Philips and Gracenote Launch Gracenote MobileSM – First Global Music Recognition and Content Delivery Service for Mobile Phones

Agreement Joins Leading Waveform Recognition Technology, Global Music Database and Third-Party Content Aggregation Platform
CES International, Las Vegas (Embargoed until January 9, 2004) – Gracenote®, the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, today announced it has partnered with Philips Research, the research and development division of Philips Electronics, to launch Gracenote® MobileSM, the first international solution for music recognition combined with related music content delivery for the mobile phone platform. The exclusive agreement combines Philips’ robust and scalable waveform fingerprinting technology with Gracenote’s global database of waveform fingerprints and third-party content integration platform to provide a reliable, global solution to carriers, content owners and consumers.

In conjunction with this partnership, Gracenote has an agreement with Paris-based Musiwave, a leading provider of mobile entertainment applications, to provide Gracenote MobileSM service to European markets. Musiwave is currently providing mobile music recognition for Spanish carrier Amena, which has proved to be overwhelmingly popular, and is driving significant increases in ringtone and dedication revenue from links embedded in the return message.

One of the key advantages of Philips’ waveform recognition technology is that it can identify a song using as little as three seconds of music, compared to similar technologies, which can require as long as 15 seconds to provide a match. The system is backed by Gracenote’s global database of music information, including waveform fingerprints for over 4 million songs, and a mature, proven content integration and delivery platform, which has served music recognition services linked to rich media for millions of users each day, for several years.

“We needed to build a global solution, which required a reliable, highly scalable international database and infrastructure that only Gracenote was in a position to provide,” said Erik de Ruijter of Philips Research. "Gracenote’s third-party content platform also enabled us to integrate a crucial component to this model; a highly effective marketing channel that will enable us to extend and grow the service into targeted regions that have demonstrated a high demand for mobile music information services."

“Philips is tremendously committed to waveform technology and their offering is an ideal match to Gracenote’s digital music identification and content platform,” said Ross Blanchard, Director of Marketing for Gracenote. “Considering their investment in world-class algorithm and search technologies, Philips is going to be a close, dependable partner for the long-term development of this field.”

How the service works:
When a music fan hears a song they’d like more information about, they simply dial a short code provided by the carrier or portal and point their mobile phone towards the music source for 5-10 seconds. Depending on their phone, the user will receive a message with related data, such as the album cover, artist and song name and links to purchase the download or ringtone. Older phones will receive a text message with the relevant data and instructions for purchasing ringtones and other content.

Gracenote Mobile MusicIDSM is the mobile version of Gracenote’s music recognition and information services. Gracenote CDDB® is the foundation for Gracenote Music Management System, including Gracenote MusicIDSM, Gracenote CleanSM, Gracenote PlaylistSM, Gracenote LinkSM and Gracenote EncodeSM; developed to provide a complete music listening experience in all music devices.
About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Tokyo and Berlin and reseller agreements in Seoul and Paris, Gracenote provides a suite of integrated software and services that enable consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to provide the best in digital entertainment. Globally, over 30 million users each month rely on Gracenote to provide an enhanced music listening experience, wherever they listen to music.

HARD-DRIVE BASED CAR AUDIO ENTERS THE MAINSTREAM

Honda, Nissan, Audi, Volkswagen, Sony, Rockford, Pioneer, Alpine, Fujitsu Ten, Clarion, Kenwood and PhatNoise® Adopt Gracenote Technology in Hard-Disk-Drive Devices
International CES (embargoed until January 8, 2004) ---Gracenote®, the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, announced that Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 will be used in hard-drive based audio devices from leading automakers and aftermarket car audio manufacturers representing major global markets. These devices offer consumers the ability to store their entire music collection in their cars, and give music fans unprecedented access and control of their music while driving.

Gracenote Music Management System® is a groundbreaking digital music platform that provides advanced functionality for device manufacturers needing to create the next generation of music devices. The foundation of the suite is music identification provided by Gracenote’s industry standard CDDB® music database and Gracenote MusicIDSM for song-level and waveform identification; once files have been correctly identified, Gracenote CleanSM automatically sorts and re-tags all the digital files in a person’s collection, turning them into fully functional, digital music libraries; finally, Gracenote PlaylistSM enables automatic and dynamic playlists at a touch of button, and Gracenote LinkSM adds related music content and album art for an enriched listening experience.

Each of the following car audio applications have adopted The Gracenote Music Management System to provide distinct and unique offerings for listeners: Honda has announced that it will offer the first OEM car audio/navigation devices for its new Honda Civic models in Japan; Rockford corporation’s OmniFi™ for the car is an upgraded version of it’s award-winning digital media streamer using Wi-Fi connectivity; PhatNoise® PhatBox® is the newest edition of it’s award-winning removable hard-disk-drive car audio system, which has already been adopted by Audi, Volkswagen and Kenwood; Clarion’s AddZest Car Navi system will provide a hard drive based car audio and navigation device for Nissan cars. Alpine’s device will provide the industry’s first car navigation system to offer digital music with direct links to album cover art for the Japanese market; Fujitsu-Ten’s Eclipse will provide the first English language hard-drive car navigation system with a complete music jukebox; Additionally, Sony, Panasonic and Mitsubishi have previously adopted Gracenote’s digital music information services into car stereo and car audio devices.

“People enjoy most of their music in cars and driving is the perfect time to utilize automatic playlists at a touch of a button,” stated Tom O’Mara, Managing Director for Rockford Corporation’s OmniFi. “We want to make listening to music in cars so compelling and fun that people never want to get out of their cars – and Gracenote’s technology is helping us to meet that end-goal.”

“ The hard-drive car audio market is one of the fastest growing segments of our business; almost half a million units were sold last year and we expect that number to grow to well over 1 million by 2005,” stated Craig Palmer, president and CEO for Gracenote. “Consumers are recognizing real values offered by these systems, such as instant access to their music and ease-of-use, and that’s starting to drive mass adoption in the mainstream market.”

Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 for car audio enables car audio device makers to make music listening easier and more fun. An entire library of music can be instantly accessible, sorted and recognized; instant playlists based on genres or seed songs can be created with a touch of button allowing many hours of sequential driving music. Notably, cars that provide these devices will likely be safer due to fewer driving distractions.

About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Tokyo and Berlin and reseller agreements in Seoul and Paris, Gracenote provides a suite of integrated software and services that enable consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to provide the best in digital entertainment. Globally, over 30 million users each month rely on Gracenote to provide an enhanced music listening experience, wherever they listen to music.

GRACENOTE POWERS NEW MUSIC DEVICES FOR HOME AUDIO

Gibson Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox, PhatNoise® Home Digital Media Player, Yamaha’s New MusicCast MCX 1000, Rockford’s Omnifi™; Denon Home Server NS-S100; all Adopt Gracenote Music Management System

Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, (January 8, 2004) - Gracenote, the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, today announced that several leading home electronics manufactures have adopted the Gracenote Music Management System in industry-leading new devices. CES 2004 Innovations Award winner for software and embedded technologies, The Gracenote Music Management System is intended to improve the usability and value of all digital music playing devices and software applications. Located in Central Hall 2, Booth #8955, Gracenote will demonstrate the benefits offered by its new product suite in new home audio devices being launched at CES, including: The Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox by Gibson Audio; The PhatNoise® Home Digital Media Player; The Yamaha MusicCast MCX 1000; The Denon Home Server NS-S100; and the latest version of The Rockford Omnifi™ for Home. Additionally, two new media servers will debut at CES using Gracenote’s technology, from IntelliNet Controls and Russound, respectively.

The Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox, which won “Best of” in the Audio category of the CES 2004 Innovations Awards, is a great example of the power that Gracenote brings to cutting edge digital music products.  “In creating the Wurlitzer Digital Jukebox we were looking to combine a name from an earlier era with state-of-the-art technology and an elegant, simple user experience,” stated Kris Carter, President of Gibson Audio. “The Gracenote Music Management System plays a key role in that experience by providing our users with instant CD information and linking to third party content such as CD cover art.”

“The fast-paced evolution of home audio is forcing manufacturers to create devices that offer both cutting-edge technology and a short learning curve for users,” said Ty Roberts, Chief Technology Officer for Gracenote. “Our technology was developed with two criteria in mind; ensuring that all user functions are easy to implement and use; and that they offer highly-valued features, ranging from basic music recognition, to the creation of customized playlist definitions that can be saved and used over and over again - at the touch of a button.”

Gracenote Music Management System is a groundbreaking digital music platform that provides advanced functionality for all audio devices. The foundation of the suite is Gracenote’s industry standard CDDB music database and CD-identification technology and Gracenote MusicID for song-level and waveform music identification; once files have been correctly identified, Gracenote Clean automatically sorts and re-tags all the digital files in a person’s collection, turning them into fully-functional, digital music libraries; finally, Gracenote Playlist enables automatic and dynamic playlists at a touch of button, and Gracenote Link adds related music content and album art for an enriched listening experience. Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 is available now and is offered with a bundled pricing package.
About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Tokyo and Berlin and reseller agreements in Seoul and Paris, Gracenote provides a suite of integrated software and services that enable consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to provide the best in digital entertainment. Globally, over 30 million users each month rely on Gracenote to provide an enhanced music listening experience, wherever they listen to music.

GRACENOTE MUSIC MANAGEMENT SYSTEM WINS INNOVATIONS AWARD

Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 is Broadly Adopted by Consumer Electronics Manufacturers, Leading Middleware Providers and Reference Designers

Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, (January 8, 2004) - Gracenote®, the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, has been awarded an Innovations Award for Gracenote Music Management System 2.0, the latest version of its information management platform, intended to improve the usability and value of all digital music playing devices and software applications. New features of the platform include the first dynamically generated automatic playlist technology for both desktop and embedded applications, and waveform recognition services that provide accurate and easy to use digital file identification for all music files regardless of their original source, file format or labeling. Located in Central Hall 2, Booth #8955, Gracenote will demonstrate the functionality offered by its new product suite and the benefits it provides to all music playing devices for home, car and portable use.

“ The beauty of Gracenote’s technology is that it solves all of the critical issues that are inherent to digital music that can create problems for users, and often negatively impact their overall experience of a device,” stated Daniel Putterman, president and CEO, Mediabolic. “Gracenote’s first product did a great job of solving the basics, with music recognition and digital file cleaning: Version 2.0 pushes the boundaries by taking the things people already love doing with digital music and making them easier.”

Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 New Features:
Gracenote PlaylistSM 2.0 is the industry’s first dynamically generated playlist technology for both desktop and embedded platforms.

Playlist 2.0 introduces a number of powerful features, including:
A highly flexible playlist generation engine that enables customized music mixes by using a wide variety of criteria to sort music
The ability to save and store dynamic playlist definitions, even directly onto a device hard drive, enabling users to continually generate updated playlists as their collections evolve

One-touch and “sounds-like” playlists that are developed by using one or more songs or artists as “seeds” to create dynamic playlists

Gracenote MusicIDSM 2.0
Provides accurate and easy-to-use digital file identification using waveform recognition technology. This service can be used on all digital music files regardless of their original source, file format or labeling:
Multi-step process that pairs waveform recognition technology with text matching for the most accurate and reliable music recognition solution
Can recognize digital music files based purely on the characteristics of the music signal itself, or by using text embedded in the file tags and name
Enables new music recognition applications for all music, including analog sources

“These are significant improvements to our technology offering, which will dramatically improve the usability and sheer enjoyment of music devices,” said Craig Palmer, president and CEO for Gracenote.

Gracenote Music Management System Features:
Developed to meet the needs of device manufacturers developing the next generation of digital music devices, Gracenote Music Management System is a groundbreaking digital music platform that provides advanced functionality for all audio devices. The foundation of the suite is Gracenote’s industry standard CDDB music database and CD-identification technology and Gracenote MusicID for song-level and waveform music identification; Once files have been correctly identified, Gracenote Clean automatically sorts and tags all the digital files in a person’s collection, turning them into fully-functional, digital music libraries; Finally, Gracenote Playlist enables automatic and dynamic playlists at a touch of button, and Gracenote Link adds related music content and album art for an enriched listening experience. Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 is available now and is offered with a bundled pricing package.

Several related announcements were made today regarding newly launching Gracenote-enabled products for home and car audio.

About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Tokyo and Berlin and reseller agreements in Seoul and Paris, Gracenote provides a suite of integrated software and services that enable consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to provide the best in digital entertainment. Globally, over 30 million users each month rely on Gracenote to provide an enhanced music listening experience, wherever they listen to music.

GRACENOTE ANNOUNCES FIRST EMBEDDED AUTOMATIC-PLAYLIST TECHNOLOGY IN SAMSUNG YEPP YH-1030 PORTABLE PLAYER

Samsung Yepp YH-1030 Challenges the Portable Market with Breakthrough, Touch-of-a-Button Playlist Function, Generated Directly on a Portable Device

Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, (January 9, 2004) ? Gracenote®, the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media, today announced that Samsung’s revolutionary Yepp YH-1030 portable device will offer the industry’s first automatic, “one-touch” playlist generation feature on a portable device, powered by Gracenote PlaylistSM. For the first time, consumers will be able to simply and easily create automatic playlists directly from their portables, wherever they are. Additionally, the portable maximizes a users’ music collection by making all of the songs available for creating playlists, regardless of whether files were originally input with accurate metadata.

Samsung’s portable device has adopted Gracenote Music Management System, winner of the CES 2004 Innovations Award for embedded technologies. The foundation of the suite is music identification provided by Gracenote’s CDDB music database and Gracenote MusicID for song-level and waveform music identification; Once files have been correctly identified, Gracenote Clean automatically sorts and tags all the digital files in a person’s collection, turning them into fully-functional, digital music libraries; Finally, Gracenote Playlist enables automatic and dynamic playlists at a touch of button, and Gracenote Link adds related music content and album art for an enriched listening experience.

Automatic playlisting depends on accurate music file recognition and metadata: A song can only be used in a one-touch playlist once it has been correctly identified and linked to descriptive information. Gracenote PlaylistSM is fully integrated with Gracenote CDDB®, the industry standard CD recognition service containing information on over 2 million CDs; and Gracenote Music IDSM, a technology that accurately identifies any digital music file, regardless of its original source, format or labeling. Working in unison, these tools ensure that all files in a digital music collection can be incorporated into a playlists, without any additional tagging by the user.

“Due to the limited user-interface on all portables, providing an instantly generated, customized playlist has been a pipedream up until now,” stated Sean Pak, product manger for Samsung’s portal music division. “Using Gracenote’s technology, we’ve been able to significantly improve the user interface of our players, for example: Trying to find a song using a genre classification is very difficult on most players – Gracenote Playlist provides us with a simplified version of their music classifications, which is better suited for a portable and in turn, is more useful tool for generating playlists.”

“Playlists are one of the coolest features of digital music, yet most people don’t use them because they take too long to create. We’ve made it so that people can build intricately tailored playlists as quickly as selecting a single song,” stated Ty Roberts, CTO of Gracenote.

In addition to creating automatic playlists, users can choose to develop playlists based on Gracenote’s proprietary, global popularity data and musical style mappings when they use the device’s software connected to the Internet. This service enables users can tap into Gracenote’s proprietary, global popularity data and genre mappings to create similar-sounding playlists based on seed songs, or popular-song playlists, generated using popularity ratings. Gracenote Music Management System 2.0 is available now and is offered with a bundled pricing package.

About the Samsung Yepp YH-1030
In addition to providing Gracenote-enabled functionality, Samsung Yepp YH-1030 offers great features necessary for the portable audio players such as lyric display, 30GB built-in hard disk drive, Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WMA file playback, simulated surround sound SRS WOW, FM tuner, FM recording, MP3 file encoding from external sources, USB 2.0 fast download, and 15 hours playback time. More information and other products are at the Samsung booth #11027 in Central Hall 3.

About Gracenote
Gracenote® is the worldwide leader in information services for digital music and media. Headquartered in Emeryville, California, with offices in Tokyo and Berlin and reseller agreements in Seoul and Paris, Gracenote provides a suite of integrated software and services that enable consumer electronics manufacturers and software developers to provide the best in digital entertainment. Globally, over 30 million users each month rely on Gracenote to provide an enhanced music listening experience, wherever they listen to music.