Gracenote Launches New Connected Music Solution for Cars

EMERYVILLE, Calif., Nov. 13, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Gracenote® today announced that it has launched a new connected music solution for automakers that will help create on a common platform to unify all of the various music sources within the car's head unit. This new solution will enable automakers to bridge online and offline music sources for a safer listening experience. This Gracenote technology will be available for 2017 model year cars.

Access to music in the car has grown tremendously over the last few years. Beyond AM/FM radio, CDs and satellite radio, consumers are now listening to their favorite artists and tracks on subscription-based streaming music services, Internet Radio services as well as downloaded music stored locally on their device. The dizzying amount of choice and feature sets creates a very disparate music experience for the listener. Gracenote's connected music solution will enable drivers to link their musical experience from traditional radio to their favorite streaming music services through a consistent user interface, regardless of the source, and deliver high quality metadata to the car's display.

"The arrival of the connected car is pushing the automotive industry to think about the musical journey in a very different way," says Ty Roberts, chief strategy officer and co-founder of Gracenote. "With Entourage Radio, we're adding an intelligent layer that helps identify what songs are being played and the source.  Once you identify what a driver is listening to and when, you can create entirely new experiences across multiple music sources from AM/FM radio and streaming to local music collections stored on a device." 

Gracenote Entourage™ is the underlying technology that enables the continuous audio fingerprinting of the songs for real-time music recognition. Being able to identify the audio source in real-time also helps Gracenote provide the correct song, artist and album information, deliver relevant Cover Art as well as station logos to the automotive display. Once a song is recognized, listeners can command through the car's head unit to play songs that are similar in genre, mood and era, play additional songs from the specific artist or add to an existing playlist within their favorite streaming music service. 

In addition to creating a seamless music experience for consumers, Gracenote's connected music solution also solves one of the greatest challenges for global automotive manufacturers – fragmentation of entertainment services by market. While one popular music streaming service is available in the United States, it may not be available in other international markets. Gracenote's vast catalogue of song IDs for streaming services will give automakers the flexibility to easily link drivers to their regional streaming music services. Automakers may also choose to leverage Gracenote Rhythm™, its music discovery platform, to enable automatic playlisting within a local library.

For more than a decade, Gracenote has worked with automakers and suppliers to pioneer in-car entertainment, starting with first generation audio systems which were able to identify CDs, to delivering metadata and Cover Art, one-touch playlisting and "hands-free" voice recognition of music. Today, Gracenote powers more than 65 million cars and helps drivers identify and connect with the songs and artists they love across leading automotive platforms, including Ford Sync and Chevy MyLink to Toyota Entune and Hyundai BlueLink.

About Gracenote

Gracenote, Inc. provides music and video content and technologies to the world's hottest entertainment products and brands. Gracenote is the industry standard for music and video recognition and is supported by the largest source of music and video metadata, featuring descriptions of more than 200 million tracks and TV listings for 65+ countries. Gracenote is a subsidiary of Tribune Media Company (OTC:TRBAA) and has offices around the globe. For more information, visit our website www.gracenote.com or follow us at @GracenoteTweets and www.facebook.com/PoweredbyGracenote.

Gracenote is a registered trademark of Gracenote, Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE Gracenote

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