competitors is common practice (Coca-Cola/Pepsi pages); however, there is no mentioning of Gracenote on All Media Guide's page. In the interest of fairness, a reference to All Media Guide, especially one inaccurately portraying that it stole a couple of Gracenote’s customers, should be removed from Gracenote’s page.

Ultimately, the paragraph incorrectly indicates that Microsoft and Musicmatch dropped Gracenote in exchange for All Media Guide, and whether Microsoft and Musicmatch use All Media Guide is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote.

2) The page currently gives the impression that Gracenote has only one customer (iTunes), when in fact, Gracenote has many.  A recent press release discloses the following, " Gracenote powers leading services including Apple iTunes, Yahoo! Music Jukebox, AOL Winamp; home and automotive products from Alpine, Panasonic, Phillips and Sony; and mobile music applications from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, KDDI (Japan), KTF (Korea), Musicwave (Europe), and others."  See for example: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/article.html/date=2007040.

3) Also, Gracenote recently launched the first legal lyrics offering in the U.S. This resulted in huge media attention.  See, for example, the attached press release from BBC news: http://www.gracenote.com/music/corporate/press/20070424BBC.html.  The Gracenote page should refer to this new service.

4) The Microsoft link under "References" should be removed (^ http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/1998/jun98/tunejtpr.mspx).  It is irrelevant to a description of Gracenote.

5) Please remove "for-profit" when describing Gracenote in the first sentence.  The description has loaded meaning. Most entries for companies are descriptive of what the company does like "is a technology firm based out of ..." or the like. Perhaps this plays into the current edit lock, but I think the current statement violates NPOV.

Thank you for your assistance. 209.10.41.94 18:47, 13 June 2007 (UTC)B.Symes
 * I've reduced the protection on the page to allow anyone to edit it. However you should beware of Wikipedia's conflict of interest policy; you're in no way violating it by just editing this article, but please make sure all edits keep in-line with the neutrality policy and that any addition of information is verifiable. Cheers. --MZMcBride 20:53, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Why do we need Gracenote?
Looked elsewhere for this information (obviously not well enough), so figured I'd ask the venerable Wikipedia community. Why is the (full) track information not just embedded in CD's? If the answer is: "It is", then why do we need this Gracenote website? I've heard of innacuracies, but that's not my beef. It's this: I went up to the country over the Christmas period, and figured I'd use some of the time to import some CD's into my Mac Powerbook. The farmhouse I was staying in (which was in the middle of nowhere) had no internet connection - no houses even remotely nearby with open wireless connections to hitch a ride on. So I began importing the first CD. Because my computer was not online, the CD imported itself into itunes as "Track 01, Track 02" etc.. Now of course this is really annoying: having songs on one's computer called "Track 01", etc. is almost useless. My computer needed to be online in order to access the Gracenote database that itunes uses as a default. However, again it seems to me that surely the CD manufacturers / producers could just embed this information into the CD, without the need for an outside web source for verification.

If this is covered elsewhere, I apologise. But surely I have a point?

86.158.239.72 (talk) 12:43, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

In short, the Format of the file system that is used on CDs is very old and didn't have the ability to embed this information into the CD. Newer CDs have CD Text support which the manufacturers *do* use to provide track information, but as far as I know, it is not nearly as complete as the ID3 tags on MP3. I don't know if iTunes supports pulling information from CD Text (or if your CD had CD Text on it), but there are certainly consumer products that use the information (all aftermarket in-car audio decks, and some home stereos for instance) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.97.251.99 (talk) 05:24, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

What an old question... But I think now trackID makes the sense, right? [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=user_talk:bluedeck&action=edit&section=new&autosummary=%20&editintro=user:bluedeck/infr/user.talk.editintro.js Chief Executed Officer ] 17:38, 22 October 2014 (UTC)

Grargh
The new "fair and balanced" article has no mention whatsoever of gracenote stealing cddb from the public. Are we really sure wikipedia isn't for sale? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.204.149 (talk) 03:06, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

agreed. I came to the wikipedia entry for gracenote after noticing that one or two of my privately-published music CDs, with no CD Text or ISRC codes embedded, were showing up in my i-tunes with the correct titles & durations. being an engineer, I quickly surmised that the t.o.c. was being used to "guesstimate" the information out of a user-driven database.... & that some altruistic fan of my band's music had done the typing/upload.

after all, anyone even half-awake will have noticed that a) i-tunes offers the ability to submit this information if it is missing from gracenote & b) that the system is often foxed by CDs with one long track, giving a number of possible near-matches.

I came to the page seeking confirmation of this mechanism's workings, but it seems that everyone is now fighting over the history of what should probably be (ironically) as "free" & "democratic" as wikipedia itself. when is a fact not a fact, eh?

duncan 23 october 2008 10:10BST  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.145.236.193 (talk) 09:10, 23 October 2008 (UTC)

Lack of controversy frustrating
I was looking up Gracenote hoping to find out more about (1)a list of competitors and (2)its various controversies, which was big news a few years ago (http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/02/1955245) but the article is shockingly bare and almost feels like an advertisement for Gracenote. Something as simple as a link to a page describing the controversy (or its sordid legal history) would be quite helpful.

If anyone came here for the same information I did, I found a revision with some useful info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gracenote&oldid=91698238

-- 69.242.39.232 (talk) 17:14, 24 January 2009 (UTC)


 * The verifiably notable lawsuits are definitely conspicuously absent and as a 1996-1998 era contributor I'd rather like to see this covered as it was previously -- samj in out 16:35, 26 February 2009 (UTC)


 * It seems to this humble editor the article is heavily biased. It even fails to reflect the whole freedb afair. I think the editing of the article by User:Gracenotes is akin to writing autobiographies. The article itself show the heavy bias that this has created. Can someone please include not controversial, but factual statements? That is, value their inclusion because of their veracity, or rather, verifiability, rather than their allude. Check WP:NPOV, WP:V and WP:AB. MEEEEEEEEE! (talk) 06:13, 1 April 2009 (UTC)

Extremely biased article
I just wanted to add my voice to the others that this article seems to be missing very important facts. While it may be inconvenient for Gracenote to include some information, I regret to say this is an encyclopedia and not an advertising outlet. Although I do appreciate the notice at the top at least explaining the article is being edited by someone "close to" the company.

There's a difference between stating the facts from a neutral point of view, and not saying anything because it puts the company in a bad light. In my view the information should be out there so at the very least someone can edit them so they are as neutral as possible. Understandably because of Gracenote's actions in the past people are quick to put them in as bad a light as possible; so could we not reach a consensus on how the information should be put?

My view is the fact the topic is so hotly debated shows it should be mentioned to some capacity. Gwatts88 (talk) 10:39, 8 January 2010 (UTC)


 * The users 209.10.41.94 and Thenin (possibly the same person) have repeatedly removed the section on controversy and put advertising material pointing exclusively to Gracenote's product web sites into the article. I'm reverting this once more now. Arndbergmann (talk) 12:02, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * In view of the company's past actions, it is not possible to put CDDB/Gracenote in a "good light" without being biased. Anyone familiar with the situation even before this Wikipedia article was started knows the general facts in the case.  Gracenote reneged on a promise, then had its attorneys lie about it in court.  Trying to sugar-coat the story to put Gracenote in a "good light" would be non-NPOV and would be in violation of Wikipedia policies.  The only way to avoid "problems" would be to remove all articles pertaining to Gracenote and CDDB from Wikipedia, but I doubt anyone would suggest doing that.  Just present the documented facts and let readers form their own opinions. &mdash; QuicksilverT @ 18:08, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just added archive links to 2 one external links on Gracenote. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100604174219/http://www.gracenote.com:80/company_info/press/042208/ to http://www.gracenote.com/company_info/press/042208/
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100516050155/http://www.gracenote.com:80/company_info/press/060208/ to http://www.gracenote.com/company_info/press/060208/

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External links modified
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I have just added archive links to 1 one external link on Gracenote. Please take a moment to review my edit. If necessary, add after the link to keep me from modifying it. Alternatively, you can add to keep me off the page altogether. I made the following changes:
 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/20100604174219/http://www.gracenote.com:80/company_info/press/042208/ to http://www.gracenote.com/company_info/press/042208/

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Neutrality/Primary sources templates
Greetings all - I deleted these templates since they've been in place for well over five years with significant edits. Specifically, I don't see any proliferation of primary sources, or anything that obviously screams "POV!" jumping out at me. Feel free to revert and let's have a chat here if you think this is in error.

Thanks! K arunamon  ✉ 22:03, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Yet the entire article reads like a PR piece. That is not neutral. Plus sourcing license notices in the terms of use of respective services as being evidence they use it are also primary sources. ViperSnake151   Talk  22:06, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * You're probably going to be a little bit more detailed. "Reads like a PR piece" is rather subjective, especially given PR pieces don't generally contain a full history, notes on lawsuits, acquisitions, and so forth. Also, if I understand correctly, a "primary source" would be Gracenote saying "X uses us". Another company saying "we use Gracenote" is primary how? K arunamon  ✉  22:45, 12 January 2017 (UTC)
 * For reference, here's the relevant section of WP:PROMO:
 * "Advertising, marketing or public relations. Information about companies and products must be written in an objective and unbiased style, free of puffery. All article topics must be verifiable with independent, third-party sources, so articles about very small "garage" or local companies are typically unacceptable. Wikipedia articles about a company or organization are not an extension of their website or other social media marketing efforts. External links to commercial organizations are acceptable if they identify notable organizations which are the topic of the article. Wikipedia neither endorses organizations nor runs affiliate programs. See also Wikipedia:Notability (organizations and companies) for guidelines on corporate notability. Those promoting causes or events, or issuing public service announcements, even if noncommercial, should use a forum other than Wikipedia to do so. See also Wikipedia:Conflict of interest and WP:Paid."


 * Could you point out where in the article there is biased style, a lack of objectivity, or puffery? Let's fix it. K arunamon  ✉  22:49, 12 January 2017 (UTC)

The style is not biased, the style is nearly perfect. The CONTENT is what's biased. The question of whether Gracenote's existence is even legitimate is one of the most notable features of the organization, because of the methods by which it changed its status and its license. The existence of that controversy is one of the main reasons that Gracenote has any notability at all. Presenting that controversy as part of the lead paragraph is essential to allowing readers a balanced view, because the company's very existence remains controversial. TooManyFingers (talk) 04:40, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

External links modified
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 * Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20100124145437/http://www.gracenote.com/sec062706/SonySecurityNotification.html to http://www.gracenote.com/sec062706/SonySecurityNotification.html

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update the gracenote logo
The logo currently displayed is old (the red version). The latest Gracenote logo is blue, as seen on www.gracenote.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by CA Road Rider (talk • contribs) 00:17, 13 December 2017 (UTC)


 * ✅ - AquilaFasciata (talk) 22:30, 30 April 2019 (UTC)